Our own Gray Aris reviews Assassin’s Creed Nexus:
Nexus simplifies the classic Assassin’s Creed formula down into a full-length VR adventure, offering thrills and suspense alongside a fully voiced single player campaign to make for one of VR’s most unique and complete experiences yet.
The Opening Mission
AC Nexus gets off to a stellar start that gives you a glimpse at what the game has in store.
The opening mission has you playing as the protagonist Ezio searching for his sword, and finds you in a beautiful Italian fortress watching fireworks explode across a night sky. It’s a gorgeous setting, and you’re free to grab some of the many objects, cabinets and drawers.
As you sneak through marble hallways and red and white rooms, you can play around with the controls, discovering how to summon your hidden blade with a motion and a pull of a trigger or how to use sound to distract enemies, getting a brief introduction to the game’s stealth and assassination mechanics along the way. You finally find the sword and are introduced to combat, allowing you to escape the premises with what you’ve learned.
Now it’s time to learn parkour. Parkour and climbing are pretty simple, you can fast walk or run around holding A button to make jumps across objects, and then you can grab onto certain surfaces by using the grip button. You climb around grabbing bricks, poles, and ledges and you can pull yourself up by literally (virtually) pulling yourself up. You’re greeted with a beautiful view of the city and night sky before moving to a cutscene in the present day.
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Faltering stories
How did we get from Renaissance Italy to some modern day scifi time? I’ll explain. Assassin’s Creed is a game about reliving the memories of past ancestors through a machine called the Animus. So, instead of playing as Ezio, you’re reliving his memories, and those of two other assassins – Connor from revolutionary-era America and Kassandra from ancient Greece. You’re really playing as a hacker in the modern day working with Sean Hastings and Rebecca Crane, assassins both originally from AC2. Here, you infiltrate the Templar organization Abstergo and work underneath Dominika Wilk, using an animus to relive the memories of our three hero characters. I checked out of the Assassin’s Creed sci-fi stories by the end of AC3, so the modern story did nothing for me, though I guess it was nice to see Sean and Rebecca again.
The individual characters all had their own unique historical stories too. The stories weren’t bad but they weren’t particularly interesting to me. I couldn’t tell you what they were about, though I enjoyed watching the characters talk and plot in their own unique settings, interacting with historical figures, such as Leonardo da Vinci or Samuel Adams.
Maps and Missions
More time periods means more maps. There are several cities for you to explore, from colonial Boston and Rhode Island to Venice in the 1500s to Athens in ancient Greece. Cities in each era are distinct, having different architecture and chatter befitting the era and location. Maps are mostly semi open world and are nothing in stature compared to Boston/New York from AC3 or Ancient Greece from Odyssey. But, they’re more than big enough, filled with collectibles and time trial parkour challenges to provide some replay value and I never felt like the levels were too small.
Missions typically involved traversing a city and infiltrating some enemy fort or hideout to steal some key item or assassinate a target. You also might have to tail targets in the open city, with some forced stealth that may put some players off. I found the tailing missions annoying at times, as I usually do, but also pretty fun to sneakily climb rooftops, eavesdropping or waiting for the perfect time to strike.
Exploring the world
Cities are large open levels which you can run and climb your way through. Of course, there’s classic Assassin’s Creed Parkour where you run on top of a wheelbarrow to grab some post and swing yourself onto a rooftop. Or you can grab onto a rope elevator to zip yourself up to the top. Climbing involves pressing the A button for basic parkour, then grabbing onto buildings and climbing by gripping with the controller’s grab buttons or throwing yourself up by swinging your arms down for leverage. It works well and makes for some enjoyable traversal, though it might take a little while to get the hang of. And of course, you can climb to high points to synchronize and get a bird’s eye view of the city before returning to the ground with one of the franchise’s signature leap of faith into a conveniently placed haystack.
Each city’s unique architecture lends itself to its era to construct some of the best and most complete levels that I’ve seen in VR. And, in true AC fashion there are Historical Constructs placed around the cities and levels, which you can pull to reveal neat pieces of real history that help to contextualize the events taking place and who the characters are. These were really cool and I found myself fully reading through a lot of the ones I found, which I have not done in any AC games since the Ezio Trilogy.
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And one of my favorite parts of the game is that it is fully voiced – a rarity in VR. All the characters you speak to are well voiced and while they won’t win any awards, they are believable enough.Cities are bustling with chatter, which makes the cities feel alive and vibrant. NPCs react to your actions, with an “I hope you don’t use that,” when you draw your weapon in the open or an “are you ok?” when they see you climbing.
Back to the Gameplay – Stealth
Stealth was my primary approach for most missions, as enemies can gradually crowd and sometimes overwhelm you should you resort to combat, whether by choice or by necessity. The stealth was the usual AC stealth and was well translated into VR. The stealth was suspenseful and thrilling – running from cover to cover, peeking corners by leaning over, pickpocketing and assassinating enemies just before they’re able to call for help. I had such a thrill wondering, “did he see me?” or “I’m in the clear.” It was also a blast getting seen and then running for cover, climbing buildings and turning corners to throw the guards off before settling in a hiding spot or escaping the scene. As far as tools go, you have throwing knives and a bow or a crossbow for ranged takedowns and smoke bombs to help you make your entrance or escape.
Combat
Combat was not as strong as the stealth for me, but was still loads of fun at times. Combat has you facing off against one or more enemies with a sword, or tomahawk in Connor’s case. You can parry by angling your sword to block enemy blows and after enough parries you open up enemies so they are vulnerable to your strikes. Heavy attacks must be dodged by crouching down or shifting to the side. Against multiple enemies, foes will mostly wait their turn before attacking you, though some might strike close together and there are often enemies lining up shots against you from afar that you are given good warning to dodge. These further enemies can be hit with a throwing knife if you have any left.
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It’s an engaging system that offers some level challenge while remaining manageable that fighting your way out is often a valid option, though sometimes the guards can be overwhelming as more may keep coming and leave you in a never ending battle until you flee (this happened to me too many times). Combat can seem floaty, and when I first started playing I would wiggle my controller as it would allow me to get more hits in during enemies’ brief vulnerability window. But, I eventually found myself really swinging my controller like a sword, and it made combat all the more intense. Combat is intuitive and not too difficult to get used to. You’ll find yourself winning all your duels, though you face a greater challenge as the number of foes arises
Graphics
I played the game on Quest 3 using Quest Games Optimizer and for a standalone VR experience, it is absolutely gorgeous. Cities are bright and brimming with detail, such as Ancient Greece’s colorful architecture, magnificent temples and statues, or beautiful paintings on some of its interior walls. That said, some of the colors outside the cities look drab, such as the British campsite Connor invades later in the game. Faces look good and the game features a full body avatar, meaning even though it’s in the first person, you can see the character’s legs and your hands and arms are fully visible. I thought they did a great job with this. In my experience on Quest 3 with QGO, I would say the graphics about on par with the Xbox 360/PS3 Assassin’s Creed games.
The game also would black the screen out if you move so close to something that your face is in it. Often I would open a cabinet which (virtually) hit my face, and the game would black out until I moved. This was 100% intended by the developers, and I wish they could find a less intrusive way of responding to this scenario that showed you where you were in relation to the wall instead of just blocking everything out.
Summary
The game might be lacking in depth and content compared to its console but counterparts, but in VR this game is magic. Crossing through a beautifully rendered and distinct city while hearing the citizens talk, sneaking into enemy bases, cutting alarms and pickpocketing my way through, only to have to fight my way out and then flee the scene running through the city made for some of the most fun experiences I’ve had in VR.
Though the story was not my cup of tea, it helped to round out the game. Not many VR games are so complete as to offer full and fully voiced campaigns, let alone detailed and fully voiced semi-open world cities, and it is welcome and refreshing to experience this level of completeness in VR, even if it is necessarily scaled down from its grander console counterparts. It’s not perfect, but there’s nothing else like it and I hope to see more games of this caliber on VR platforms in the future.
Final Rating: 8.5
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Assassin’s Creed Nexus is a Meta Quest exclusive compatible with Quest 2, 3, and Pro, and is available on the Meta store for 39.99. It contains various accessibility options such as level of immersion/comfort, combat and stealth difficulties, hand stabilization, and more.
