Door 21 of the RPS Advent calendar is covered in cut debris and the tables appear to have come from different trees, even if they are now part of the same door. Running away may be the way to go, but honestly, you’re free to rip it off and turn it on if you prefer.
It’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla!
Imogen: I never played any AssCreed games before Valhalla, so I don’t understand anything of its underlying story about modern humans and weird magic. I don’t want to understand that either, to be honest, because for me Valhalla is just a fun game about being a stealthy viking.
One of the things I enjoy doing most is climbing everything. Mostly because it’s very liberating, but partly because I find it incredibly fun. While climbing can sometimes be tricky, for the most part it can be climbed for just about anything. It’s not like the annoying Horizon Zero Dawn, where you play a character who is clearly very good at scrambling through rocks, but will only do so on specific paths with bright yellow markings. Garbage! Climb the Eivor to a flat wall and it will only go there, regardless of whether or not there are handles.
Which brings me to the degree that I find funny: a huge Viking warrior running and jumping into various buildings. Every time I do it in some random city or town it baffles me and makes fun of me that no one really cares. It’s almost as if these people have absolutely seen the terrifying woman climbing the side of a church, but of course they won’t call her because if she jumps in and crushes me.
And I would absolutely do it because air eliminations are wonderful too. There’s nothing as satisfying as a stealth attack from above, especially when you’re a giant viking that absolutely flattens people before giving them a quick stab. I’m 90% sure they’re already dead from the impact of Eivor’s body, putting them in with the hidden blade just seems like a formality right now.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will allow you to upload stuff and crush people, 8/10, GOTY.
Alice Bee: Imogen doesn’t have to worry, because most Assassin’s Creed fans for a long time don’t understand the history of magical computer frames, but not historical ones. Anyway, it was never the important part, was it?
Ubi’s majestic flagship adventure series, which basically tries to stab people throughout history, was renewed a few years ago with Assassin’s Creed Origins. Set in Ancient Egypt, the new Assassin’s Creed style removed the markers from HUD, a revitalized combat, which gave it a much larger, more lively world to play in. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey added a great starring girl to the mix. And this year we got Valhalla.
Since I’ve played all of AssCreeds, Valhalla, to me, seems like a game that has the best chunks in the series. She has the big world to play in, the practical approach that allows you to play in a more adventurous and cordless way and the protagonist of the big girls in the latest games. But it recovers the stealth combination of previous games. The forerunner of high-tech alien things is fading.
Then also add Viking raids to your own ship (with a cat!), People’s foot axes, cool hairstyles, a village to prepare them and a full side piece where you can relive being a Viking god you can totally ignore if you don’t do it.
Sometimes the amount of things you can make it feel a little overwhelming and I don’t think you need all the items it has. The side searches where you find an old altar stone and then you have to do a search to kill a bunch of hares and pick up your feet could probably have been trimmed.
But missions in which a nudist colony has been fighting with its former leader (and is now naked on a rock above their bathroom and constantly calling them) or two families are fighting for their shared grain business, so that you set fire to everything, or to the family of pagan witches … yes, that kind of thing can stay. Assassin’s Creed is dead; long live Assassin’s Creed.