So I just picked up this game about 3 hours ago for Playstation 4 and been playing for the better part of the past two hours and am just wondering if it's me or this game is almost unplayable? Apart from the hundreds of glitches I've already encountered and dismissed as "AC glitches" (wall/stair clipping + running through people + scripted events not working out well with some NPCs being stuck in loops) I'm also experiencing the worst framerate I've gotten from an Assassin's Creed game.

I'm talking way below 30fps, anything that involves me taking cover reduces my framerate drastically to unplayable levels. The game looks absolutely fantastic with the tiles shining, flags moving with the wind, fire/smoke being my personal favourites "next-gen" moments. But what's the point of having all that if whenever you have too much activity (or too much greenery I found) the game slows down like crazy. Game came with a ~850MB Day One patch that only makes me imagine what the game must have been like before.

I'm pretty disappointed, I love where this is going in terms of story-telling so I'll stick with it for now but will probably be returning it to GameStop for Dragon Age/FarCry4/GTAV next week. Hoping a last minute patch resolves some of the issues to convince me to keep the game.

This sounds like AC3 all over again. That game ran similarly to what you have just described. We talking framerates in the low 20's, here? AC3 got down to 18 at many points.

People bemoaning the PC version of the game spoke too soon, it might end up being the most stable of the 3. Yikes

That makes me feel a bit better about not getting it, but it sucks that games are already running at unstable framerates this early into the generation. I really hope this is an optimisation issue and not that the tech is too intensive for the current consoles.

@doctordonkey: It was around low 20s yes.

I've restarted the PS4 since and the frame rate has "stabilized" at a visible 30fps. It holds up but after getting used to smooth frame rates it's such a pain to look at -.-

I wanna say more than one AC game have had the issue of framerate getting worse over long playthroughs. I dont know if that's a cache-ing issue or what but I experienced it in Black Flag and 3

I saw some of that AC Rogue leaked footage earlier, and that game looked real rough performance-wise. I thought Unity would've been better. Maybe Ubisoft is having problems keeping up the quality.

It'll probably be fine on the Xbox 1, since they got a deal with Ubisoft for no.1 version.

Yep, saw it on Xbox at PAX to and it was pretty pitiful on there as well.

Looks like every version of this game is garbage and I might just have to wait till my next major computor upgrade (probably 2-3 years) to play it.

Played up until after the escape without the patch and it was ok. So far with the patch, no problems either. Load times are a bit long, though.

Considering that Sony had the deals on the older games and the PS3 had the weaker performance I wouldn't bet on it.

Just picked it up at midnight and was wondering the same thing. I immediately thought it played and looked like garbage. Is it just me or is this absolutely nothing like what they showed at E3? Big time disappointment. Especially after playing sunset overdrive and having that run so smoothly. Can only hope that Dragon Age and Far Cry live up to their hype cause I'm taking this shit back in tomorrow to try and get a refund.

That's because Sony paid money to Ubisoft but barely had a working devkit for the PS3. Ubisoft simply took advantage of Sony's stupidity and took their money.

I'm sure MS are leveraging their investment in AC4. I'd be shocked if the XB1 version runs poorly. It will probably look better AND run better then the PC/PS4 versions.

Wouldn't be surprised if it's a memoryleak from a game engine so young it doesn't know how to crawl. They showed freaking renders for E3 etc. One-frame-per-many-minutes rendered material. I believe it's not the first time Ubi does that.

This is wishful thinking of the highest order.

As someone with the Xbox One version, it definitely runs poorly. I'd gladly flip a switch to get it to run in 720p to get a more consistent framerate.

It's one of the best-looking games I've seen if that's any consolation, though.

I'd be shocked if what you're saying is true considering that statement they released about how both console versions are locked at the same specs. They would have to intentionally gimp the other versions of the game and that'd be a poor business decision even if Microsoft was paying them to fuck up.

I wanted to create a topic about how the game appears (in the recent gameplay videos) to lack polish with regards to the parkour and combat, but I didn't want to jump the gun, especially since most games nowadays come with a sizeable day one patch. I'm disappointed to hear that it runs even worse than I thought.

Game's not out of embargo until 9AM today, so there's still time for a 10GB patch.

But you have to use UPlay, you know, UPlay, the service that says it has cloud saves but doesn't actually upload any of them to the cloud...

I found that out in the hard way when I returned to Blacklist earlier this year. -_-

:D :D :D

Uplay means your saves literally go into the clouds, never to be seen again :)

@amyggen said:

dat pop in son!

@amyggen: It's not pop in... it's just a glitch in the Animus.

After needing to drop down the resolution to 900p, was there any doubt of incompetent fools making this game? One look at Second Son or First Light makes Ubisoft look like total chumps.

@amyggen:

New engine, made from the ground up EXCLUSIVELY for the current gen systems guys! If what OP talks about is a consistent experience on the platform, then this is just embarrassing for Ubisoft.

Convenient embargoes huh?

saw 1-2 youtube videos on 1080p 60 and man. that looked ROOOUUUGH.

Be curious to hear what Alex's experience has been like on today's Bombin the AM. I wasn't planning on getting this game anyway, but still... what a shit show.

Its kinda sad this is getting me a little giddy. Probably shouldn't have split resources to make 2 separate game Ubi

This is all a real bummer as I was actually really excited to play what I assumed was going to be the first real "next gen" experience.

Well at least Dragon Age is getting stellar reviews. I guess.. just gotta wait another week..

This is such a massive bummer. I've been so excited for this game, it takes place during one of my favourite periods of history and from how they were talking it seemed like they were finally learning from their mistakes.

Surely this is likely to be due to the playstation 2.0 update that has borked the performance of a lot of games recently no?

One of the reviews of Dragon Age I read earlier mentioned a similar problem but then added that they were sent a ps4 with the patch for the broken patch already installed on it and all the crashing and chugging stopped.

@bugbarbecue: People are reporting issues on all platforms.

I wish all devs would prioritize good performance over graphics.

It's really cool to have games across multiple platforms, but as expensive and complicated games are to develop these days, I wonder if the need to port to 3 or 4 platforms actually means that every console version will be worst then it could be had the development team focused on one platform.

There's countless examples of ports that are more or less equal on different platforms. The general trend is PS3 and 360 were mostly equal (towards the end of the cycle) and then PC beat them both out.

That's the same as now, except PS4 is sometimes running at a higher resolution. This is a Ubisoft problem, I would advise people to remember how shitty Assassin's Creed 1 was on PS3, it had terrible framerate problems, I remember returning my copy because it was so bad.

A shame, but probably one that won't end up being too big a deal for me personally.

At least people now have an alternative in Shadow of Mordor, which hopefully could get some extra wind in its sails if Unity turns out to be shitty.

This is really bumming me out.

What a shame, especially as I felt Black Flag was getting the franchise back on track again. Explains why review dates were so late, makes a lot of sense now.

Still, as someone who adored this franchise it's a bummer to see Ubisoft screwing it up.

Found this spectacular demonstration of the pop-in issues in this game from a thread on GAF. Absolutely unbelievable.

It's hard to pick a favorite moment from this video, but I think mine has to be at around the 0:11 mark. Keep your eye on the top right of the screen and watch the lady walking away from the player, next to the overturned wagon.

Ubisoft deserve to be chastised for this obvious anti-consumer embargo!

Kinda had a sneaking feeling this game would be garbage. Glad I wasn't interested to begin with. Guess we also know why they took it down to 900p I wonder if they just had a ton of trouble optimizing the game?

@privodotmenit said:

While the embargo timing is extremely suspect, I have this lingering feeling that when reviews hit, the majority of them won't be nearly as critical of these glaring technical and optimization issues as they probably should be. I really hope to be proven wrong later this morning, though.

I think you are right but considering all the glitches that people are reporting I'm not sure how people are gonna feel about spending 15+ hours with this game while it's also running at 20 fps, that can get annoying really fast.

@captain_felafel: Jesus christ that framerate, I got slightly nauseous just from watching that. It doesn't even look that good either. It's muddy, low poly and other than Arno's outfit all the textures are shit.

@corevi said:

And that's the PS4 version too. When I saw the Xbox One version, it looked even muddier somehow. Like, legitimately blurry.