Welcome back to Day 3 of my Game of the Year reveal. Today, we are going to take a look at my #8 Game of the Year. If you missed any of the previous days, you can go to #10 and #9 to read about them.

8. Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate

I played this game at the very beginning of 2016 and it was one of the best AC games that I have played so far. It’s not as good as Black Flag but it is right below that game in terms of quality. I did not play Unity because I heard it was terrible and I had hope for Syndicate since it was setting up to be a good year for AC since the series seemed to be on a one year good, the next bad cycle.

The big thing that made this game so much fun was that the main characters were so well fleshed out and sympathetic. The best thing about them was that they were written believably as a brother and sister. Games can fail spectacularly when they try and show different family dynamics or anything that approaches that. This game did such a great job of showing both Jacob and Evie as their own characters with their own strengths and weaknesses. They covered each other's faults over and had an amazing dynamic.

The other thing that made the game so enjoyable was that the story was well done and the game played about as well as any AC game has so far. The tale of how Jacob and Evie went their separate ways in London to take out the Templars was well told and done in such a fashion that you always wanted to see what was coming up next. The small detour you get to take into the future was also well done and seemed to possibly set up a way for them to continue the “present day” story that was put on hold for the most part after AC 3. I’ve always been a fan of the goofiness that defines the series when it comes to the “present day” story and this was the right amount of stuff to work with.

The game continues to be a well controlling experience as well. The traversal stuff seemed to be tightened up even more and it shows. There were not as many problems in traversing the city as there have been in the other games. The main way they fixed this was to give you a grappling hook. This allowed you to move up to the roof of any building really quickly and get you moving horizontally that much quicker. The combat is still a lot of fun and the ways in which they block the city off through “levels” was a very cool way to make sure you didn’t go outside of a part of the city you weren’t ready for.

Overall, this was an excellent way for me to start my year of gaming off and I am now eagerly awaiting what Ubisoft does with AC next year since they took 2016 off to work on some things.

Thanks for reading and I hope you come back tomorrow for my #7 Game of the Year, where we’ll be jetting around the galaxy like a rebel.