Assassin's Creed Syndicate

Assassin's Creed Syndicate moved the series' story on Xbox One to Victorian London, where the Rooks gang led by the siblings Jacob and Evie Frye stands against the Templar influence controlling the city amid the industrial revolution and rapid industrialization. The player alternately controls both siblings, each of whom has a slightly different approach to combat and stealth, with Jacob leaning toward direct confrontation and Evie more toward unseen progress, and for the first time in the series can use a grappling hook that allows fast movement between rooftops as well as onto the carriages of a moving train.

Ubisoft Quebec built the game on a densely populated London full of factories, bridges and landmarks like Big Ben or Buckingham Palace, through which historical figures of the era also pass, such as the writer Charles Dickens or the scientist Charles Darwin, with whom the player collaborates on side missions tied to their real-life fates. The combat system was sped up and simplified compared to previous installments in favor of more fluid action scenes with larger groups of opponents at once, while the musical score evokes the industrial atmosphere of the Victorian era with hints of darker tones accompanying both slum quarters and the stately residences of the aristocracy, between which the player moves using carriages, trains and boats on the Thames.

After the troubled release of Unity, Syndicate was received as a more stable and technically polished return to the series' qualities, though already without such great open-world ambitions as previous installments. London offered players a varied array of side activities as well as an interesting story about sibling rivalry and the gradual takeover of the city by the gang, thanks to which it ranks among the more popular installments from the transitional period of the series between its classic conception and the later, more expansive RPG titles that awaited the series in subsequent years, and thanks to this it retains its own distinctive identity even within the long line of historical installments.

Why play it: For fans of the series, Syndicate is a solid choice thanks to a varied London, an engaging story of sibling rivalry and a more polished presentation than the previous installment.