Parent's Guide: Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

What is Assassin's Creed Syndicate?

Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a third person action and adventure game, in which you control the twin assassin siblings, Jacob and Evie. Set in London in the midst of the industrial revolution, there's a corrupt gang, known as the Blighters, controlling the streets - and it's up to Jacob and Evie to kick the ne'er-do-wells out. You control either Jacob or Evie on their quest to make London a better place, and you have a choice of whether to run straight into a fight, or to play stealthily. As you complete missions, and take over criminal hubs, you'll slowly begin to chase the bad guys out, with the aim of tracking down and removing those in charge of the gang for good.

What do you do in Assassin's Creed Syndicate?

With a huge world to explore, collectibles to find, and, well, people to assassinate, there's plenty to do in Assassin's Creed Syndicate. The main aim of the game, and indeed the main goal of many of the story missions, is to assassinate a certain character. Sometimes you only have to take a person prisoner, but you would still have to kill any nearby rival gang members. The more people you kill and the more missions you complete, the higher the level you will become. The higher level you get, the more skills you can unlock, which make you stronger, and let you customise your character according to how you play the game, whether you're buffing your strength, or making it easier for you to use stealth. When in control of either Evie or Jacob you can run around the boroughs of London, heading out either on foot, using a zip wire across the roof tops, or riding a horse carriage. At times you'll also have the opportunity to travel on the roof of a moving train. Combat is a fairly straightforward button-mashing affair, letting you press certain buttons to attack, block and use items such as medicine. The game automatically saves regularly whilst you play, so you can stop at any time and turn it off if you need to.

How tricky is it?

Handily, everything you do in the game has a tutorial, which you can access at any time should you need it again afterwards. When in a fight, you'll have to pay close attention to when an opponent is attacking, because if you don't block in time you can only take a few hits before being defeated and having to start over again. Each London borough has a different difficulty level. You have access to all the boroughs, but it's best to stay out of the more difficult ones until you're a higher level. You can tell what level they are by checking the available quests on the map in the game.

The game is automatically set to have subtitles on the screen of all the main dialogue in the game, but this can be turned off.

This is a game about being an assassin, and therefore is an extremely violent game. You'll dispose of many enemies with a knife to the back or a slit of the throat, with blood flying out, and gurgling noises being heard. Set in Victorian London, the game also contains bad language, such as "f**k", "s**t" and "b*stard", along with a lot of references to other mature content, such as references to hallucinogenic drug use and the presence of alcohol.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 4