For more on Assassin's Creed Unity, check out our full Assassin's Creed Unity review. Or, for more of the best Playstation 4 games for a 10 year old, why not try our Family Game Finder
Assassin's Creed Unity is an open world game set in revolutionary Paris in the 18th Century. Playing as the young Arno, a servant to a rich master who has a tendency for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, one thing soon leads to another, and before you know it, you've been falsely accused of murder, banged up in prison, and inducted into an ancient order of assassins when you survive the storming of the Bastille.
While it plays a bit loose with its facts, Assassin's Creed Unity still features all the historical landmarks you'd expect. From Notre Dame to the Louvre and even, at one point in the game, the Eiffel Tower, it's a lovingly recreated Paris - and it's all scalable, too. As an assassin, Arno is a master of free running parkour, and can climb pretty much any building in the game. All you have to do is hold a button, and run towards a building, and Arno will do the rest. It's pretty useful when you want to escape from a guard, or simply take in the sights of the city.
As an open world game, there's loads of things to do here. You can complete the main story missions, which usually see you assassinating someone in some refreshingly linear, story driven missions, which leave little room for you to get lost. You can complete the game's many, many side quests and bonus missions around Paris, whether you're retrieving heads of the deceased for Mme Tussaud, or solving a murder in a monastery. Or, you can scour the city for the collectible treasure chests and cockades that litter it, using the points you earn for collecting them to level up your character, and buy new skills.
More accessible than the earlier Assassin's Creed games, with more of a tutorial to ease newcomers in, and more hand-holding in the missions to ensure you know what you're doing, this is easier to get to grips with than the others, but still isn't easy enough for young players. Some missions turn the game on its head, and offer you almost total freedom with how you get to a target - which means there's almost infinite *wrong* ways to do the mission, which younger players may find frustrating. Some basic concepts in the game aren't really all that well explained, if they're explained at all, while the map is awkward to use. With some missions asking you to find a specific building in Paris, and with the only way to find which building's which being to hover your cursor over a very specific icon on each building on the map, there's a lot of trial and error involved, which again may be off-putting to younger players. With the content considered too, this is probably one best left for the older players.
As a game that has you playing as an assassin, there's a lot of violence in Assassin's Creed Unity. Blood spilled in combat stains clothes, smears over skin and splatters over walls and floors, while you'll often be slitting your enemy's throats, stabbing them with a sword (which pierces their chest) or otherwise hitting them with something sharp or heavy. Stabbing or slitting your enemy's throat is often accompanied by gurgling sounds, while carts in the town contain decapitated pigs, who've had their bellies split open, revealing their internal organs to the world. There is, however, an option to disable blood in the game, which does get rid of the blood splatters, but doesn't have any effect on the overall violence.
Age Ratings
Format Reviewed: Playstation 4
