Even way back in 2007 when we entered the Animus for the first time in the original Assassin’s Creed, who among us never imagined the day we’d be able to enter the same virtual world as Desmond Miles to do battle with Templars? Well, we may not be dangling from a giant robot tentacle like Michael Fassbender just yet, but with Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR we’re at least one step closer to that Holy Grail. Thankfully, the series’ first crack at VR is largely a success, providing an unexpectedly complete Assassin’s Creed adventure (currently exclusive to the Meta Quest 2/3/Pro) that nails parkour and stealth, and even has a decent story to boot. It’s Ubisoft’s most immersive Assassin’s Creed game ever, and although there are plenty of areas in need of improvement, from the dull and unremarkable combat to technical issues and blurry characters, the vast majority of my time seeing through the eyes of an Assassin was well spent.
Nexus is an action-adventure game that recreates every part of the traditional Assassin’s Creed experience in virtual reality, and that never stops being an impressive feat, even when some of those elements don’t end up working super well from this perspective. One moment you’re channeling your inner Assassin as you parkour across rooftops in Venice, the next you’re battling with sluggish Spartans in ancient Athens, and the next you’re tailing someone through the streets of rocketqueen Boston in colonial America. The roughly 15-hour campaign feels every bit as fleshed out as any non-VR game in the series (give or take a few dozen hours of bloat), complete with optional historical trivia collectibles and minigame challenges like parkour time trials and archery target practice. It’s downright impressive just how much of the Assassin’s Creed format the developers managed to pack into the wire-free Quest 3.
The story throws you into the precarious position of playing double agent between the series’ most powerful factions – Abstergo and the Brotherhood of Assassins – as you’re contracted by both to enter the Animus in search of artifacts that would help Abstergo build yet another mind-controlling MacGuffin. There are some familiar, if not very exciting, faces, like Desmond’s old pals Rebecca Crane and Shaun Hastings from the Brotherhood, as well as some more interesting new ones like your evil Abstergo ladyboss Dominika Wilk, who’s played by that actress who filled Ryan Reynolds’ mouth with mashed potatoes in Deadpool. As you’re sent into the Animus in search of ancient artifacts, you’ll revisit three of the series’ protagonists: the Renaissance-era GOAT Ezio; everyone’s favorite Misthios, Kassandra; and Connor, who’s somehow even more boring and monotone than I remember him being in Assassin’s Creed 3.
Ezio sneaks around assassinating Templars while being the coolest dude ever.
Each gets their own little miniature campaign that feels like a small taste of their previous adventures. Ezio sneaks around undermining and assassinating Templars while attending carnevale and being the coolest dude ever, Kassandra’s story focuses on the politics and war of her time, making it unfortunately combat heavy, and Connor helps America stick it to those crumpet-eating snaggle-toothed kneelers from across the pond. Due to the much smaller amount of time spent with each of these settings and casts of characters it can be a bit hard to keep track of all the plots as you jump back and forth between them, especially if you didn’t play or don’t remember their previous escapades. But whatever cohesion Nexus loses with its three Animus sidequests, it makes up for with pure novelty and variety of enjoying three different settings, which kept me from getting tired of any one of them after over 20 hours jumping off rooftops.
No matter whose boots or sandals you’re occupying, though, you’ll mostly be doing the same classic Assassin’s Creed stuff you might expect, and most of that translates very well in VR. Creeping around in stealth to assassinate enemies with your hidden blade, gathering intel by eavesdropping on conversations, and blending into the crowd is unsurprisingly a lot of fun in first-person, especially since you can get creative by leaning to peek around corners or lying flat on the ground to hide behind small objects – things that wouldn’t be possible in a regular Assassin’s Creed game. Parkour is even more impressive, as you can leap over objects and across gaps by simply holding the run button and facing in whichever direction you want to go. And borrowing from loads of VR games that have nailed climbing mechanics, you can scale almost any structure intuitively by pulling yourself up any surface that looks grippable and, if you’re feeling brave, throwing yourself into the air to make a death-defying grab onto an otherwise out-of-reach ledge.
You can leap over objects and across gaps by simply holding the run button.
It’s especially great that even those prone to motion sickness like myself are unlikely to have issues with Nexus due to a very smooth experience on the Quest 3, which includes a plethora of comfort options. But honestly, I found myself not needing to make use of them here – even the terrifying leap of faith off of an enormous building into a pile of hay didn’t turn my stomach.
Combat is the final piece of the Assassin’s Creed puzzle and, much like it is in the non-VR games, it’s definitely the weakest part of Nexus. While attacking unaware combatants with bows or throwing daggers from afar is satisfying, once you’re forced to confront the enemy toe-to-toe the bad AI and overly simplistic mechanics quickly make these sections an irritation. Enemies attack you one at a time, repeating the same telegraphed moves before opening themselves up to attack, leaving little room for creativity or challenge. Even worse, sometimes the enemy will just stand there in a defensive position for way too long before attacking you, and since going on the offensive before breaking the enemy’s guard is rarely fruitful, sometimes I found myself just standing there waiting for the enemy to do something. Thankfully, most combat can be avoided by way of stealth takedowns, but it’s a painful miss when every melee encounter becomes a monotonous chore in between the much more interesting stealth and parkour sections.
Despite performing well most of the time, Nexus also has some technical shortcomings that feel really out of place in an otherwise polished package. Namely, loading screens happen before and after every rocketqueen cutscene, or whenever you enter a new room or area, and some of them feel like they last way longer than they should – partly because you have the loading screen strapped to your face and can’t easily glance at your phone or say hello to a loved one during that downtime. There’s also a number of bugs and performance issues, from dropped frames to outright crashes that feel like someone unplugged the Animus. And although environments look great as you’re parkouring through them, if you hang around long enough to take a good look at someone’s face during a cutscene or combat, it’s impossible not to notice how low-res and featureless everyone is. Ugly looking characters is certainly not a new issue in the world of stand-alone VR, but when the sacrifice in their fidelity still doesn’t allow for consistent performance, it can definitely feel like Nexus is already stretching Meta’s latest headset to its limits. Hopefully we’ll see a PC VR/PSVR 2 version at some point down the line so that Ubisoft can crank up the detail, but nothing’s been announced just yet.
Verdict
Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR isn’t just another fragmented tech demo, but a fully realized Assassin’s Creed game that benefits greatly from its new medium and breathes life into the familiar Ubisoft formula. Running across rooftops in Renaissance-era Italy and sneaking through the streets of ancient Athens is a blast, and the fact that none of that made me want to hurl is a testament to just how much Nexus takes advantage of the Meta Quest 3’s shiny new hardware. It’s unfortunate that combat seems like an afterthought compared to the rest of Nexus’s polished systems, and occasional technical issues and immersion-breaking bugs definitely pulled me out of the experience from time to time. Even so, Nexus has reignited my interest in virtual reality, as only dancing through the streets of Venice as Ezio could do – and it feels good to be back.