Assassin's Creed Origins stands as arguably the best Assassin's Creed game yet released, and now that we're pushing into 2018, Ubisoft hasn't given up on their epic origins opus yet. Or on its main character, Bayek, as we explore in this review of the first major DLC drop for the base game, The Hidden Ones.
Here's a snippet from our review:
The playspace we have here is Sinai, a (real-life) peninsula of the Red Sea that sets itself apart from greater Egypt in Origins thanks to its mountainous, craggy makeup. From a set piece design perspective, it’s gorgeous and helps continue painting a larger-than-life picture of Ancient Egypt. Half-finished (demolished) pyramids and temples riddle the land, while we get another glimpse at active and abandoned quarries in equal measure. You’ll even see quarry workers moving stone. Take that Giorgio A. Tsoukalos.
As a slice of content, you get four more Senu synchronisation points, a few like-for-like Phylakes (now called Shadow of the Scarab), two new stone circles and the usual mix of hidden treasures, papyrus puzzles, Roman and bandit fortification points to clear and so on. Largely, The Hidden Ones is just a small (heh) slice of Origins. A few of the game’s quests go out of their way to engage the player in different ways (the Gertha questline is fantastic) and perhaps more refreshingly, the challenge ante is upped with some of the bigger forts featuring massive numbers of soldiers and less player-friendly stealth gameplay options. Verticality messes with line-of-sight and less symmetrical design makes it harder to remain essentially undetected, forcing the player to think even more creatively about how to tackle these new strongholds.
Click here for our full The Hidden Ones review.