Door 21 on the RPS Advent Calendar is all covered in carved runes, and the shelves look like they are from a few different trees – even if they’re all part of the same door now. Sneaking through it might be the best way to go, but honestly, you’re free to fire it up and set it on fire if you prefer.
It’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla!
Imogen: I’ve never played an AssCreed game before Valhalla, so I don’t understand the underlying story about modern humans and weird magic. I don’t want to understand either, to be honest, because to me, Valhalla is just a fun game about being a cool stealthy Viking.
One of my favorite things to do is climb everything. Mainly because it’s very liberating, but partly because I find it incredibly funny. While the climbing can be tricky at times, for the most part you can climb just about anything. It’s not like the annoying Horizon Zero Dawn, where you play a character who is clearly very good at shuffling rocks, but will only do so on specific trails with bright yellow ledge markings. Nonsense! Push Eivor against a flat wall and she will just go, regardless of whether it has handles or not.
Which brings me to the bit that I find funny: a colossal Viking warrior who sprints and jumps against different buildings. Every time I do it in any town or town I’m both baffled and amused that no one seems to really care. It’s almost like these people have absolutely seen the terrifying woman climb down the side of a church, but of course they won’t cry out because what if she jumps down and crushes me.
And I absolutely would, because anti-aircraft guns are great too. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as a stealth attack from above, especially when you’re a giant Viking who absolutely flattens people before giving them a quick stab. I am 90% sure they are already dead from the impact of Eivor’s body, poking them with the hidden blade just seems like a formality at the time.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Lets You Climb Things and Squash People, 8/10, GOTY.
Alice Bee: Imogen needn’t worry, as most Assassin’s Creed fans don’t understand the aliens-but-not-historical computer magic framing story. It was never really the most important part, was it?
Ubi’s stately flagship adventure series, which is basically about the stabbing of humans throughout history, got a bit of a makeover a few years ago with Assassin’s Creed Origins. Set in ancient Egypt, the new style of Assassin’s Creed has removed the HUD markers, revived combat and gave you a much larger, more vibrant world to play in. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has added a giant girl protagonist to the mix. And this year we have Valhalla.
Since I’ve played all AssCreeds, Valhalla feels like a game with the best bits from the series to me. It has the big world to play in, the hands-off approach that lets you play in a more adventurous, off-the-leash way, and the big girl-girl protagonist from the more recent games. But it brings back the stealth blending from the previous games. It blurs the precursor to high-tech alien things.
Then it also adds Viking raids into your own longship (with a cat!), Hoof axes to people, cool undercut hairstyles, a village to rest and a whole side where you can relive being a Viking god that you totally can ignore. if you don’t like it.
Sometimes the amount of stuff you can do feels a little overwhelming, and I don’t think it needs all the elements it has. The sidequests where you find an old altar stone and then have to do a retrieve order to kill loads of hares and collect their feet could have probably been cut back.
But the missions where a nudist colony has gotten into a fight with their former leader (and he’s now standing naked on a rock over their beach town and constantly yelling at them) or two families fighting over their shared grain trade, so you set the whole thing on fire, or the family of heathen witches … yes, things like that can stay. Assassin’s Creed is dead; long live Assassin’s Creed.