With Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, Ubisoft’s flagship series crosses over into virtual reality, exclusively on Meta’s untethered Quest VR headsets.

Assassin’s Creed probably deserves to make the jump to virtual reality more than any other game franchise out there. The series’ very premise is essentially about virtual reality. The protagonists plug themselves into an Animus device, which is effectively a fancy VR system, to experience the memories of historical assassins that have been encoded into their descendant’s DNA.

After a bit of faff trying to log into my Ubisoft account to link in with my Meta account, the game wasted no time sucking me into the Assassin’s Creed mythos. My living room was filled with the light blue glow of the Assassin’s Creed menu utilising the Meta Quest 3’s mixed reality passthrough camera.

The Assassin’s Creed chronology, which the series has fleshed out over the last fifteen years, is esoteric and multi-layered. Ubisoft has tied itself into such narrative knots that the games have had to be reinvented a couple of times.

Casually picking up Assassin’s Creed Nexus, with its complex background, could be a bit overwhelming for newcomers. Thankfully, the game explains everything that you need to know on how to play and enjoy the game. The tutorial takes you through the basic mechanics of sneaking, fighting, assassinating, jumping, and climbing almost straight away. As more features unlock so do the tutorials.

The game can be played standing or seated; you just need enough space to flail your arms about a bit. There are the usual comfort settings allowing teleport locomotion, snap rotations, and movement vignetting. If you don’t suffer from VR sickness, I recommend smooth movement and turns. If you are new to this sort of open-word movement, it takes a bit of getting used to, but actually works really well.

Playing as just another triple-A VR game, players unfamiliar with Assassin’s Creed will have no trouble getting into the nuts and bolts of Nexus. If, however, you have been following Assassin’s Creed game for a while, you are in for a real treat.

The intro hints at the experience being something special. That mixed reality sequence that has you in your home, your room around you, making your Meta Quest 3 experience part of the game, really is “meta”.  The game positions the player as a hacker working undercover as an Abstergo Industries operative whilst on the payroll of the modern-day Assassins.

For those not in the know, here’s a brief rundown on the basis for the Assassin’s Creed games. There are two factions at play: the Templars, a group that wishes to shape human progress and the Assassins who believe that humans should forge their own path.  Both of these groups and their predecessors have been in conflict for over a thousand years. To achieve their goals, the Templars seek to employ ancient and powerful artifacts via their modern-day front company, Abstergo Industries.

Those artifacts, Pieces of Eden, were created by a precursor race, the Isu, who were worshipped as gods in prehistory, their existences forming legends and myths. These objects have been discovered and lost throughout history. Using a device called the Animus, the Templars use DNA memories to recreate the past and find the location of these artifacts. The Assassins are in a race to get to these objects before the Templars.

Assassin’s Creed Nexus allows players to revisit characters from across the franchise. The game’s first stop is with Eizo Auditore da Firenze, the Italian nobleman and Assassin from Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood and Revelations.

The tutorial sequence has players performing short quests, such as Eizo Auditore da Firenze, retrieving his sword in 1509 Venice.  retrieving his sword in 1509 Venice. As with the main games, stealth is key. You can physically crouch or press a button. This is the point when the game’s sense of immersion really hit me. I was in a room, hiding behind some casks avoiding the guard. I watched their gaze as I sneaked past. I ACTUALLY sneaked past. Rather than just control the assassin with a gamepad, I WAS the assassin. The next room had a guard on the door, I threw a cup. The guard, distracted, left his post and I scurried past.

Next. it was time to use the game’s iconic hidden blade, by pressing the trigger and twisting my wrist to release the blade. My first attempt had me stumble, alerting the guard- you really have to jab the blade in. It feels a lot more real, and a bit disturbing when you have to physically stab your opponent. The next area was a courtyard and it was up to me to either dispatch or sneak past the guards. One hapless guard fell to my hidden blade, the others lived to tell the tale.

Climbing is a big part of the Assassin’s Creed games. In Nexus, the game has you physically climbing by reaching for ledges and pulling yourself up. After a bit of climbing and jumping, I reached my sword. The game then branched off showing how to attack and parry.

Before long I was in the Italian moonlight with fireworks in the background. In front of the fireworks the text “Ubisoft Presents” appeared and then the Assassin’s Creed Nexus logo. It gave me goosebumps and it was cemented that, yes, this is a real Assassin’s Creed game.

As with the main Assassin’s Creed series, the game has players trying to locate magical Isu artifacts, in this first of the three parts of the game, Ezio once again teams up with Leonardo da Vinci to locate the Staff of Hermes.

Being a Meta Quest exclusive, the game is tailored for the performance of the equipment. The compromise of untethered, standalone VR (and MR) means that the visuals may not be as good as those of a high-end PC or even the PlayStation VR2. But they are still very good and what would have been considered high-end PC VR graphics only a few years ago.

The game then took me back to the setting of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey as the mercenary Kassandra in 405 BC Greece. Once again, the player is charged with obtaining an artifact and must confront a Templar agent.

Ancient Greece is even more impressive than Renaissance Italy. For this second sequence, the game opens up, allowing players to traverse the map with a bit more freedom.

The final character that you revisit is Conner Kenway from Assassin’s Creed 3. Caught up in a prison break in colonial-era Boston the game has players running across rooftops and dispatching enemies with arrows and Conner’s signature tomahawk.

The play areas for each character, whilst quite large, are more constrained and curated than in the main Assassin’s Creed games. There’s also a bird’s eye view of the map that can be used to plan your approaches.

The game is a lot more physical than the main Assassin’s Creed games. Swinging your sword, parrying, climbing, and swinging all require a bit of effort rather than just pressing buttons. It’s the same with dodging, using your hidden blade, throwing knives and bow. The result, though, is a more immersive experience than any other Assassin’s Creed game.

The Meta Quest 3, being such a comfortable and lightweight device, allowed me to play extended sessions in the game. This is handy as Assassin’s Creed Nexus is no simple VR “Experience” it’s a full-length game that provides gamers with 15-25 hours of gameplay. It’s not a game that I’d recommend that you put down as the VR controls, whilst easy to pick up, are also easily forgotten, requiring another look at the tutorials, which can be a chore.

The game visuals are pretty good for a standalone VR game. There are some compromises, but the game’s immersion and the details in the environments mean that you are likely to not be scrutinising the level of ambient occlusion or counting light sources.

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR is a “must-have” Meta Quest 3 game. I feel for Assassin’s Creed fans who don’t have access to a Quest headset, as this is a very special Assassin’s Creed game, one that allows players to actually be the assassin for the first time.

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Ubisoft has released a new Gameplay Overview sharing how the development team took the fifteen-year-old Assassin’s Creed franchise to a new level of immersion with Assassin’s Creed Nexus in Virtual Reality, exclusively on Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest Pro.

For the first time in the franchise, players will be able to embody three different assassins in first person across three different time periods, and physically perform Iconic Assassin’s Creed actions like wielding the Hidden Blade, exploring cities from above with parkour, engaging in combat and mastering stealth. In Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, the player is an elite hacker operating undercover for the Brotherhood at Abstergo. They will delve into the memories of iconic assassins Ezio, Connor and Kassandra, who have each crossed paths with the artifacts Abstergo seeks.

The development team gave extraordinary attention to detail in parkour mechanics, crafting large, open urban environments, called open-maps, that truly come to life in VR. Players will be able to traverse them intuitively with a sense of freedom and realism like never before.

Stealth is at the center of the Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR experience, allowing players to physically sneak around or use social stealth to blend in and tail a target without being detected. The interactive environment presents endless opportunities to create unique infiltration scenarios. To distract guards, players can make use of the whistling feature, or use throwable objects to manipulate their surroundings and outmaneuver their enemies with finesse by performing intuitive physical actions with the Meta Quest controllers.

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR also introduces innovative physical gestures for blocking, parrying, and executing takedowns, providing an engaging and empowering combat system, with specific sets of weaponry for each Assassin’s arsenal. Whether you prefer to throw Connor’s tomahawk at enemies, draw Kassandra’s bow mid-air, or perform thrilling air assassinations with Ezio’s hidden blades, the options are yours to explore.

Years of development have led to Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR featuring a comprehensive suite of comfort features to accommodate players of all types with VR sensitivity. Players can remove partially or completely locomotion through space, use the Fear of Heights feature to reduce vertigo, and many more options that are fully customisable to meet the player’s needs.

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR is the first AAA VR title of the franchise that allows players to embody three master assassins and physically perform their iconic actions in first person. The game will release on November 16, 2023 on the Meta Quest Platform, which includes the Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest Pro for AU$59.95.

With development led by Ubisoft Red Storm*, Assassin’s Creed Nexus will let players choose how to achieve their objectives as they make their way through open maps and use their hands to block, parry, counterattack, and duel a variety of enemies. Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR is a full-length Assassin’s Creed game that features all the iconic gameplay from the series, including parkour, combat, stealth and the dazzling leap of faith, all with an entirely new story, only available in VR.

Players can add Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR to their Wishlist on the Meta Quest Store page now.

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Ubisoft has announced that Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, the first AAA VR title of the franchise that allows players to embody master assassins and physically perform their iconic actions in first person, will release on November 16th, 2023.

The new trailer unveils Abstergo’s sinister scheme to manipulate people’s beliefs using ancient technology. To defend Free Will, players will embark on a journey through the newly discovered memories of three master assassins from three different eras, each featuring their very own set of weapons for a unique gameplay experience. They will join Connor in the midst of the American Revolution, blend into the crowds, and dispatch foes with a powerful tomahawk throw. Players will also embrace Kassandra’s world in Ancient Greece, draw her bow, and perform the iconic leap of faith from historic monuments. Lastly, they will employ Ezio’s stealthy hidden blades to discreetly eliminate their enemies against the backdrop of the Italian Renaissance, and uncover the secrets concealed in their memories. Players will have to navigate Abstergo’s scheme as an undercover hacker, hired by their cyber-security leader, an ambitious and bright woman named Dominika Wilk, whose methods tend to be quite unorthodox.  This new character in the AC lore is played by renowned actress Morena Baccarin.

With development led by Ubisoft Red Storm*, Assassin’s Creed Nexus is the very first installment allowing players to play a master Assassin in first person. Players will choose how to achieve their objectives as they make their way through open maps and use their hands to block, parry, counterattack, and duel a variety of enemies. Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR is a full-length Assassin’s Creed game that features all the iconic gameplay from the series, including parkour, combat, stealth and the dazzling leap of faith, all with an entirely new story, only available in VR.

Players will get to immerse themselves in the action with weapons including bow and arrows, swords, throwing knives, the tomahawk, the crossbow, the Hidden Blade, and bombs. They will explore iconic historical cities including Venice, Athens and Colonial Boston. Each environment features 360-degree navigation, allowing them to climb and parkour freely as they meet civilians and historical figures, all of whom react to the player’s VR actions. They will feel the tension of stealth as they sneak up on a target from behind or surprise them with an air assassination. They can blend into a crowd or distract enemies with objects in the environment.

Years of development have led to Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR featuring a comprehensive suite of comfort features to accommodate players of all types with VR sensitivity. Players can add Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR to their Wishlist on the Meta Quest Store page Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR on Meta Quest 2 | Meta.

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During the Ubisoft Forward Live conference, Ubisoft revealed more about the upcoming Assassin’s Creed games: Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, and Assassin’s Creed Codename Jade.

Each title enriches and expands the Assassin’s Creed brand to new territories, giving the opportunity for more players to delve into varied settings and immersive gameplay experiences.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage

With development led by Ubisoft Bordeaux, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is an homage to the series, and a particularly special tribute to the first Assassin’s Creed. Inviting players in a magnificent ninth-century Baghdad at the peak of its Golden Age, Assassin’s Creed Mirage offers a condensed, narrative-driven action-adventure experience with a modern take on the parkour, stealth, and assassinations gameplay elements that have defined the franchise for over fifteen years.

Two new trailers were unveiled during the conference, delivering an immersive preview of the iconic Assassin’s Creed experience the game will offer to players.

As they follow the story of Basim going from a street thief to a master assassin, they will fight against the Order of the Ancients and discover more about the nightmarish visions that haunt him. Assassin’s Creed Mirage will release on October 12, 2023 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X | S, Xbox One, and Amazon Luna, as well as on Windows PC through the Epic Games Store and the Ubisoft Store.

Starting from launch, players will be able to learn historical information and discover images from renowned museums and institutions’ collections thanks to the “History of Baghdad” feature.

Featuring 66 historical sites across the world of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, “History of Baghdad” will provide a research-based perspective over the setting and era of the game. All entries will be available in the game’s Codex.

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR

Led by Ubisoft Red Storm and set to release Holiday 2023, Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR is the first AAA VR title of the franchise, allowing players to embody legendary master assassins and physically perform their iconic actions throughout a full-fledged game.

The game will be available on the Meta Quest Platform, which includes the Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest Pro. Fan favourite characters will be playable in Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, including Ezio Auditore da Firenze in Renaissance Italy, Kassandra in Ancient Greece, and Connor in Colonial America, in an all-new story built from the ground up for VR.

Abstergo Industries has found a way to retrieve powerful lost artifacts that can profile anyone via their lifetime of memories, and then use those profiles to manipulate their beliefs. Players will work to sabotage Abstergo’s plan, discovering all new chapters of each Assassin’s story.

Players will be immersed into the world of Assassin’s Creed, using real-world motions to fight with their blade, throw their axe, and wield their bow in combat against a variety of enemies. They must move stealthily, hiding within the environment or blending in amongst civilians. Players will explore iconic historical cities including Venice, Athens and Colonial Boston, as each environment features 360-degree navigation, allowing them to climb and parkour freely as they meet civilians and historical figures, all of whom react to the player’s VR actions.

They will experience the rush of air assassinations and the thrilling leap of faith as they decide how to achieve their objectives. Years of development have led to Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR featuring a comprehensive suite of comfort features in order to accommodate players of all types with VR sensitivity. Players can add Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR to their Wishlist on the Meta Quest Store page.

Assassin’s Creed Codename Jade

Today, Ubisoft also revealed its partnership with Level Infinite, a gaming brand dedicated to delivering high-quality games to a global audience, that will publish Assassin’s Creed Codename Jade.

Players will get to access a huge open world set in third century BC ancient China, featuring iconic Assassin’s Creed’s gameplay elements: exploration, parkour, combat and assassination. For the first time in the franchise, players will be able to customize their character’s appearance and make it their own, before tackling the journey ahead, filled with ancient history and hidden dangers.

During this pivotal era, the Qin Dynasty unified China and secured the trade route to the West. Players will have to take on desert raiders and work to dismantle conspiracies, taking on greater responsibilities and facing new challenges along the way, from the Great Wall to the imperial capital of Xianyang. To ensure the delivery of the most compelling experience, players feedback will be collected through various beta phases, with the first one starting later this summer.

Pre-registrations for the next public beta phase of Assassin’s Creed Codename Jade are now open to players at assassinscreedcodenamejade.com.

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NOW CLOSED – Huawei New Zealand and StG are giving YOU the chance to own a superior and premium android smartphone, produced by both Google and Huawei; the Nexus 6P!

This bad boy rocks both stability and reliability with it’s 3GB of RAM and an Octa-Core 64 BIT ARM processor coupled by a HD 5.7″ screen.

Boasting a finger print sensor at the rear of the device and ease of use with Google’s very own Android 7.0, basically not re-skinned, meaning no bloatware allowing you to make the most of the built in 32GB storage for all of your digital goodness. (You can read our Review HERE).

Camera modes galore and a rear lens at 13MP, front selfie camera at 8MP, currently being the flagship top shelf Nexus on the market.

And it can be all yours.

To Enter our Nexus 6P  Giveaway, thanks to Huawei New Zealand, we want to hear from you as to why you believe Huawei Handsets are the premium smartphone to own.

There is no wrong or right answer and be as descriptive as you like.

You can give us your Answer by placing a Comment below, hitting us up on Facebook, Tweet to us, or Email Us

And don’t forget to to give your love to Huawei New Zealand, the only smartphone manufacturer that knows and tailors their devices to their customers. Huawei have introduced Te Reo Maori as a Language option in their P10 (Read our Huawei P10 Review Here).

* Winner(s) will be randomly selected from those that Comment below / Facebook Comment / Email in accordance to the above Question. Winner(s) will receive a Brand New Boxed Black Nexus 6P smartphone. Competition ends on the 27th of April, 2017. Competition entries are only valid for New Zealand based entrants.

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Huawei and Google joined forces to create a super supreme smartphone. World meet the Nexus 6P.

Free from the stock standard and infuriating bloatware, the no nonsense handset is pure Android, pure Google with Huawei’s quality build and design.

Traditionally the Nexus series have been mid road, garnering a fan base no less, but not quite able to mingle with the bigger players. The Nexus 6P has bought about changes to their social standing.

We were loaned a 32GB handset and having been using a Samsung Edge up until the Nexus arrived at our office, it felt both large in size and sparse in applications once the initial first time setup was complete.

Now, it is fair to say that Google are overdoing it a little with their apps as of late, most recently with an added extra of ‘Street View’ as an additional separate app in the mix of Gmail, Google Play, Google Music, Maps and the list does go on. But very pleasingly there was no third party bog-your-phone-down nonsense to be seen.

It actually took a little bit of getting used to as one of the first things that new users of a handset tend to do, myself included, is to rid the factory applied applications, or at best disable them. With the Nexus 6P there was none of this activity and after setup you were up and running in no time.

The very vivid full HD 5.7” screen is uncluttered and reveals a small bezel, as is Huawei’s trademark. To the upper back of the unit is a finger print sensor. Once setup, this enables you to lock and unlock your handset, as you would assume, and for our time with the smartphone it never failed. You do need to keep your finger on the sensor, unlike the Mate 7, it’s not a simple tap.

Having the now mandatory 3GB of RAM and an Octa-Core 64 BIT ARM processor you are sweet for high end games, multitasking and anything else that your super power smartphone user can think of.

But being that this is an end of year new-comer and really Nexus’ first power play I would have thought that boasting that RAM up to 4GB would have been a no-brainer decision. Maybe we are likely to see that in the next edition.

Camera was on par with the rivals, 13MP at the back and 8MP for the front selfie camera. Of course nowhere near the Xperia’s calbre, but on par with the P8 and high end Samsung range.

Absent from the handset is microSD expansion. My guess here is that Google wants you to use Google Drive for all of your digital goodness and perhaps this is a trend that we smartphone junkies will have to get used to as a couple of other providers have also removed this hardware option from their ranges.

If you are a digital hoarder, then most likely you will want to chip out for the 128GB unit, whereas if you are not needing to store the entire internet on your device, then there’s also 32 and 64GB options.

This brings me to the price factor. The Nexus 6P is pricey. Especially when you pit it against Huawei’s flagship P8, or even past Nexus models. Pricing begins at $1099.00 (NZD) and, well, up from there.

And while it looks like Google have tried to make some effort with their Android based Music Player by having an equalizer option I still have to disappointingly say, music lovers be wary, or use a third party app. Sound through headphones was crisp, clear and semi-quiet at full volume. I’m pretty sure that the loud speaker on the handset was actually louder than the audio through headphones (and better sounding too).

Huawei also made the surprising choice to opt for a differing USB connector. I have to admit I did not notice this until I was using the Nexus 6P as an everyday phone and saw that I was running low on battery and went to plug it in to the micro USB data / charge cable I have on my desk and oops… a different connector. The Nexus 6P utilizes a USB Type-C which Huawei explain is better for fast charging. I can confirm that they are correct on this.

The handset was extremely reserved on its power consumption and managed to last nearly two and a half days normal daily usage before it almost went lights out. To charge it back to full health only took a couple of hours at best.

There are some functions that you may want to toggle off from the time you set up one of these, which will also save you on battery life. The most obvious being the gesture wake up. Picking the phone up will see the screen dimly light up, just enough so that you can see any notifications that you may have. A tap on the screen while in this dimmed state will produce full brightness. But, so many times I fully woke up the screen by simply putting the phone into my pocket or pulling it out, infact almost any form of movement at all.

The loan handset that we had also coincided with our time reviewing the Huawei Watch. The Nexus 6P never missed a beat with Bluetooth connectivity, whereas with the P8 (and P8 Lite) we found those two to be temperamental with what they would connect to.

The Nexus 6P is an interesting smartphone and an equally interesting user experience. Without going back into the aforementioned absence of bloat and crapware, having a trimmed and slimmed down operating system does take a bit of getting used to.

It is definitely Google’s flagship smartphone, and another fine example of Huawei’s design and engineering capabilities, but the Nexus 6P, as wondrous as it is, could have been a bit more beefy in it’s specs.

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