Rarely do I begin a review with the negative aspects of a video game. Assassin's Creed Unity is the first exception to date. The gaming experience that was downright beautiful was completely ruined by the excessive amounts of glitches, freezes, and disjointed mechanics/controls.
On multiple occasions, I fell through the map while climbing walls and entering buildings. It wouldn't be so bad if it just reset you to the last spot where you were at, but your character desynchronizes and you are loaded back into the last checkpoint. It seems to be a large problem for the Xbox platform because it happened to other fellow players while on co-op missions as well. These glitches along with a plethora of mid-mission freezes contributed to one of the most frustrating games that I've played in the last few years.
The real kicker was the in-game mechanics when Arnold is climbing or sword fighting. I found myself yelling at my TV screen because of the lack of detail that Ubisoft put into these controls. Somehow your character can literally ascend a wall with leaps that are greater than his height, but when you come to certain simple wall climbing movements he just sits there with his thumb up in places it shouldn't be. Like simple climbs from one window to the next, something a normal human could literally do. Ubisoft spent so much time developing the landscape that they completely neglected to fix any of these movement problems from previous games. As a matter of fact, I would go as far to say that they were far worse.
For the positives, which were overshadowed by the negatives of this game; the co-op missions and graphics were remarkably well made. The cut scenes for the missions were very detailed and there were extensive buildings that could be explored indoors. (Not that there is much reason to do it for most). When looking through a crowd, I never noticed two duplicate NPCs at any time. This diversity is a great step forward and a positive that couldn't be addressed on older consoles.
In summary, this is a Red Box kind of game. I am very unhappy that I spent $60 for this game to sit on my Xbox's hard drive. It will not be getting much attention now that I've completed the main campaign and most of the co-op missions. Buy it at your own risk, but just like all of the other Assassin's Creed games, it is still worth playing despite its downfalls.