Developer and publisher Ubisoft took a massive hit to its reputation this month when Assassin's Creed Unity released in an unacceptable state, with woeful framerates and a laundry list of crashes and glitches. There were eighteenth century French peasants hovering in the air, magically appearing from nowhere or disappearing into walls, and poor Arno Dorian wasn't much better off. Players frequently found themselves falling through the floor into a void or simply suspended in the air, with Arno flailing his arms ineffectually. That's without even getting into the horrifying "missing face" glitch.

Ubisoft has since been scrambling to fix the situation, releasing a third major patch this week and offering consumers free DLC or a free game as an apology. It's worth mentioning that Far Cry 4 released a week after Assassin's Creed Unity and was in altogether a pretty polished state, but it's fair to say that quite a few people have been left wary of buying Ubisoft games on launch day.

The next big upcoming Ubisoft release is The Crew, an open world racing game with integrated singleplayer and multiplayer - or "MMO-Car-PG," as it's been dubbed. The Crew has had four closed betas and one open beta, which means that it will theoretically be prepared for its imminent release, but The Metropolist contacted lead game designer Serkan Hasan and asked if there was a risk of The Crew experiencing the same breadth of problems as Assassin's Creed Unity. In response, Hasan promised that the game would run at 1080p and 30fps on consoles at launch, and said that he has "confidence in the stability of the game and its performance."

There's obviously a big difference between a select group of players trying out The Crew in a closed beta and the number of people who will be playing it on launch day, but Hasan said that the repeated beta tests over the course of The Crew's development leaves it in a good position.

"For The Crew, we’ve reaped the benefits of a long term beta program, designed specifically to push our infrastructure as far as possible in real world situations, with thousands of players from all over the world playing the game at the same time.

"The launch of any online game these days has potential issues, but I hope that players will be encouraged by our open approach. If you had any doubts that we could pull this off, I hope that the betas proved our credentials and the game’s stability."

It seems like Assassin's Creed Unity's problems may have stemmed from the pressure of an annual release schedule. Far Cry 4 hit shelves two years after Far Cry 3 and The Crew is a new IP that was made by a different developer, so there's no reason to assume that it will suffer from a similar set of glitches and performance issues as Ubisoft's latest historical adventure. Nonetheless, it might be best to wait for reviews before buying.

The Crew is set to launch on December 2, 2014 for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Xbox 360.

Source: The Metropolist