AC2, Brotherhood and Revelations tested.
In theory, these games should be a good fit for Switch.
The open world action-adventure games are full of small tasks and missions suitable for short play sessions.
Facial modelling and animation is awkward, and environmental detail is limited, with flat and plain looking buildings.
Brotherhood shows some moderate improvements, particularly in character faces, but is otherwise similar.
Character rendering took another big step here, with a particularly realistic portrayal of skin for the time.
So how do these games fare on Switch?
Let’s start with AC2, which is a complicated and rather compromised conversion.
All of these changes further remove the game from the original aesthetic of the PS3/Xbox 360 release.
Revelations is a little more interesting.
However, there is one further cut on Switch, and it’s a big one.
The Switch version looks clearer, brighter, and less sophisticated in many scenes.
1080p is achieved most of the time and the image looks sharp and detailed for a Switch title.
Portable mode employs a similar setup, although the results are a bit more variable.
The resolution target is cut to 720p, with lows around 540p.
Resolution takes a dive more often here, particularly in Revelations and Brotherhood.
This is complicated slightly by Ubisoft’s approach to image scaling.
This applies to both portable and docked modes.
A more conventional approach to image scaling would have been best I feel, as this tends to distract.
AC2 and Brotherhood stand out in particular and look super-sharp owing to their lack of anti-aliasing.
Performance is mostly positive.
Docked mode operates at a solid 30fps across all titles, with dips only in rare circumstances.
Portable mode fares somewhat worse.
Unfortunately, there is one final oddity here, and that’s the audio mix.
The audio compression issues present in otherAssassin’s Creed gameson Switch seem to have made a return here.
Many scenes still sound fine, but others are noticeably degraded.
These aren’t bad versions by any means, but they could have been better.