Assassin’s Creed Shadows 17+

The main issues after 5 hours of gameplay are poor performance and a bug to where my mouse just doesn’t work. Trackpad does and restarting the game multiple times sometimes fixes it. This is not a my mouse issue because it works on every other game. Im on an M3 Max and was struggling to get 30fps at default settings (mostly medium). It was also using roughly 28gb of my 36gbs ram at these default presets and still running poorly. Lots of stuttering and input lag. After turning down settings it made the game almost always get 30fps. You also can't disable ray tracing either you can only set it to low. This game has potential but just doesn't feel like they put the effort into this version. There needs to be much more optimization on all versions of this particular game but that’s Ubisoft in general.

Specs:

MacBook Pro

M1 Max 10 Core CPU/32 Core GPU

64GB of Unified Memory

2TB SSD

I was delighted to contribute to the support of Mac gaming for a AAA day-one release (I extend my gratitude to Apple and Ubisoft for their efforts). However, while Ubisoft asserts that 720p at low settings should yield 30 frames per second, this is not consistent, and low settings at 720p do not provide an optimal experience for such a visually stunning game.

One would think that such a controlled system like Apple’s Macs would be similar to game consoles like Playstation and Xbox in that the developers aren’t building the game for as large a variety of CPU/GPU/RAM configurations like for Windows PCs, therefore it would be easier to optimize, but I guess not.

I have awarded the game three stars, acknowledging the complexity of development. Nevertheless, the price of $70 for a poorly optimized game on Mac is unacceptable when I can spend the same amount on PlayStation, Steam, Xbox, or other platforms and obtain a superior experience.

Regrettably, I have requested a refund, as I believe Ubisoft has failed to meet expectations despite the delay. It is evident that the additional time was not dedicated to system optimization for Mac.

PERFORMANCE: The performance on Mac is not great and I was expecting a little more from Ubisoft. You have to run the game on lowest settings using dynamic resolution (Im using 4k upscaled) on performance mode in order to get above 30 fps which is more than playable. After a while I think they will get the game more tuned up for the Mac. I just think they should have polished more for launch since they were porting with a Mac release. GAMEPLAY: The game is a good despite some of the controversy online. I think that if the average person plays the game themselves they will see this as well. I am not saying it’s the best assassin’s creed narrative because Black Flag is stunning. So is Odyssey, I think that with patches, and expansions there will be more ironed out to make more of a complete game.