Recently, Ubisoft released a patch for the legendary 2014 game, Assassin's Creed Unity, offering an excellent opportunity to revisit one of the most contentious chapters in franchise history. It's a chance to play again, with Unity's performance problems removed, while also enjoying a favourable resolution update. Ubisoft calls it a 4K 60fps upgrade for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but the reality is that no console version of the game operates at native 4K, while 60fps can be considered more as a target as opposed to a fixed level of performance. Even so, it's worth it, representing an excellent chance to revisit the game.

You see, for many of us, Assassin's Creed Unity stands as a monument to the remarkable ambition of Ubisoft as it transitioned from the 7th to 8th generation consoles, taking the existing formula properly into what was then the next generation. A phenomenal boost to detail in the open world of revolutionary Paris, buildings with interiors, beautiful global illumination, sometimes stunning character rendering and a vast amount of NPCs flowing through the city. I remember the phenomenal immersion of the first Assassin's Creed even if the gameplay was a tad lacking - but this promised to be next level stuff. While now dated in many ways, it's still worth playing.

So, how does the upgrade work? Well, it's very simple. There is no full fat upgrade to native PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series apps. Instead, Ubisoft has patched the existing PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game, basically removing the frame-rate cap and adjusting rendering resolution. The enhancements in terms of pixel counts and unlocked frame-rate firmly put this upgrade into the realms of "back-compat plus" - an area where the Xbox historically commands a highly significant advantage over PlayStation.

First of all, let's talk about resolution. Each and every current-gen version of AC Unity improves upon the original 1600x900 rendering resolution. To be clear, none are 4K, but let's go through them in turn from lowest to highest. Ubisoft says that Xbox Series X delivers 1080p, but our pixel counts come in at 960p - a 13.8 percent increase in pixel count. Truth is, I'm not sure it's worth it.

PlayStation 5 gets a 2304x1296 resolution, which is more significant. It's slightly over twice the pixel count of the original game and it's undeniably a better-looking game because of it. The same resolution applies to PS5 Pro, the only benefit coming from more GPU power to deliver that presentation more fluidly. Xbox Series X is by far and away the best option, with a 2880x1620 output - 75 percent of 4K on both axes. Unity predates TAA and it doesn't use dynamic resolution scaling, so those extra pixels matter.

Beyond that, the games present with a very similar visual feature set - but that wasn't always the case. When the patch arrived, there was a skin shader issue on Xbox One that removed subtle shading, making the characters look like unearthly zombie-like figures. However, a hotfix recently addressed this and graphics parity has returned.

So what about the 60fps? Well, it's true to say that swathes of gameplay will run at 60 frames per second, but it's very much context dependent. It's fairer to say that the majority of the game runs in a 50-60fps window, with some dips into the 40s in very heavy scenes - and during many cutscenes, where Ubisoft uses an extremely heavy depth of field effect that cuts hard into your frame-rate. The highest overall frame-rate is delivered by PlayStation 5 Pro, but to be honest, I'd still prefer Series X: Xbox's system-level VRR works on back-compat games where PS5 does not. So, the vast resolution increase and VRR support means that the game looks best on Series X and runs in a consistently smooth manner.

So, for those actually after 4K 60fps - or higher - PC is the place to be, right? Well, you can ramp quality settings higher than the consoles, you can use HBAO+, you get Percentage Closer Soft Shadows, which look better. You don't need to use FXAA - you can use 2x, 4x or 8x MSAA which really tanks performance. Nvidia's long dead TXAA is also an option - an early form of TAA.

But Unity is still heavy. On a 9070 XT, 4K ultra high with 2x MSAA can drop frames in similar problem areas to what we saw on consoles. RTX 5090 powers its way to 4K at 60fps and beyond, but it has profound stuttering problems that AMD does not. This isn't an Nvidia 50-series problem - it's been there for years. And the PC version has its own issues regardless - even on the ultra high preset, LOD pop-in can look far, far worse than the console versions.

Mods have attempted to solve AC Unity's long-standing LOD details, but none of them have really worked. All of which is to say that the pursuit of the ultimate Assassin's Creed Unity experience hasn't been solved by the console patches, it can't be solved by throwing high-end PC hardware at the problem and while I doubt it'll never happen, a stutter-free experience on Nvidia would certainly be helpful.

In an ideal world we'd get a full remake along the lines of the rumoured Black Flag project, but I still think that maybe revisiting PC is the best way forward. In researching this project, I dug out 1080i E3 conference footage from the Ubisoft and Microsoft press events, delivered to US audiences back in the day via Spike TV, if you're aware of that.

Here, I found Unity presenting with far fewer LOD pop-in problems. NPC crowd density is higher with far superior draw distance. Volumetric atmospheric rendering seems to present in a more convincing way than the final game. Both conferences show an Ubisoft staffer playing the game, while the wobbly frame-rate (between low 20s to mid 30s) does suggest a real-time experience.

In theory then, today's hardware would do a much better job of handling that extraordinary graphics load. Could those original settings options be brought back to the PC version of the game? Could the buzz surrounding the console patches suggest to Ubisoft that a PC upgrade could be commercially viable? Perhaps I'm asking too much, but amazingly Unity was actually ported to Google Stadia, so… anything's possible right?