Parents' Guide to Assassin's Creed Syndicate

This action-adventure game is a return to basics for Ubisoft's signature series. It ditches competitive and cooperative multiplayer to focus on the franchise's primary strength: smooth single-player action in a sprawling and meticulously detailed open world. The technical problems that plagued its predecessor, Assassin's Creed Unity, have been largely eliminated. Syndicate's Victorian-era London is beautiful, breathtaking in its scope and design and (for the most part) runs at a smooth 30 frames per second. It feels like stepping 150 years into the past, and it raises the bar for lifelike sandbox worlds. You can have fun simply riding around on one of London's trains and gazing out over the game's living, breathing city. The action, meanwhile, is very compelling. Combat has been lightly revamped and now feels smoother than ever, with a well-choreographed dance of cane strikes, brass-knuckle punches, and quick pistol shots. And though it's a little more difficult to make parkour runs through London's architecture, which is noticeably taller and more diverse than that of previous cities featured in the series, the addition of a grappling gun helps balance things out, allowing players to quickly and easily zip from rooftop to rooftop.

It's not perfect, though. Bounding across the Thames, leaping from boat to boat, feels weirdly like playing Frogger and is at odds with the realism of the rest of the game. Driving bulky carriages through London's narrow streets, leveling lamp posts and plowing through crowds of civilians, is similarly off-putting. But, by and large, Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a return to form for one of modern gaming's defining series.