Assassin’s Creed Mirage Is Another Subpar PC Port

Assassin's Creed Mirage is out tomorrow on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X. The game marks Ubisoft's return to the series' roots at the request of a sizable portion of the fanbase. Whereas Assassin's Creed Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla were more akin to open world action roleplaying games, this is meant to be a much smaller stealth-focused game.

For our full review on the game, check out Nathan's article. Here, I'll focus on the PC performance. Let's begin with the system requirements, confirmed just two weeks ago. According to Ubisoft, the following configuration should be able to play at 4K with Ultra settings and 60 frames per second:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-11600K/AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 3080 10GB/AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT 16GB
• RAM: 16GB (dual-channel mode)
• OS: Windows 10/11
• Storage: SSD with at least 40 GB of free space

My test configuration is massively more powerful:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
• RAM: 32GB DDR5
• OS: Windows 11
• Storage: WD_BLACK SN850 NvME SSD

Assassin's Creed Mirage features a built-in benchmark tool, just like most of Ubisoft's recent PC releases, which is commendable. However, while the average FPS shown in the benchmark is 71 frames per second (with everything set to Ultra), it only achieves that result with the help of NVIDIA DLSS set to Quality mode. That's the least of the problems, though. Far more aggravating is that the frame graph shows massive variance, ranging from a minimum of 8 FPS to a maximum of 138 FPS. The lowest 1% and 0.1% FPS drop as low as 36 and 22, respectively.

In practice, when you play Assassin's Creed Mirage, you can feel all these stutters. They're usually not massive compared to other games, but they're always there, a constant reminder that you're not getting a smooth experience despite the high-end PC.

I've also captured some gameplay roaming the streets of Baghdad, and the frame rate mirrors what was registered by the benchmark tool. CPU utilization seems to be a big problem, as it rarely goes above 30%. Unfortunately, it's a common issue to most of the technically underwhelming PC games released in the past year.

It isn't even like the game sports cutting-edge visuals. There are no advanced rendering techniques like ray tracing or path tracing here. Moreover, as mentioned by Nathan in his game review, some of the characters look straight out of the last console generation. Honestly, from a graphics standpoint, it may even be a step back from previous games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Valhalla, despite the newer version of the Ubisoft Anvil engine used in Mirage.

At least in terms of options, Ubisoft delivers. Users can tweak the following settings:

• World Details
• Clutter Density
• Shadows
• Volumetric Clouds
• Water
• Screen Space Reflections
• Environment Textures
• Character Textures
• Depth of Field
• Motion Blur
• Adaptive Quality

As promised ahead of launch, all the base upscalers are available, including Intel's XeSS. With NVIDIA DLSS you can also select native quality, which is effectively DLAA, and it's nice to see it supported since most games do not. There are also sharpening and Field of View (FoV) sliders, although the latter is based on a percentage, which makes tweaking more confusing than with the regular numeric value.

Assassin's Creed Mirage is far from the worst offender in the onslaught of broken ports and disappointing releases that PC gamers have had to suffer. However, it's also not nearly as solid and fully featured as I would hope from such a high-profile developer.

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