Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and Faeria will be free on the Epic Games Store this week

Steam may have many legs up on the Epic Games Store when it comes to features (like some sort of perverted centipede good luck scrubbing that image from your mind), but there’s one thing they definitely don’t have in the digital arms race against their competition: Free games! And not just any games mind you, but actual good ones as well even if they’re a few years long in the tooth at this point.

Here’s a prime example for you: Assassin’s Creed Syndicate! Ubisoft’s Victorian era stealth ‘em up will be hitting the Epic Games Store on February 20, bringing the ninth game in the main series to cheapskates on PC. Syndcate’s a bit of a weird one in the grand scheme of Assassin’s Creed, being the final chapter in the traditional Animus portion of the franchise before it got a major makeover in Assassin’s Creed Origins and the superb Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

Set in merry ol’ London during the heyday of the industrial revolution and being able to get away with staffing your factories full of expendable orphans, Syndicate focused on twin assassins forming their own gang to take on the Templar organisation and the choices that each sibling would have to make along the way. It was perfectly alright at the time, but nothing to really write home about. Unless you were Geoff, who was home when he literally wrote about the game back in 2015 and my whole plot has come undone now:

There aren’t great big, sweeping changes to the established formulas here – it’s still very much Assassin’s Creed. Kill people, synchronise viewpoints, muck about in the open world collecting things, opening chests and engaging in crowd events. That’s all still here – but the setting, its characters and the little changes that have me wanting to play it more. Yes, I actually want to leave my desk and play more of the game, which I think is all that really needs to be said.

Beyond that, the Epic Games Store still has Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Aztez up for a freebie grab if you’re interested, with Syndicate and turn-based card strategy card game Faeria moving in on their territory at 8AM PT/6PM CET on February 20.

Last Updated: February 18, 2020