25 Great Games Like Assassin's Creed Identity

Sometimes you just want to play the hero. These games are violent and include shooting but, as with B-movies and 1980s TV series, it’s as much about the quips, characters and fantasy settings as it is about killing. The drama may be peppered with cinematic gunfire but, like those TV series, the real draw is spending time with the heroes every week.
 

We invited visually impaired video gamer, activist and campaigner Dr Amy Kavanagh to compile a list of games with helpful, well thought out and intuitive navigation. As a streamer and disability consultant, Amy passionately advocates for gaming to be accessible for everyone...

One of the joys of gaming are the places you get to explore that you would never be able to visit in real life. This is particularly important to me as a low vision gamer. I often face barriers when navigating the world, so it’s thrilling when I get to experience driving a fast car in the dystopian London of Watch Dogs Legion, swinging through New York as Spider-Man or climbing a mountain on a secret pirate island as Nathan Drake in Uncharted 4.

Studies have shown that gaming improves both spatial awareness and navigation skills. However, getting unintentionally lost in a game is an all too common and very frustrating experience. Not knowing where to go or feeling confused about how to move from one location to another can be a challenge for many gamers, including new or younger players, low vision gamers like me and those with cognitive impairments.

The games in this list make exploring a virtual world smoother and finding your next mission fun rather than frustrating! There are some important factors that make games easier to navigate and can support you to improve your way-finding skills:

• Maps: A great starting point for being able to find your way around a game is a clear and detailed map. As in games like Spider-Man, it’s important that the world map is available from the beginning and supported by an easy to follow mini-map permanently on screen.
• Head Up Displays: Heads Up Display or Navigational Display provides information about the relationship between your character or avatar and the space they are existing in. As in games like Horizon Zero Dawn features like a compass, distance counter or radar can all be used to indicate in which direction an objective is.
• Objectives: Giving objectives, missions, collectables or even key interactions different colours or symbols means you can learn your way around a game quickly. As in games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, it’s even better when you can customize these symbols so they are larger or appear more frequently. Alternatively, making objectives obvious using lighting, key colours or camera views can make a game more navigable without adding complicated HUD mechanics.
• Directional Cues: Once you have reached your destination, prompts or clues about where you might find what you are looking for are also important. As in games like The Last of Us Part II this can include a camera view that will snap in the right direction, arrows or pointers, haptic feedback, audio cues or dialogue.

Some of my favourite games bring together these elements to make exploring a virtual world a treat rather than a chore. The standout example has to be The Last of Us Part II, designed with blind and low vision consultants, the game is possible to find your way through even with no useful vision. The combination of audio cues and haptic feedback means you can enable constant prompts to help you navigate a dystopian and sometimes terrifying world.

A game that combines a range of directional information into a fun experience is Spider-Man and the sequel Miles Morales. From the option to swing through the city in high contrast mode, to the large objective icons and pinging backpacks, it’s easy to find your way around the richly detailed environment of New York city. So now it’s time to voyage into the digital unknown, here are some easier to navigate game to help you on your way.
 

Whether it’s a simple puzzle grid, a battlefield or a universe of planets to visit, all games create virtual spaces in which to play. Some of these are simply the background to a campaign - the game’s unfolding drama, missions or challenge. But others invite you to invest in the worlds they create, move in, tend to and inhabit in fantastical ways.

The games in this section invite you to spend time in spaces that have a sense of place, life and character. Worlds that hold history and lore in their landscapes, flora, fauna and inhabitants; environments that respond to your presence and invite you to restore them to their former glory.
 

Finding games to support and ease the challenges of illness, disorders and disabilities can be a time-consuming task. We have been working with experts in many fields to help individuals identify games they can enjoy, and potentially even benefit from.

We've worked with Fibromyalgia UK, and Andrew Hardy ([link https://twitter.com/andyhardy360 andyhardy360) who lives with Fibromyalgia, to identify some searches that return useful games for Fibromyalgia sufferers. As stated on its website, "people with chronic pain conditions have often used distraction techniques as a diversion from their pain. An increasing number of people with fibro use gaming for enjoyment and as a distraction to cope with and manage their pain."

Andrew described one of his symptoms as fingers feeling like they were stuck together and being painful to move. This means that games that offer button or keyboard remapping are a good place to start, as the inputs can be configured to suit his varying digit mobility. Also, games you can play with fewer buttons can be good.

This also means that vibration is an important consideration. Games that use sudden and strong vibrations can cause Andrew pain and make it hard to keep playing. But also, he mentioned that games that offer softer and more continuous vibration can actually offer a welcome massaging experience. Games like Lonely Mountains Downhill or Rhythm Doctor are good examples of this.

Andrew also described the symptom of "fibro fog" as he described it. Not being able to think clearly or quickly. This means that games that offer really clear mission guidance and navigation assistance are helpful to get him on his way.

The unpredictability of his pain means that Andrew often needs to stop playing unexpectedly. This means that games that let you save where you are without losing progress are another good aspect to consider.

We put these requirements together to create a custom search for Andrew, games with the following features:

• "Large Clear Navigation"
• "Save Anytime"
• "Head-Up Display Navigation"
• "Vibration Optional"

You can use this as a starting point or create your own search from scratch on the game browser page of the database. We've also picked out some games that these searches return and provided them in this list below.

One reader, Angela Hickman Newnham, who suffers from chronic pain and fibro, said: "Video games are an important part of distraction from pain for me. Things that are important are not having rapid button presses and flow/pacing of the game. Lots of games work for me, depending on how bad of a flare! I am often weighing the value of distraction vs effect on symptoms. Currently playing Hades, which is hard on my hands but the adaptive difficulty (God Mode) makes it playable. It's helped me through 2 really rough weeks because of short play sessions of less than 1 hour and the rewards cycle that keeps me engaged."

A good search for Angela could be games with the following:

• Played in Short Rounds
• "Unfailable"
• "Rapid Repeated Pressing Optional"

 

Some forms of play are timeless. Running around with a stick pretending to be in the army. Chasing each other in games of tag. And, of course, hide and seek. The games in this list offer digital ways to play hide and seek with a variety of different twists.

Hide In A Crowd: There are games like Spy Party, Thief Town, Hidden in Plain Sight and Buissons, that let you play as a range of characters and then challenge another player to find you amongst a computer-controlled crowd, from what way you move and interact. The Fruit game in Game & Wario on Wii U has the same mechanics, with one person trying to steal fruit without the other players working out who they are. Wii Party offers hiding in its Spot the Sneak mode where one player has a secret advantage in the mini-games that the other players have to spot. Another great example is Wii U Party, Lost and Found Square mode. One player stands in a crowd of identical people and uses the Wii U gamepad to look around and describe their location to other players, who use the TV to explore and find them. At the end, you see a map of where the players had run.

Prop Hunt: There are games with "Prop Hunt" modes where you can change into the items in the world to hide. Fortnite has a great Prop Hunt mode, as does Minecraft. Then there are games like Witch It designed around this idea of transforming into normal items and hiding in a game world.

Separate Screens: There games like Mario Chase and Luigi's Ghosthouse in Nintendoland, or Pac-Man Vs where one person has their own screen while the others team up to hunt for them use the main TV screen. Or games you play online where everyone has their own screen and try to hide from a particular character like in Secret Neighbor. Screencheat is a twist on this, where you share the same screen and try to shoot each other, but your characters are invisible.

Hidden Objects: Or there are hidden object games where the computer hides things that you have to find, like Hidden Folks and Hidden Through Time. There's a hidden object mode in Super Mario Odyssey where you hunt online player's hidden balloons. A twist on this is Here Kitty where one person hides a phone that then makes cat noises until the seeker has found it.

Open World Hiding: You can use pretty much any open-world game to make your own hiding fun. You can hide in Minecraft (having turned nameplates off), sneak around on public transport in or simply count to 10 while visitors hide in Animal Crossing New Horizons.
 

These games’ mechanics and options make it possible to adapt the experience to be accessible for people depending on your physical capabilities.

• Remap Controls: Remapping buttons and swapping joysticks (like Fortnite) help customize the player’s way to interact with the game, also helping players that use only one hand.
• No Holding: Some games (like Moving Out) also offer the option to avoid having to hold any buttons down for actions like aiming, opening or equipping. You can use simple taps or toggles instead to reduce muscular fatigue.
• Sensitivity: Some of these games (like Fortnite) also enable you to adjust control sensitivity as well as controller vibration if that is present.
• Fewer Buttons: Simpler controls (like FIFA) are good to consider, as well as those that offer extensive difficulty settings.
• Speed: Reducing how fast a game plays (like Eagle Island) is a helpful setting.
• Difficulty: Offering customisable difficulty, like how fast a game plays (like Eagle Island) or adding invincibility (like Celeste), and other features allow tailoring the game to the player’s needs.

This list and accessibility details in each game was compiled the help of Antonio Ignacio Martínez and Kyle “onehandmostly”. Please be aware that options may vary depending on the platform you choose to play. Also there is no game that works the same for everyone, so be mindful of your own needs when considering this information.