You don’t get a lot of gaming heroes with mullets. Probably for good reason but it’s nice to see minority haircuts given an airing in the digital world. Hell, maybe ‘business at the front, party at the back’ was all the rage in 430BC.

But Mullet Boy is only one option in Odyssey. You can choose to bin Alexios in favour of Kassandra, if that’s the way you want to fly in this, the 11th Creed release (20th if you add up all the minor additions since the original 2007 title).

Here we’ve made a Peloponnesian pitstop, stuck in the middle of a fictional take on the Athens-Sparta scuffle. You’ve got the option of taking both sides, the great big mercenary that you are, but there are bigger fish to fry, such as stapling together your fractured family history, along with the kind of underlying mystery that generally rumbles along beneath the Creed series.

The genetic make-up from previous releases is pretty much unchanged, although combat has been greatly simplified. But you do have to watch yourself here, far more than in other editions. This is because you have a choice over many of your actions. Conversational choices pop up during chats/arguments/fights and you can choose to kill, let go, work for or even recruit many characters you meet in this outrageously vast world. Early doors you’re given the option to slaughter or release a bunch of ruffians. Being the benevolent type, I smacked their bottoms and sent them on their way, only for them to reward my generosity with a full-blown assault a little bit later, the scallywags.

And if you’re going to roam the land making a nuisance of yourself, you’d better watch your back. Up to five mercenaries can wander about tracking you down, akin to GTA’s wanted stars. They’re not the easiest to dispatch, although if you’re toe to toe near the water’s edge, diving in and under the surface can provide a quick getaway to restore energy and pop an arrow in their neck from a better vantage point.

Abilities are thrown into your three general trees of Warrior, Assassin and Hunter, and you’ll need these to survive, particularly if you want to win some of the splendidly large battles that come about as a result of your meddling in Spartan-Athenian affairs. You’re thrown right in the middle, each side with an energy bar and if you don’t do your part, the likelihood is your army is toast.

Creed bugs have been myriad over the course of the major titles, although this and Origins have been the least buggy in my experience. I haven’t come across anyone missing limbs or their face, which is a shame from a comedy point of view but it seems quality control has improved markedly. The drawing time can be an issue, occasionally my horse would freeze while the game kept up, and a feature to snap a picture in-game repeatedly flicked up while I was in the heat of combat – bloody annoying particularly during a sea battle. Other, far more minor issues of impossible-to-loot loot pop up but nothing that made me want to sling the disc out of the window.

There’s 60 hours of gaming time here if you’re looking to smash through most of the missions, but far, far more for the Creed explorer willing to poke his face into every cave and ruin.

And Odyssey is gorgeous, begging to be explored. It’ll eat up more than a few late nights and early mornings, but who needs sleep when there's Grecian blood to wash from your mullet…