Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles

Assassin's Creed for the DS is a game based on the original hit released primarily for the consoles Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, which later was also ported for PCs. It actually has its story set before the events of the first Assassin's Creed. This game had potential, not only because it had a name that quickly gained immense success written in its box-art generating undoubtedly high expectations whenever a new game is revealed, but also because the developers already made clear that they can create a very engaging game when they released the original. This time we are left with a constant feeling that this game was rushed, not only that, it looks like they tried to implement the most they could from the original in a portable format, making the proper adjustments of course, but this attempt failed at recreating some key factors from the first game.

The story was one of the best aspects of the first Assassin's Creed, and this time it actually feels like an abridged version of what it could have been was shown to us, not to worry, it actually is not bad, not that good either that's for sure. In the Crusades, an assassin, our well-known Altair, is asked to go find something called "The Chalice", it is said that this artifact contains enormous power and should not fall in the hands of the wrong people; so Altair heads out in a journey to find this chalice. Soon he discovers the possible location of the so-called chalice, and also discovers that he'll need three keys to get into it and acquire the piece that he seeks. And there goes Altair to find the keys, from now on multiple twists will happen and I'm not gonna spoil anything more. Even some connections with the story of the first one are to be found.

The way that the game and the story unfolds have some resemblances with the first game, you go gather information, go to another place, kill someone, talk to some fellow assassin, gather more information, assassinate some others, and like this it goes; in the middle of that, if you are not sneaky enough, you'll have much more battles than the necessary. You also have to pickpocket some necessary keys to advance, in the original you just needed to approach the target and pickpocket, now you use the Nintendo DS's touch screen to recreate it a little more faithfully, when you trigger the pickpocket action you'll be brought to a screen of inside the pocket of the person, some items will be there as well and you have a timer to get the key out, you should avoid touching the key to the walls of the pocket and the items that will be there, which will be in movement to make the job more difficult, because the you'll lose precious time; if you don't manage to get the key in the first try you can replay it as much as you want. There is also another little mini-game that is timed, and it an improvement of the interrogation, in the original you had to beat up the person until he showed disposition to talk, now you need to use the touch screen to apply pressure to certain spots of the body while holding the person, and therefore making him talk through force.

This is a 3D game with plenty of action and adventure in it, but also some serious platforming. This time you can also climb buildings and walk over the top of them to avoid getting noticed, the system is similar to the one found in the original, but with controls functioning in a simpler way due to the Nintendo DS's capabilities; you just have to go against a wall to hang on it, another tap in a button and Altair will climb it, it's easy but could be better, if you go against a wall and keep the button pressed frontwards Altair won't climb automatically, you'll need to release and press again, or press the button B, they could have made it easier by just climbing after you held the edge and kept pressed the d-pad, but it's not a major problem at all. You can't also go climbing large buildings by grabbing to various fends around the structures anymore, just short walls will be up to climb, the ones you can climb with only one jump or the ones that are short enough for you to jump and hold the edge.

You don't use the touch screen for much, except for the mini-games for pickpocketing and interrogation and for changing weapons, which by the way is the biggest improvement over the original, even bombs will be at your disposal. It's a shame that most of the new arsenal will possibly be left aside and your weapon of choice will be the sword anyway since the controls don't help you much. The controls are loosy and often unresponsive; also the actions won't leave you different types of results, like when you need more precision to go down a net while grasped to it trying to avoid spikes that go up and down, when you find this kind of situation you find yourself under the need of more precision but a deep press or a soft press will give you equal results. Another complain about the controls is that sometimes when the action button, to trigger some distinct actions through the game, should appear it doesn't, then you need to keep moving the character until you hit the right spot for the button to appear for you to be able to press it and continue.

For a DS game it looks good, but it doesn't look crisp with a clear picture, it actually looks grainy. The locations are always very nice, but it lacks a certain special treatment and finalizing process to make it better. What I can't complain about it the sound, the music is great, some fine middle east tunes will follow you throughout the adventure, along with an exciting action music for battles and good sound effects; as always, a headphone is required to get the best out of it.

You don't have much to do after you finished the game unless beat it all over again in a higher difficulty setting, the collectibles are the blue orbs, they aren't exactly collectibles, you just collect them throughout the game to exchange it for upgrades in the amount of damage your sword wields and how many big is your life bar. You also won't often find yourself lost since a nice help system will give you a hand on where to go next, it practically points out where you need to go unless you turn it off.

Assassin's Creed Altair Chronicles isn't quite what a fan of the original would want in a portable version of this series that, although young, has already shown us great potential. Since it seems the next Assassin's Creed won't be allowing players to control Altair anymore, this is a good chance to control him once more in a different type of adventure other than the original game. Just don't expect much of it, both if you liked the original and if you didn't like it. If you liked the original be aware that the quality isn't quite the same. And if you didn't like the original you should know that the chances of you liking a lower-quality game, which much more simplified gameplay, will be very thin.