A promising start to a highly original franchise
Story (9.5/10): I really enjoyed this aspect of the game. The development team clearly put a ton of research and thought into the story, recreating accurate cities, historical personages, and giving you a highly stylized vision of life in the Levant during the age of the Crusades.
In particular, the story does a surprisingly good job of adding a moral element to the proceedings. Unlike in a lot of role-playing games, where "morality" just means making either a clearly good or clearly bad decision, Assassin's Creed introduces moral questions through the assassinations themselves. After each one, you and the target have a sort of deathbed confession scene in which he attempts to justify his actions. It lends a moral ambiguity to your actions (well, considering you just killed them, I suppose it's ever-present) and leads you to question the wisdom of your missions.
The highly-publicized and hence spoiled "twist" in the game actually performed its function well in the game, at least in my opinion, lending an air of modern conspiracy and urgency to ancient events.
The story does end on something of a cliffhanger, setting up the anticipated sequels in the planned trilogy.
Gameplay (7.5/10): The majority of Assassin's Creed consists of a formula: reach a city, enter one of the regions (Poor, Rich or Middle-Class districts), scout the city from various vantage points that you climb, and then complete the missions you find from each vantage point. The missions are quite simple, consisting of interrogation, pickpocketing or eavesdropping, which all function as sort of chores to do before you get to the good stuff.
By this, of course, I mean the actual assassination. And this part is usually riveting. After gathering intel (by doing three of the six possible missions in a given region), you have enough information to seek out your target and kill him. After slaying him, you then flee from your pursuers before repeating the process. All in all, you kill nine or ten people.
The control mechanics of Assassin's Creed make just exploring the city a blast. The method they invented to control climbing and free-running is amazing and quite fluid after you get used to it, which takes an hour.
Combat, however, is a little bit boring because it's too easy. All you do is block until your opponent lunges forward, then you hit the counter button and pull off a counter attack. Basically, they cannot hurt you while blocking, so you are nearly invincible in combat and can pick your spots to kill them at your leisure.
Presentation (9.5/10): Assassin's Creed is an intensely beautiful game, with massive cities and breathtaking vistas. Sound is also excellent throughout, with voice-acting from such notables as Kristen Bell (whose character is actually clearly modeled after her). The one criticism is that the character models themselves don't look all that great, with odd, flat faces that seem unconvincing when expressing emotion.
Overall, I think Assassin's Creed is a strong game but by no means a perfect one. The gameplay has several serious flaws, but compensates with many thrilling moments. Nonetheless, even while accomplishing the most mundane tasks, one is still compelled by the excellent story and entranced by the stellar production values.
