An ambitious adventure game that has a unique style to it.
Assassin's Creed was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the same group of developers that brought us Rainbow six Vegas 1 and 2. In the game, you play as Altair, a master at assassinating people, hence the name, Assassins creed. He is close to your basic generic protagonist. I said "close" because it seems that he doesn't mind killing a lot of people. You also play as Desmond Miles, but you just walk around with him. I don't really want to spoil anything with him; even though his parts are boring. But it is an interesting way to keep you in the story.
The story is a love hate sort of thing. I found the premise interesting and even though I thought the ending was not satisfying enough, I want to know what happens next. But even after the ending, there are ways you can find out more about the story and its future even. For players who know nothing about the game, the start will seem like a huge plot twist; even though it's not meant to be.
The assassination missions are what make most of the game. As Altair, you travel around real word locations such as Jerusalem to find and kill your target. But first, you will need to do several side missions to receive information about your target. You will pickpocket, interrogate, and ease drop on conversations to learn more about your target. Some of these are helpful in giving you tips about the guard locations and areas to sneak in. Other tips will be very vague and basically useless. For the first couple of missions, I went through and accomplished all the side tasks hoping to get some extra rewards. The only reward I got was a gain in my health meter. That was not a good even reason for me to continue on with the side-tasks for the rest for the game.
Which brings me to the game's biggest problem: Repetition. Every single assassination mission has you doing the same side-tasks over and over again. Basically in the same order: you climb a building to get an eagle's eye view, save a citizen, pickpocket, and ease drop, repeat. Granted the assassinations are varied, I found myself dragging on toward the end. Another problem of the game is the combat system. Granted it is fun and slick. After you learn to counter someone's attack, you can take on hordes of guards easily. So you never get this sense of dread when fighting an enemy because you know one counter can easily take them down. It would've been cool to see the sword fights be more intense and less forgiving. The combat A.I is nothing great, but it gets the job done. Sometimes you might question why the guards don't all attack you at once, but that would make it too hard. It is cool to see how sometimes guards will run away after you slaughtered several others. The most impressive part of the A.I is when the guards chase and you look for you around the city. The smallest action may alert guards to hold their sword or even threaten you with it. Also, they will throw rocks at you if you're climbing a building. I thought that was pretty cool. BUT, it's lame to see how you can easily just go into low-profile mode and hide from these guards. You can stay in the same area after slaughtering several guards, go into low profile mode, and the guards will walk right by you.
But really, the game works just fine to not water down the experience. Every counter you make will pan the camera to a sort of "in-action" view and Altair will perform so gruesome finisher. The atmosphere of each is city is amazing. Most of them are separated into three districts: poor, rich, and middle class. What is pretty cool is how each district has its own unique look and style to it. In the poor district, you will find a lot of beggars and drinks. But in the rich district, you will find a lot of people who snob at you and your actions. All of the details just add in the world and give the player a better experience with the game. The developers did put time to create this rich and beautiful world.
The graphics are strong for a next generation game. In terms of scale, art, and geography, the game is beautiful. I found myself just stopping at looking at the scene around me. The models of the citizens are toned down a little, but this was more of a necessary down-scale because of the mass number of civilians on the screen at once.
The audio is strong. The citizens' audio is a bit dubbed down, while the main characters are obviously dubbed fine. Everything sounds like it is suppose to in a well developed game like this. The music is fine, but toward the end, I wasn't too crazy about it.
Assassin's Creed is a game of ambition, and risk. The developers wanted to create a game that separated itself in terms of diversity and game play. The atmosphere is rich, the story is trying to be different, and the fun elements are there. The game's length is determined by the player, it is a short story that could be finished in a determined weekend. In the end, I enjoyed Assassin's Creed for what it was: An ambitious adventure game that had a unique style to it. Assassin's Creed is a must rent, not buy.
