Assassin's Creed

The highly anticipated Assassin's Creed has enjoyed massive sales but mixed reviews amongst critics and consumers alike. While my score implies the following review will be positive, let me start by saying many of the negative reviews are justifiable. However, I have found that the positive qualities of Assassin's Creed do much to compensate for the obvious flaws. Overall, I found Assassin's Creed to be a wonderful and innovative game, which, for several unfortunate reasons, fell just short of the "epic masterpiece" status Ubisoft Montreal promised.

For those familiar with the story, please skip this paragraph to get to my review. In a sincere effort to avoid spoilers of any kind, I will be as vaguely specific as possible, if that makes any sense. The main character in AC is Altair, a 12th century member of the Assassin brotherhood who has been charged by the master of the assassins to eliminate specific targets in an effort to halt the Third Crusade. As your body count increases, so does the mystery surrounding the intentions of, both, your targets and your master. You will spend the majority of your time in three ancient Middle Eastern cities: Damascus, Jerusalem, and Acre. You begin the game in your home city of Masyaf, to which you will return after each assassination. These cities are linked by a large grouping of thoroughfares and villages referred to as the Kingdom, which you can choose to traverse at speed on horseback. I found the story to be somewhat predictable after the rather major twist, which happens to come at the very beginning of the game, but the premise was interesting enough to help keep my sixaxis embedded in my palms until it was over.

The gameplay is a wildly entertaining and intuitive fusion of platforming, creative problem solving, stealth, and tactical timing-based sword play. Controlling Altair may seem complicated at first glance, but the system is effective and easy to learn. Basically, the face buttons are assigned to four parts of Altair's body: triangle (/\) for his head; square ([ ]) for his weapon hand; circle (O) for his empty hand; X (uh, X) for his feet. For example, hit /\ to go into a first person viewpoint to scan your surroundings for enemies or targets. Hit [ ] to attack. If you're on the verge of having your cover blown (as indicated by a flashing red symbol and a persistent beep) hold down X to slow your pace and blend in with the crowd. Hold O to use your open hand to gently push your way through crowded areas.

Altair defaults to a low profile action set, which is basically a very deliberate lurch, as you move him around the city with the left analog stick. However, to perform the much touted "free running" (also known as parkour, an alternative sport which originated in France several years ago) you must hold down R1 to go into high profile mode. This makes Altair much more noticeable, but lets him run faster and clear smaller obstacles such as crates and low walls. The really cool stuff requires that you also hold X while in high profile. This causes Altair to sprint on straight paths, and automatically leap across gaps in the rooftops, hop from rafter to rafter, climb walls, etc. Much ado has been made of the free running aspect of the game, and for good reason. In an effort to keep you immersed in the game world, much of the specific control of Altair has been taken out of your hands to achieve a fluidity of motion that would otherwise have been impossible to attain. The cities are very vertical in construction, with posts, bricks, windows, ledges, and more protruding from nearly every surface, just begging you to climb, and it would have been frustrating to have to control every hand and foot movement to scale a wall. While simple in control, you will quickly fall in love with the incredible animations as his hands and feet realistically reach for every protrusion, or as he soars off of a roof and grasps onto a ledge across a 20ft gap, swaying from the momentum. It's all thrilling stuff, and it honestly never got old over my estimated 20 hours of play time.

What will get old after about four hours of play time is the repetitive nature of the mission structure. Every one of your missions must be approached in the same way. Before you perform an assassination, you must gather information on your targets' location, habits, schedule, etc. by utilizing informants, eavesdropping, interrogating, and pick pocketing. Once you have enough information to plan your assassination, you report to the city's Assassin's Bureau for approval to carry out your mission. Few of these information gathering sub-missions are very fun, and by the last few assassinations, they all seem like a boring chore. Yes, eavesdropping is as boring as it sounds, but after a few missions, you're happy to see that little symbol because you know it takes little work to accomplish and you can go grab a beer while the dialogue drones on. Luckily, you are only required to complete a couple of these before unlocking the assassination missions most of the time. However, completing these sub-missions can aid in your assassination attempts by revealing optimal escape routes, guard locations, etc.

The actual assassinations are great. I loved sneaking around the guards (or silently killing most of them) and slowly creeping into position for my final strike. Sometimes you can use the crowd to get close; other times the rooftops might be the best option; there may also be the occasional target you just have to hunt down the old fashioned way. The beauty of this game is that they are all viable methods in almost every case. It really depends on you. As long as your target expires after you've taken flight and buried that blade in his neck, there's no wrong answer.

Many have taken umbrage with the "simplistic" and "unrealistic" sword fighting element in AC as well, which is something I have had difficulty understanding. Yes, you will often be surrounded by ten or more guards who seem to attack far less often then you would expect, but in response to that I have a couple of points. 1) If you're part of a large group surrounding one guy, would you want to all go in swinging at once, possibly hacking off a friend's arm or getting your own lopped off in the process? I don't think so. 2) If you're standing in front of a guy who's only job in this life is to kill people, and almost everyone who attempts to attack him ends up with a slit throat, a blade in the gut, or a couple of broken legs, would you want to be the next one to take a crack at him? I don't think so. I found the swordplay to be immensely satisfying. I really like the counter-attack aspect of it as a change of pace from the more prominent "hack-n-slash" techniques most games employ. Plus, the instant kill animations for each weapon are un.be.lievable (when you're down to one enemy, go for a counter with your hidden blade equipped; if you succeed? OMFG it's badass). Just be aware that the counter-attack ability is not granted until after you've completed your first mission, so if you get frustrated with your limited arsenal at the beginning, please give it time.

I should also mention that Assassin's Creed is uniformly beautiful in almost every respect, from the graphics to the animations, from the cities teeming with life to the rolling countrysides. There's really not much else to say about how this game looks. It is certainly one of the most gorgeous and immersive games of this generation.

If you've made it this far, I congratulate you. I tried to tackle all relevant aspects of this game to potential buyers, but please bear in mind this is an opinion, and not the most popular one from what I've seen. Assassin's Creed does a lot of things right, and a few things very, very wrong. In the end, you could love it or you could hate it. While obviously flawed, I found it to be one of the most engrossing games I've ever played.