So, I bought all the Assassin’s Creed mobile games (not including Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, since it actually the only one Ubisoft will acknowledge is a part of the series.) I’m not proud of it, but I did and we all just need to move on with our life’s. Well, I can’t since I have these crappy DS/PSP games next to me. (I’m talking about these three, 1, 2, 3 by the way)

Let’s start off with the past. I do not really like AC1. Maybe if I was older I would have finish the game but at the time I never could get past how boring I found the game to be. But by the next game, I came back. I love the Ezio trilogy. Specifically, Assassin creed 2 is the best. Maybe, if I played 2 and brotherhood back to back today I might reversed that order, but hey, nostalgic is a powerful tool. I mean, that big battle in 2 with the two groups fighting each other is still the best moment in the entire franchise for me. Brotherhood adds the following assassins in the game, which is amazing. Do you know how satisfying it is to use your full meter to rain down arrows on all the guards? Revelations adds a few more mechanics that don’t work out so well and the assassin followers are less fun, but the game is still good even if I understand people’s complaints about it being the same. I will take a slightly less fun, very similar sequel to a disappointing worse sequel any day though. Yeah I’m talking about you AC3. You and your weak story and crappy story missions. I still really like the homestead stuff. And of course I may like it more compared to AC4, more on that next time though. For the present day story stuff, after SPOILER LUCY GETS STABED UP SPOILER I kind of stop caring when they did not property explain everything and ruin what I liked about the story and when the characters did not matter anymore. Anyways, on to the game we are here for.

My first thought when playing Assassin’s Creed Altair Chroncles is that this game is not an AC game. Yeah sure the box say “Assassin’s Creed” on it, and there is a character name Altair on it, but it does not feel like an AC game. It feel like someone outside of Ubisoft made the game, which makes since Gameloft did make it, and they probably got a design doc and got told “make something”. The most obviously thing noticed, tone wise, is that the game adds things for the sake of gameplay that make the game unrealistic. With spikes on the roof of buildings and snakes hanging out and a god dame grappling hook mechanic (yeah, Altair has a god dame grappling hook) everything feels off. And yo, wall jumping. Also, to assassinate a guard, they must have some ZZZZZ over their head. Cause I guess Altair can only assassinate sleeping guards. Also a civilian, cause you have to kill a civilian to get their cloths in this stupid game.

The thing that closely reminded me of the core games and the only genuine enjoyment I sort of got is the combat. The combat has the assassin creed sword play with the strike and the counter. Well, kind of. Altair has a heavy and a light strike, which is the early sign that this game emphasizes on the wrong parts of the combat. The enjoyable part the AC combat is the rhythm of countering attacks and knowing when to attack. So early on when the best option to take out guys is to counter their attacks, the combat is a somewhat enjoyable part in-between the horrendous platforming. The problem is, the counter only works with the first two tiers of dudes out of four. This means that after the harder dudes start showing up, you have to do the annoying and boring part of the combat, mashing out combos. Yes, you do combos with the heavy and light attack. And when the combos are the only way to damage the harder dudes to my knowledge, pressing X,X,Y 4 times to kill a dude becomes a mundane task to advance. And sadly the countering system becomes completely useless halfway through when the game adds easier ways to kill the dudes. After they allow you to knock down the dudes with the grappling hook and the latter combos kill dudes in one hit, there really isn't any reason to counter anyone, making the combat completely boring and sometimes annoying.

And you also have your accessories to use during combat... that are useless. Using daggers during combat would be nice, but you can only have your sword OR one accessories equipped meaning when one of the dudes get up your grill and you have your daggers equip, your probably going to die. Oh, and it does not help that you must equip weapons by tapping on the touch screen, far too long to make switching weapons useful in battle. Altaïr also gets a crossbow, something I don't think excited back then. There is also a boss fight that you press buttons to make it stop about three times throughout the game. But it is just a QTE (there are big ass button prompts above the dude) of you pressing X,Y,X 4 times and done. Good times

Oh and also, Altaïr gains powers at random intervals like it’s a metroidvania game. These powers including wall-to-wall, wall climb, and the one that made me laugh out loud, triple jump. Imagine triple jumping in AC 2? You can’t because that’s completely stupid? I agree. Weapon combos and new accessories like daggers are also gain at random. Another thing you will never see in a core Assassin Creed game is character upgrades, the two being health and sword power. Yes, you gain more health and swords in the core AC games, but not by collection blue orbs along the path like its SR4. I went with sword power first, in case you were wondering.

Okay, we need to deal with the elephant in the room. About 50% of this game is completely garbage, terribly controlled, with a terrible camera in uninteresting environments platforming. Did I tell you how terrible this jumping on roofs and avoiding spikes and jumping on moving platforms is? Cause it is. Let’s start with the controls. Depending on the awful camera, movement can switch 90 degrees, meaning you will fall off and die. I never fully understand hot to climb up after hanging on a ledge, meaning many deaths. The jumping length is too random meaning many deaths. Me just not giving a shit about learning the patterns of the spikey spike so I will just throw bodies at it until I pass it meaning many deaths. The camera is in a mostly 2d plane view, but the problem is that the game is in 3D. Whenever you have to jump forwards it means you get many deaths. It kindof hard for me to articulate my feelings on how much I despise the jumping stuff in this game for whatever reason, so I’m just going to end by saying NO THANK YOU.

Mini games are also here that use the touch screen, and they feel like tech demoy crap like the stuff in that vita uncharted game. The two, stealing a key that involves moving a key past magically moving coins and the other being you interrogating some poor dude by playing a rhythm game. Again, not that fun and they feel even more generic then the other stuff.

There is also a longer felt then probably was stealth sequence that was bad. Instant fail if looked at stealth stuff is awful no matter what. I guess it good then that the stealth was dirt easy making the whole thing feel pointless. A number of puzzles are also in the game. Cause the assassin creed games are not games until they have a crappy mirror puzzle with two movable mirrors. To be fair, all the puzzles were terrible cause they did not require much brain power, just tedious motions.

Oh and there is a story I think. Something about finding keys and about a chalice that turns out to be a lady and a double cross with the assassin’s guild that when you kill the double crosser the game abruptly moves on to the next scene and is never talk about again. And the Templars (I think) attack a city and at the end when you kill the boss dude the Templars still manage to take the chalice lady away and the game abruptly ends and the game say congratulations and I unlock the hard mode and I took the game out and buried this game under a mountain. Oh, and when you need to sneak through the Templars camp dress as a scholar you need to steal a kid for a guard to unlock a prisoner's cage. After the guard unlock the cage he took the lady prisoner away which felt like Altair help a rapist and sigh.

The developer, Gameloft, makes since because the game feels like a knock off Assassin creed game for IOS (the game was latter ported to IOS funny enough), just like Modern Combat compared to Call of Duty. With no modern day stuff, very little gameplay similarities, and it just not being a good game what so ever, it really is not an Assassin Creed game except in name alone. Here’s hoping the only mobile games are not complete trash.

Next week I will probably just do a roundup of other stuff I'm playing to give me some time to play Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines. I also got Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon, the only English release FE game I have no play yet, so that will be disappointing I bet. See you then.

Also, I made a list of top Dum Dums flavors as some stupid joke for the Mixlr crowd. I thought I should try and make my wasted time less wasted.