Munkeh111

User Score
8.5

Presentation - 8.5
Gameplay - 9.0
Value - 7.5

Assassin's Creed is a game of two sides. You have the free running, and then you have the rubbish missions. For every great thing, you have something pissing you off. The story suffers the same problems as the rest of the game. The game starts with a seemingly shocking, and odd twist, you don't actually play Altair, the cover hero, but Desmond (voice by Nolan North, better known as Nathan Drake or the most recent Prince of Persia), who has been taken hostage by a company in the near future, and is now being forced to play through his ancestor's memories... Confusing huh? You learn more throughout the game by interacting with the characters outside the Animus, the machine allowing Desmond to see his ancestor's memories, but the real meat of the game is when you are controlling Altair. The story here is not that great either, with unskibbable cut scenes, where you do get to move around, and fiddle with the camera, but they are dull, very dull.... The overall story can be pretty interesting, but it is not done that well. I actually got the most out of it when reading an article on CVG explaining the end of the game, which made me far more interested in the story.

What is good are the graphics. The draw distances are subline and everything does look great. I only noticed 1 or 2 major problems with the framerate, but it was solid for nearly all of the game. Lighting effects are also very good. While that is great, characters models are only decent, and there are so many repeated citizens it is unbelievable. You will be driven mad by hearing the same voice saying the same line over and over again in different parts of the city.

The game controls in a slightly odd way, it utilises a pupetteerig system, with the face buttons controlling different things, with the top button being head, and the bottom being feet. The triggers are used to enter high profile mode, and then to go into low profile, it is odd but it does work.

So for the traversal, you enter high profile mode, and hold the feet button, and Altair runs, and he jumps, and he climbs. You point him where you want to go, and then hold those buttons, and that is where you will go. At first it feels odd not pressing a button to jump, but when you are running along the rooftops, you will not care, it just feels fantastic, helped greatly by the animations. You are encouraged to scale towers with eagle view points on top, from where you can fill in your map, and enjoy a magnificent view. Many of them are very fun to climb, and very satisying when you get to the top, and you get a nice jump into the bail of hay at the bottom.

When you get moving, it feels great, put the combat is less so. Though sneeking up on the guards and slitting his throat with your hidden blade is fantastically fun, the actual sword combat is not so. After playing the game a few times I realised that it is the easiest combat system ever. You just hold L2 to block, and as your enemies are so polite only 1 will attack at a time, this will block all but the strongest attacks which are easily avoided with a press of the X button, and then you hit Square when they are trying to hit you. With the weaker enemies, you will execute an awesome counter kill, which you won't tire of. However, later in the game, for some reason you can no longer do this, and so you just knock them back down, quickly switch to the hidden blade to stab them, and then repeat (not helped by the rubbish d-pad), while their fellow soldiers just watch. The problem is there is nearly no incentive to ever go on the attack, and the only reason I did was because I was growing tired of watching Altair stick a sword through the enemies chest (this was the 3rd playthrough). There are multiple weapons to choose from, your longsword, throwing knives (with a short sword to hold off attacks) and the hidden blade, but ultimately, the combat gets very repetitive, but is fun for the most part. You do gain new moves, but if you can get through the entire game just counter attacking.

The structure of the main part of the game is this: you enter the Animus, and get a long lecture by the head of the Assassins, then you take your horse to the city, Damascus, Acre or Jerusalem. You then have to do several missions before you can do the assaination yourself. This is where the game starts to fall apart. Though there is nothing wrong with the sections as you take your horse through the countryside, there is one example of very odd game design. As the game goes on, the guards get more weary of you, so to avoid their suspicions, you slow your horse to a very slow walk, because obviously an assassin would make his horse trot, but a normal person would just go slowly... it is a bizare design choice, and I actually found the best thing to do was just to run straight to the exit, as they can never catch up with you. After the first journey you do get to trip skip though. You then have to find your way into the city, normally using the group of monks hovering outside. After you do a favour for one of them, you can "disguise" yourself amongs them, and walk straight in, as the guards will ignore your weapons and think you are a monk... it is bizzare. Within the city you can do more tasks like this by helping innocent civians that the guards and threatening.

Now come the missions. These can vary from doing things for informants, like finding some flags, to eavesdropping or pickpocketing. These are basically all the same, and you have to do over 20 of them throughout the whole game. They get dull very quickly, so I just did the eavesdropping and pickpocketing as they are quickest and least painful, frankly this area of the game is slightly rubbish.

The assassination attempts themselves are good. They all feel different, though follow the same structure. You sneak in, and if you get it right, kill the target before alerting the guards, then have an inexplicably long chat with the dead ghost. If you get it wrong, you have to chase through the guards to get to them, just kill all the guards, and then him. At some point you will always have to fight off some guards to get some room to escape. Escaping from the guards means loosing line of sight, then hiding in one of the inexplicable room gardens. They don't make much sense, but make the chases fun as you desperately make that jump trying to reach there before the guards catch up. However, most of the time, you will end up getting back to your destination, and then killing all the guards, before entering.

The worst thing in the game, as I have alluded to above, are the civillians who are hanging around. There are plenty of them, but there only seem to be able 5 different people, and it gets incredibly annoying. There are also mental patients, who barge into you. I think they were designed to make it more tricky to avoid alerting the guards to your presence, by forcing you out of low profile mode, but they are really just a test of your ability not to slit their throats, which would lead to a loss of health. They are some of the most annoying things in video gaming.

The main story is a decent length, though it can be rushed through in under 8 hours, but that is only if you know precisely what you are doing and where you are going. There is little replay value, as you will have already got annoyed by the combat by the end, so all you might do is return to a level via the animus, and just run around on roof tops, or try and climb some more view points. There are collectables, in the form of flags to find, and Templars to kill, but with no trophies and no ingame rewards there is really no point in getting them.

Overall, Assassins' Creed has some really high highs, but there are so many lows. However, it is still worth playing, as the free running can just be so fun, and the climbing, is great fun too. You will get annoyed at the game, and it could certainly work on the story, and they are many problems with it, but you will forgive many of its flaws when you are running over those rooftops

{I have played this game on both Xbox 360 and PS3, but I have used essentially the same review for both}