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Also On: PlayStation 3

"Hit and run in the dark ages..."

A Review by gamer odd
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Assassin's Creed is an action adventure game from the people at Ubisoft who made the more recent Prince of Persia games. You play as Altair, an Assassin with an attitude problem that gets him into trouble early on in the game.

I won't go to much into the story because the twists and turns are a large part of what's interesting about the game, but the basic premise is that you're an assassin during the crusades who is given the task of hunting down and killing various men of influence throughout the Holy Land. As with any good story, things aren't what they seem..... DUM DUM DUMMMMM!.......


The gameplay of AC is all about getting around. You can travel on horse back through the country side to get to the cities in which you targets dwell. Once you get to a city and receive your mission, it usually comes down to finding the right person to talk to, completing a couple side missions, gaining access to your target, and killing him without drawing unnecessary attention to yourself. I'm over simplifying things a bit, but that's the general gist of it. Thankfully, as dull as it sounds for me to just say it like that, it's a lot of fun. The reason it's fun, is because you really can go anywhere. Jumping from rooftop to outcropping to pillar to haystack never felt so good. You simply hold down the A button as you run toward a wall or whatever, and you will automatically climb it or perform the appropriate action. That may sound dumbed down, but really it just means you won't be frustrated by constantly missing your jump.



If you go running around on the roofs like a nut, however, people will see you and react accordingly. Aside from all the gorgeous acrobatics, this is really a stealth game. You're invisible when you're doing things that are socially acceptable, like nonchalantly walking through a crowd. Once you start running through that crowd and knocking people over the guards will start to take notice. If you should make a guard decide you're a threat, you can either kill him, or try and run away and hide until the suspicion dies down.

The fighting in the game is also fairly simple. It mostly comes down to timing your blocking and swing right, and making sure you watch your back since most fights involve three or four guards. While it's nothing I would call revolutionary, the combat works well, and keeps things interesting. Generally it's something you're supposed to at least try and avoid though, since this really is more of a sneaking game. You gain different swords moves and abilities as you progress through the game. Some of the counter moves can get pretty brutal.

The assassinations themselves were usually interesting, although I felt like they didn't really require as much stealth as they should have. Some were harder to approach than others, but mostly they were pretty similar. Some times there would be archers to take out, or guards to distract, but usually you could just charge in without necessarily having to use all that much finesse.



And that brings me to probably the greatest complaint about this game. The repetition. The missions are all very similar. There isn't a lot of variety. Thankfully, what there is is fun enough to be worth doing several times over, but by the end I really wished they had changed things up a bit, or had more of a build up as to the kind of things they required of you. Don't get me wrong, sneaking into a massively fortified castle to make a kill is a blast, but when the assassination plays out all to similarly to the last 5 or 6, you just start to wish there was a little bit more variety to it.


This is one area I really can't fault them in. The cities are huge and detailed, with scores of pedestrians and soldiers and priests milling about. Unfortunately you can't generally go into most of the buildings, though it doesn't really take away from the experience since there are more than enough interesting things outside to look at. Every time I would climb onto some tall tower and look around, it never ceased to impress me. Then, of course, I would make a "leap of faith" into a hay stack a hundred feet below. That too never gets old either. The character models and animations are generally good, if not mind blowing.


You're an assassin in this game. Need I say more. There's no sexual content. You won't find any brothels in Damascus. There's blood and killing and that's about it. There's quite a bit of philosophy tossed about that will probably go right over most kids heads. There is definitely a lot of emphasis placed on the act of killing itself, at least when it comes to the particular targets. The guards don't get much mention, but you'll almost feel bad for killing the targets when they start casting doubt over your motives with their dying words. Not a game for most young kids in my opinion.


Assassin's Creed is fun. It really is. The repetition in gameplay is made up for by the fact that the core gameplay mechanics are fun enough to be worth going through for each mission, even if you probably won't be likely to play through it again, unless you just have to find all the flags that are hidden throughout the cities. I didn't. It's an open world game with some interesting twists. The world they've created is a sight to behold to be sure. The story is interesting, and definitely takes a few major twists by the end. I stated at the beginning that this was by the people that made Prince of Persia. This is definitely not Prince of Persia. There are acrobatics and swords, but the similarities really end there. AC is unique in many ways, and it does a lot of things very right. The things it does wrong may be enough to make you just want to rent it for a long weekend, however. None the less, it is definitely a gaming experience worth having.

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