Assassin's Creed

Ubisoft seem to have promoted Assassin's Creed as a stealth game, which would make a lot of sense seeing as the main character is a medieval assassin but let's get this straight, the stealth elements are underwhelming and what you have instead is a beautiful, quirky action/platform game with a compelling story.

The majority of assassin's Creed puts you in control of Altair, moody badass and Hashshashin extraordinaire. Altair fumbles an important job for the guild and is stripped of his rank/ability faster than you can say `Super Metroid' and from there on must prove his worth by assassinating nine of the key figures responsible for prolonging the crusades. Controlling Altair is pretty intuitive and it only takes a few minutes to get to grips with the controls. Expect to have as much fun climbing up buildings as in `Crackdown', running across rooftops is very rewarding and gives an impressive feeling of speed and Fighting plays a lot like a rhythm-action mini game.

Each assassination is made up of a few steps, first you must travel to the city on horseback. These over-world sections feel a little bit under developed and whereas the horse riding mechanics are fun, they don't really add much to the game. It would have been nice to see a few secrets around the map but as they are these sections resemble those in `Shadow of the Colossus' or `Gun' more than they do `The Legend of Zelda'. Once you arrive at the city you will have a few tasks to complete, firstly you need to seek out tall structures, ascend them and survey the land. This will allow you to see more of the map and cause side missions to show up on you HUD. The side missions are undertaken in order to gain information about your mark and in some cases to make the job easier.

These side missions take the form of assassinating guards, eavesdropping, pick pocketing, rescuing citizens from guard brutality and oddly, hopping above the city in timed flag collecting races. They seem to have come under a lot of fire from reviewers but the repetition didn't really bother me a lot. I'll be honest, this isn't `Oblivion', you can expect to hear the same lines over and over again and the challenge or variety never really increases as the game progresses. It would have been nice to see some real depth and variety here but they are what they are and most have some aspect which is fun. My favourite were probably the flag races which reminded me of Ubisoft's other Fall platformer `Naruto: Rise of a Ninja'. There are precious few of these races, largely due to the problems of implementing them into the game narrative. There are only a few times that you can use `Erm... I lost a bunch of flags, can you get them for me before... a generic event happens'.

I found the actual assassinations to be a lot of fun, most only really involve going to point A, watching a cut-scene, running up and putting a blade through the target's face then legging it back to the Assassin's Bureau. This will obviously annoy those anticipating a more cerebral take on killing. I'm sure that it's possible to put more thought into the kills but the game doesn't really encourage or reward it and `Hitman' it aint.

Graphically the game looks amazing; it renders huge densely populated areas without really struggling. Just climb to the top of one of the towers and you'll feel overwhelmed by what the developers have managed to pull off. I noticed a handful of small glitches as I played such as texture pop-in, and screen ripping but nothing that hindered my enjoyment of the game. Similarly I experienced a couple of stutters while loading areas but I can count the number of times on one hand.

The voice work was largely professional, Altair sounds a bit too much like Troy McLure and a few of the NPCs are a tad on the `wacky' side but it's entertaining rather than aggravating. There was music there but I can't really remember it which is usually a good thing in soundtracks. Presumably it supported the action rather than intrude upon it. All in all the sound was adequately done with a couple of stellar moments such as Kirsten Bell's performance as Lucy.

Without spoiling what is an admittedly poorly kept secret there are some small adventure chapters that link the sections of the main game and add a twist to the story. I strongly advise players to make the most of these sections as they provide likeable rounded characters, an interesting mystery and hint at the direction of future installments of the franchise. Depending on how much work you put in these sections will either be slow paced and boring or fascinating and you can't skip them so it's up to you to make the most of them. Explore the rooms, use the computers and rummage through emails, I think that fans of TV shows like `Lost' will be well pleased with the overall direction of the story.

Overall Assassin's Creed is a solid action-platformer with next-gen looks and last-gen gameplay. I personally enjoyed it a lot but it doesn't really bring anything new to the table and reminds me of a number of existing games. It also leans a little bit to the easy side and offers little immediate replay value. There are numerous flags to collect but Ubisoft have taken the cheap option and bagging each set will only unlock an achievement. Gamers expecting a world changing experience will be disappointed but I suggest that anybody interested in the genre, setting or those frustrated by a lack of complexity in Video Game narrative pick this one up.

7/10

I have actually found this game really enjoyable and I would thoroughly recommend it for it's different feel. It should be noted that it is a single player title with no Xbox Live or multiplayer integration at all, but this is no bad thing....at least it means all efforts have been channelled into making the game good.

Ubi Soft would obviously claim that Assassin's Creed has been built "from the ground up", but it's roots are clearly in the Tom Clancy's titles, especially Splinter Cell. This means you get decent physics, stunning lighting and quality textures on a richly 3D map, plus a solid, well thought-out story.

You play as Desmond Myles, descendent of Altair (al-tie-ear), who has inherited the memory of his ancestors through his DNA. These memories are sought out by a scientific reserach group who are after a lost treasure from ancient times. It's your role to access and play out these memories of ancient times, and in doing so you spend most of your time carrying out the tasks of Altair in the 'simulated' ancient realm.

This all happens in the time of King Richard, between the cities of Damascus (Turkey), Jerusalem, and Acre (England I think), with an expansive rural 'kingdom' connecting the cities, which you cross on horseback!

The combat is all about swords and knives and archery.....no grenades and rocket launchers here....so fights with city guards and the like tend to be pretty intense. The games' big feature is free running; you can scale pretty much anything and leap from roof top to roof top in an effort to disappear.

This is where you can see the re-use of Splinter Cell code....it's all about being low or high profile. If you are discreet you can pass through the cities unnoticed, blending with the crowds and not attracting the attention of any roof guards. Climbing ladders gets you to the rooftops where you can move around more freely, but as you would expect, it gets harder as the game progresses to not attract unwanted attention.

So like Splinter Cell where you use light and shade to control how visible you are, in Assassin's Creed you use discreet and non-discreet behaviour in the same way.

I've found this particularly enjoyable in Assassin's Creed, as you can change the pace of the game in an instant, whenever you like, and it makes the in-between times less tedious as you don't have to creep around everywhere.

There's plenty of side missions and objectives that are well worth doing, and a good haul of gamerscore points available, and also as you progress through the game, you unlock new weapons and abilities. Without this the game would probably get too repetative too quickly, but with this built-in control over your progress it actually helps you develop your skill at controlling Altair's actions.

As you spend more and more time playing, you will find that you can move around the environment much, much faster, and it's at this point where I've been disappointed at how regularly the game/disc has to catch up. It's only perhaps half a second that it hangs for, but it still messes with the flow, and I think it's a symptom of Ubisoft games, where they rush to meet a deadline and release a game with a few unfortunately obvious bugs. It's the same with the Rainbow Six Vegas and Ghost Recon AW stuff.

My only other complaint, as others have mentioned, is that they only recorded one set of dialogue for people that you re-encounter, so for example, when you save a citizen they'll say the same thing the last citizen said in a different city. For the sake of a couple of minutes of extra audio, it would have made a big difference.

Despite these negative points, I still give the game my full recommendation as it's a really fresh approach to 3rd person role-playing action adventure stuff, and the free running is really cool and well done.

The concept lends itself to a franchise, and it'd be great to see a sequel set somewhere different, like feudal Japan.

I think the key to enjoying this game is not to have read the pre game hype. Many of the people ranting about how let down they felt seem to have raised their expectations too high by reading all the fuss that is generated before a big company like Ubisoft releases anything. Just my humble opinion but I think that rating this game less than 3 stars is pretty unfair. Let me share my thoughts:

The Positives:

This is graphically one of the most beautiful console games I have ever seen. The view is 3rd person - which in my opinion is waaay better than the much over-used 1st person - and the characters movement and animation is smooth and realistic. The controls are well explained to you through the use of a tutorial mission and the missions increase in difficulty as you learn more skills. The stealth aspects of the game are well done and I feel that they are much more realisitc than the hitman titles were. For instance; in hitman, when you were meant to be blending in with a crowd, you could pretty much get away with running up behind your target and just taking about 1 or 2 steps in stealth mode. Not so here. Do that in assasins creed and the guards will have you in a heart beat. There are also many other stealth skills (other than killing) worked into the game such as eaves dropping and pickpocketing. However, as I played the game I found that the most fun was to be had simply "free running" over the rooftops and spires of the city - to me that was a fun game on its own!!!

The Negatives:

As I said in my title this game does have its flaws. Not the least of which is the non-stealthy combat, which esstially consists of smacking the "x" button really fast. Not exactly challenging - but then again, open hack and slashing is not really the point of this game. A further irritation was the part of the game where you are "in the present", so to speak. Although the majority of the game is set in the past, the flashes to the present leave you wandering a lab with essentially nothing to do waiting for a whole bunch of dialogue to play out. Boring. Don't know what possesed them to incorporate this into the game. Finally, the game is very linear, which no-one seemed to care about years ago but having since been spoiled by the likes of Oblivion, Mass effect, GTA 3, Fable etc seems to be a common complaint. I do feel that it should be remembered that this is not an RPG however. Not really fair to expect that it would be.

In summary, I'd say get it. It's beautiful fun. But don't expect a revolutionary game because it isn't.