Assassin's Creed

Product Description
Jerusalem, 1191 AD - The Third Crusade is tearing the Holy Land apart. You are an elite Assassin sent to stop the hostilities by suppressing the powers on both the Crusader and Saracen sides. But as you carry out your missions, a conspiracy begins to unfold. You find yourself tangled up in a conflict that threatens not only the Holy Land, but the entire world. Experience the power of a feared Assassin. Your actions can throw your immediate environment into chaos, and your existence will shape the events of this pivotal moment in history. ESRB Rated M for Mature

Assassin’s Creed is the next-gen game developed by Ubisoft Montreal that will redefine the action genre. While other games claim to be next-gen with impressive graphics and physics, Assassin’s Creed merges technology, game design, theme, and emotions into a world where you instigate chaos and become a vulnerable, yet powerful, agent of change.

The setting is 1191 AD. The Third Crusade is tearing the Holy Land apart. You, Altair, intend to stop the hostilities by suppressing both sides of the conflict.

You are an Assassin, a warrior shrouded in secrecy and feared for your ruthlessness. Your actions can throw your immediate environment into chaos, and your existence will shape events during this pivotal moment in history.

Key Features

• Be an Assassin: Master the skills, tactics, and weapons of history’s deadliest and most secretive clan of warriors. Plan your attacks, strike without mercy, and fight your way to escape.
• Realistic and responsive environments: Crowds react to your moves and will either help or hinder you on your quests.
• Action with a new dimension - total freedom: Eliminate your targets wherever, whenever, and however. Stalk your prey through richly detailed, historically accurate, open-ended environments. Scale buildings, mount horses, blend in with crowds. Do whatever it takes to achieve your objectives.
• Relive the epic times of the Crusades: Assassin’s Creed immerses you in the realistic and historical Holy Land of the 12th century, featuring life-like graphics, ambience, and the subtle, yet detailed nuances of a living world.
• Intense action rooted in reality: Experience heavy action blended with fluid and precise animations. Use a wide range of medieval weapons, and face your enemies in realistic swordfight duels.
• Next-gen gameplay: The proprietary engine developed from the ground up for the next-gen console allows organic game design featuring open gameplay, intuitive control scheme, realistic interaction with environment, and a fluid, yet sharp, combat mechanic.

Falls short
The storyline in this game had promise, but the way the game is played/designed led to confusion. I eventually lost interest.

Stunning for its cultural sensitivity
While I agree with reviewer J. Powell's comments about the tediousness of the same sort of mission objectives for each new city and the amazing ability of the guards to know, half-way across the city, that you are wanted by guards on the other side --- I do want to praise the game for its cultural awareness. It's not often that one gets to take up the persona of an ostensibly Muslim character in the Middle East during the Crusades. There's not another game I know of that will let you hear French and arabic without translation while you're fighting characters who speak it. The direct opposite would be what I'd call the Worst Game Ever: Kill Switch: Take Cover, Take Aim, Take Over.

I think the game's futuristic framework is also innovative. Without it, Assassin's Creed might be just another seek-and-kill game, on a level with soemthing like the Hitman series for PS2 (another of my all-time favorites)Hitman Trilogy (Includes Blood Money, Silent Assassins, and Contracts). The storyline for AC itself sets it above all that -- but I'm not going to spoil the ending for anyone. When you finish the game, wait for the end of the credits: there's more.

I am wondering this, though: do you get anything extra for actually collecting all the various flags in the cities and kingdom renderings?

One of the Best Titles in the PS3 to the date !!!
Wonderful Story, Great and Huge Enviroment, Awesome Killig Styles, You can do whatever you want in this game, I really love the game, you must to learn how to move the assasin, Altair, but when you got, its awesome !!!

When assassinations become chores
There's certain games where getting to the end is part of the sheer immersion and interest in the story that you'll just keep playing and playing until you're done and even that might not stop you thanks to achievements, trophies, bonus costumes and endings or new weaponry. But then you have Assassin's Creed, a game you want to finish yet find yourself growing less and less amazed by the game yet you'll still play it for extended periods of time anyway. Well I love Ubisoft's Prince of Persia trilogy, this game merely gets a "like": too good to be awful but too flawed to be really amazing which is what the game feels like it should be.

Story: You play as Altair, an assassin living in the 12th century. When Altair breaks the rules of his brotherhood, Altair is stripped of his ranks and most of his abilities (in other words, you've been "Metroided") and is tasked in assassinating 9 men which will help situations with Catholic and Muslim forces. But the real reason why he's being tasked will be revealed later in time...far later.

Graphics: There's games with great art design then there's technologically superior games with pristine graphics and full use of lighting, shaders and the like. Compare a game like Okami to Gears of War for instance. Assassin's Creed is a game that really has both as the world is completely well designed and it does feel exactly what 1191 should feel. From the look of the towns to the large number of civilians to the amazing views you get when you climb view points as well as the character animation on Altair and this is quite a great game to watch.

Sound/Music: The music in the game is serviceable by means that it works within the game but on occasion I barely notice it and prefer to hear the ambiance of the town like civilian chatter and the like. Of course then again you'll frequently hear the same voice despite being in a different street or town as the last time you hear it and while it's not as if Ubisoft can record 50 variations on the same "thank you for saving me" parts, hearing another person saying the whole city will hear of my sacrifice can get grating. Not to mention Altair's rather odd American accent though the rest of the cast like the actual targets are good.

Gameplay: In a way the game feels like it wants to be a "something for everyone and anyone" kind of game. You have stealth kills which never get old, especially to those crazy lepers who keep wanting to throw me and only me everywhere or the women who follow me and give them money (which you don't make by the way). You have action when you're caught and have to fight off sometimes a dozen enemies who never seem to rush you and even take their time before they do some pose in a "boy we're gonna get you good!" way. And then there's the sandbox where you can take on various missions which really only resort to interrogation where you follow somebody and beat em up for info, pickpocketing people for their letters or eavesdropping on people by sitting on a bench. I admire the developers wanting to do more than one but unfortunately they just don't do all 3 in a great manner.

One thing you'll find also with the game is how repetitive it is. Here's your oft-occuring formula for the game: climb down from your mountain base every single new mission, travel or zap instantly to your next time, visit the town's assassin's bureau for who to take on next, climb tall buildings to build up your map and key missions/quests to take on, do them, go back to the bureau for your go-ahead, go to target, see cutscene of their plan, kill them (and hear their go on and on about their plan and reasons for it) fight or run away from enemies as you make your way back to the bureau. That's it and this is for around 9 targets and sure some games have a noticeable similarity in how you progress but there was always at least some change-up or variety but this is just the same stuff in more than one city and nothing else.

However on the other hand I still wanted to get through to the end mainly cause the game felt so interesting that even if I didn't understand the story, I at least wanted to see more of it. Randomly stabbing people is fun in a "I swear I'm not homicidal but this is fun" kind of way and the downloadable patch makes the framerate/freezing problems of before all-but-non-existant but still, this is a game that wants and really needs to be more than what we have.

Irrelevant sidenote: google the producer Jade Raymond...the woman is gooooorgeous.

Audio X Rocker - Black

PlayStation: The Official Magazine (1-year)

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

PlayStation 3 Wireless Sixaxis Controller

Grand Theft Auto IV

Sony PlayStation 3 Blu-ray Disc Remote

Assassin's Creed & More...