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.

Stunning Next Gen Visuals, But A Let Down In Playability
Assassins Creed is a game that, before its release, received a lot of hype because of its historical and religious plot, the free running acrobatics and stunning visuals. There is a lot of good to say about this game, but unfortunately, there is also quite a bit of negative to say about the game. Over the past decade or so, thanks to the massive Grand Theft Auto series, the free roaming game has taken on many different platforms from racing to superhero, but none have paled in comparison to the GTA franchise. Assassins Creed was ready to change all that with its deep storyline, detailed and large maps, realistic characters and a free running system that would allow you to scale and jump across buildings to escape your enemy.

The plot is mainly set in 2012 and Desmond Mile, a bartender is kidnapped by Abstergo Industries to be used as a test subject for the Animus Device. The device calls up the memories of an individual's ancient ancestors and Desmond just so happens to be the ancestor of an Assassin during the Third Crusade of the Holy Land during 1191. The majority of the game places you in the shoes of Desmond's ancestor, Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad ( , Arabic: "The Flying One, Son of None" or "The Bird, Son of None") during his quest to assassinate 9 people in Damascus, Acre and Jerusalem, who are seen by the Assassins brotherhood as troublemakers and their demise would bring peace between the Crusader and Saracen forces.

The plot is certainly deep and steeped in historical splendour, but with that the game play falls flat in a lot of ways. The free running and climbing aspect is superb and certainly replaces the need for any type of car jacking, but when it comes to one of the best assassins of that time, you would expect the combat sequences to be much better than they are. In this, it's simply a one button system in which you draw your weapon and just hit the melee button at the right time. The reversal killing sequences are kind of cool, but the overall combat system is weak to say the least. Stealth killing can be fun and the blending sequences are interesting, but again, they just tend to fall flat and become very boring indeed. The missions generally consist of investigations such as eavesdropping, pick pocketing and interrogation in order for you to gain information about your targets location, then the assassination itself.

The settings are immensely detailed and are truly amazing to look at from a very tall point within the city. The other civilians seem realistic but also very generic as they don't differ at all and really only seem to consist of those who carry pots on their heads, preachers, crazy people and just people walking by. There is so much that could have made this game an undisputable 5 star winner, but the negatives really drag it down in a dramatic way which is a disappointment. The conspiratorial aspect of the plot is what is most interesting and things such as the Knights Templar featured within the game are something I will be researching just out of interest. Looking forward, it seems like the sequel may repair the short comings of this game to make one hell of a gaming experience.

Mixed feelings
When my friend bought the game and let me borrow it (she'd use it at my house every weekend), I hadn't ever heard of it before, so I didn't have any expectations. I was blown away by the graphics and the sheer size of every city and the amount of detail that went into everything. And the fact that you can run around freely and irritate the citizens and guards to your little heart's content? Shyeah! I had lots of fun with the slogan "I am an assassin. I blend into crowds," and the fact that you go around groping people to get them out of the way (gentle push), your arms flailing if you stand in one place in the middle of a moving crowd.

Unfortunately, as many people of stated, it gets old after awhile. To the point where my friend who bought the game in the first place got sick of it and just let me keep it. And I got sick of it for a long time and had to go through a few other games before I was ready to come back to it. You get a mission, complete the same sorts of boring investigations, and assassinate the target (i.e. some political leader). Initiate conversation with the victim that hints to the fact that you are being fooled, you talk to your leader who insists they are lying, on to the next mission.

Now the 'twist' (I wouldn't really consider it a twist since it is revealed at the beginning, and frankly, with all the futuristic sparkly blue whatevers floating around, I sort of suspected as much) was kind of interesting. I liked Desmond better than Altair (hearing him speak didn't grate on my nerves as much) and going around stealing people's pens was more fun than assasinating people, much to my dismay. The downside to that was that Desmond walks really slowly and he kept glitching over Vidic's office chair, flying into the air for a second.

While in the Animus, I'd have glitches where I'd walk off a table of sorts, and end up standing on someone's head. Or during a sword-fight, my camera would glitch through a rock and I'd be left really confused. Or randomly there would be a beeping sound and my screen would go black but I'd still hear the audio, and I'd think that maybe it was just the Animus pulling my leg, but I'd sit there for five minutes and nothing would change. So I'd have to restart. Or the whole thing would just freeze altogether. I don't know if that's supposed to be funny, but it was just really annoying.

Towards the end of the game I started to get pumped up for a killer ending that would leave me begging for the sequel. So I finish the last memory, walk around as Desmond for a minute and then, guess what? Credits! The end. Now you get to walk around as Desmond or get back in the Animus and do whatever you want. Let down. And you know what really grinds my gears? The fact that it made me want to buy the sequel.

Boring, plain and simple
This game gets old FAST! It was mentioned in a great lengthy review earlier. It starts off really cool, and I was really excited. However....

All the cities look the same. You do the same things over and over. You will soon realize you can pretty much kill any amount of guards who attack you, thereby completely killing the necessity or need to remain stealthy. I wont go in to detail, because others already have. It is fun for the first two cities maybe, then it just gets boring. I made it to Damascus, the 3rd city, and I stopped playing it for the reasons above. Disappointing.

I have also had some glitches, when in the transitioning state (really the level load state, it has stalled out and failed to load the new mission). Required a restart.

A fresh concept set in a remarkably detailed world, but it falls short in a few key areas.
The Good:

- Stunning graphics throughout the game. Surface detailing is incredible. Ambient effects such as fog, "floaties" in the air, etc. are well done. The characters are also well detailed and light/shadow effects are excellent.

- Totally interactive, free roaming world immerses you in the game. The citizens interact with your every move.

- The map/city design is well thought out. Each city has a wealth of building styles: churches, palaces, docks, markets, stables, etc. You can tell special attention was paid to the architectural accuracy of the buildings. This rivals Grand Theft Auto as the best free roaming world ever designed.

- Fighting is fun, unless there are a bunch of guards to fend off. Exploring/roaming is also cool.

- Climbing/jumping on buildings is very fun and easy to control.

- Finding the various hidden flags is a nice touch, but there are so many!

- Climbing the viewpoints is always fun and the views on top are incredible. I also like the swan dive you take off the top of the viewpoint.

- Good sound effects and a decent musical score.

The Bad:

- Mission design is very repetitive. You essentially do the same thing for each mission... a little investigation, then an assassination. It gets old.

- Guard/alert system is tedious. It is very frustrated to "blend in" every time you walk past a guard.

- Controls are overly confusing. Try holding "blend in" while walking and trying to look up at a guard on a building. I don't have three hands, so why do I need that many to perform this simple task. Perhaps "blend" shouldn't be a push and hold control. The fighting controls also get tiresome. The climbing controls, while easy, don't always work as anticipated. Sometimes instead of scaling a wall, you bounce backwards right into the guards you're trying to escape.

- Stealth aspect of the game is underdeveloped. You can't hide behind objects, peak around walls or even crouch down. But, you can jump in a bail of hay, and that loses the guards... right. You can also sneak up on guards, but again it just feels underdeveloped. Perhaps they should have referenced Metal Gear Solid if they wanted to do stealth right.

- The cut scenes after an assassination are silly, and they are all so similar. The cut scenes with the head assassin (old guy in robe) are also silly and much too wordy.

- After picking up a flag, the screen twinkles with DNA effects, which is pretty, but it essentially makes you blind for 2-3 seconds... not good when escaping guards.

- I have gotten an error "Disk is scratched or dirty" a few times when trying to leave the assassin's bureau. The disk is perfect... it's a glitch.

- Some graphical "pop in", especially when running or riding horse. Entire crowds of people just pop into the screen. Unacceptable for a PS3 game.

- Weapon choices are limited. A sword, some throwing knifes, and a smaller sword, that's about it.

Overall this game is a cool concept, but it falls short in the key areas of gameplay, control layout and mission design.

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