Assassins Creed Review (nick)

[Nick]

Assassin’s Creed. A title that many gamers have for years been drooling over; its wonderful environments, shown off in breathtaking videos and amazing screenshots, its emotional atmosphere that brings together religion, death and society. Assassin’s Creed was meant to be the title of 2007, the game that just blew everyone away. A game that would be so beautiful and spectacular that every other game released around it would be ignored and pushed aside.
Expectations were high for the game from Ubisoft Montreal. Practically, AC was going to a Grand Theft Auto-esque title based during The Third Crusade, an era filled with assassin’s, religious extremists and war. Thankfully, that time period has come and gone and we have all gone on to live peaceful lives in a wonderful, free society. Wait a minute…

An interesting, compelling and entertaining plot

Nowadays in video-games it’s not so out-of-the-norm to come across a title that has a complex and original storyline that is somewhat Hollywood-like in his telling. Assassin’s Creed is one of those titles. While at first it is a little difficult to grasp what exactly is going on with all the characters and changes in time, an hour or so into the game and you’ll finally be able to grasp the concept of the title and the direction for which the story is heading in. To give a little heads-up to those who haven’t yet played the game, here’s a short summary:
You assume the role of a bartender named Desmond Miles whose line of ancestors, dating back hundreds and thousands of years, were assassin’s. He is taken to a special facility where he is subjected to the Animus, a machine that allows you to access the memories of past ancestors through DNA-based memories that have been passed down through generations. While hooked into the machine, Desmond becomes (or re-enacts) the memories of Altair who is an original member of the Hashshashin (a sacred group of assassin's). He is ordered to assassinate the nine targets who are leading the cause of The Crusades.

Now, that summary isn’t all that short, but that pretty much is the jist of it and that’s as small as it could get without leaving something out. The fact is, there is a lot more to the story and plenty to uncover. While this story is an original one and always has been considered so from the time the game was announced, it’s always a matter with how the story is executed and told. Unfortunately, while the story itself is something that can applauded, the way for which it is executed can’t be. One thing you’re going to become accustomed with while playing this title is that there are a lot of twists and turns. The sad thing is that you’re either not going to realise the twist in the plot even took place unless you play through it a second time (which you won’t want too), or the twist has taken place far too early in the game to increase your interest in the story right up until the end. What is rather discouraging is that there are particular elements of the story that could have been left until further on in the title, but instead they’ve been give away early on and it’s like walking into a 3.5 hour movie, only to find out who the killer is 20 minutes in.
A nice-looking title…from afar.

The animation system throughout Assassin’s Creed is generally pretty good. At times, AC comes off as one of the prettiest games available this generation. At other times, it’s clear that the development team forgot, or just didn’t bother, to fix some issues with the presentation. It’s no secret that the game went through development issues not long before the game was set to be released on the 360 and Playstation 3. Luckily, there were no major delays. At first glance you could probably say that the development issues were rectified and fixed, but Assassin’s Creed is actually a beautiful red rose with sharp, poisonous thorns. If you’re going to judge this game from a first-look, chances are you’re going to fall in love with the visuals. Granted, the game looks pretty good, especially from the Eagle look-out points (aka. View Points). The cities are all heavily detailed and the game has a large draw distance. However, it’s obvious that there were serious problems with the Playstation 3 development, especially when you play it side-by-side with the 360 version. The frame-rate dips so badly at times in the PS3 version that it is often unplayable, especially towards the end. There's also the matter of the in-game freezing which is supposed to be fixed in a downloadable patch, but we're reviewing the retail version of the game, not the patched version.

An American assassin in the ancient Middle-East. Wow. Just…wow

The gaming world is still yet to see “The Passion of the Christ” of video-games. Now, when we say that we don’t mean a movie about Jesus and the Jews. What we do mean is a game that maintains all of the elements of the era it is based in. All of them! From appearance, to attire, race and accent. From the moment you hear Altair speak you can’t help wonder; why the hell is this guy American? We can understand that game had to be in English. After all, having a game incorporate ancient Arabic would deem to be a very challenging task for developers. But why have every other character have a Middle-Eastern accent, something we have all become accustomed with now, and then have your main character speak with a strong American accent? You have some aspects that are so realistic, like the cities and atmosphere of the title, but then you have this American assassin, which is strange considering North American wasn’t discovered until the 1400s (AC is set in the 1100s). Would it really have been so difficult to have given this guy an Middle-Eastern accent? Honestly, if you’re going to make him American, at least choose a voice-actor who can be more enthusiastic about the role because most of the time he sounds as though he is reading directly from a sound-card.
Fortunately, the rest of the voice-acting throughout the title is top-notch. There is some great emotion and direction in the acting and thankfully this makes up for the boring and typical voice of Altier. However, you have to bundle all of the voice-acting together with the rest of the sounds throughout the game and as a whole it just doesn’t hold up. First you have Altier’s laughable and dumb American accent, then you have repetitive comments from people you pass in the street. One can’t help but wonder how this is happening in this generation. Obviously, we haven’t advanced as far as we thought.
Compelling gameplay

The main aim of this title is to assassinate nine targets, all of which are spread out across the three major cities: Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus. Each city has three sections, comprising of poor, middle-class and rich, so all up you have nine areas and nine targets. Not all are available from the get-go though and you’ll have to slowly work your way through each to unlock other areas of the cities. The games graphical beauty and powerful presentation can be truly respected once you unlock an entire city.
Assassin’s Creed has a wonderful control scheme. Altier controls fairly well and you have the option of either Stealth mode, which is more suited to slow, quiet assassinations and walking by enemy guards, and High Profile Mode which attracts attention to you but gives you more freedom with your movements. With High Profile Mode you can leap across building tops and climb high buildings which is simple and fun and never gets boring. This distances the game away from a traditional platform title, and it is executed very well.
One aspect that will deem to be very important in AC is your ability to climb to the various View Points spread out across the cities. Not only do these points give you a birds eye view of the cities, which are amazing, but they also allow you to locate people of interest when looking for assassination targets. Without climbing these View Point, you ultimately won’t be able to find your target.

The whole point of the View Points is to get a quick over-view of the city and pinpoint these people of interest on your map. You find these people, and either eavesdrop or pickpocket them, and then you will be able to locate your target and assassinate them. However, these become rather repetitive after two or three times and that’s where the option to do more investigation comes in handy. You’ll be able to sought your targets after completing only a set number of tasks, but you have the ability to investigate further and unlock even more information about the target, which can deem to be very helpful or rather useless. Overall, you’re going to be doing the same investigation-based tasks throughout the game which can get very boring, fast! You also have side-tasks, such as "save thecitizen" which add a little bit a value to the title.
The actual assassination’s are generally well-done and play out through cut-scenes before you’re given the opportunity to make your move. They are rather enjoyable early on, but as the game ages they become pretty tedious. Once you complete your goal you have to travel back to an Assassin’s Bureau located in that particular city, but you can’t do it if you’re being chased. If you are, you have to break the line of site of your chases before hiding and then becoming anonymous. If you can’t break the chase, you won’t be able to enter the Bureau and finish the mission. This aspect is also very enjoyable, as the assassination’s are only just the beginning of the whole mission; you must then escape the guards who are out to punish you for your actions.
AI, AI, where art thou AI?

Simply put, the enemy AI in Assassin’s Creed is dumb, sometimes unbelievably moronic. All you have to do is sit on a roof-top and watch a guard trying to climb a ladder and you’ll see what we’re talking about. On top of that, it’s pretty easy to get away from the guards once you become a target and that has nothing to do with the environment but rather the idiocy of the tactics used by the guards. What’s even worse is that when you find yourself fighting five or so guards, they mostly just sit back and watch you while you bloody their friend to death. On occasion’s they will all jump in and attack you at once, but all you have to do is sprint away and wait for them to catch up before you can stab one of them in the stomach.

Overall, the enemy AI just doesn’t cut it. It just ain’t all that challenging and it compromises the whole stealth aspect of the title. You can very easily just walk up to a guard and knife him without being overly quiet but that’s worthless, as a loud, high profile kill is just as effective and chances are no one will notice that you’ve just made a loud kill until you’re back free-running across the roof-tops.
A great combat system

If you can look beyond the terrible AI that you’re going to be using it on, Altier’s combat is quite impressive. The whole thing plays out like a rhythm based flow of actions and once you master it, you’ll be pulling off moves that look great and put a smirk on your face. Smashing the hell out of your controller just isn’t the way to play this game, and that’s where the inventive mind of the title comes into play. You’ve got to time your moves perfectly and if you can do so, you’ll be making easy kills without hesitation. While button-mashing can get the job done it will take you a lot longer to kill your enemy, especially if there is a bunch of them and it does no justice to the gameplay, especially when you have a more free-flowing and attractive combat style available to you.
Grand Theft Auto during The Third Crusade? Yeah…No!

It’s been said often throughout the gaming community that Assassin’s Creed is pretty much a GTA-esque title that is mission based and free-roaming. While it is both of those things, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s anything like GTA. That closest thing we’ve gotten to a GTA-like title in the past is Saint’s Row and that’s because it offers different and changing missions around the story. What Assassin’s Creed does is maintain all of the same gameplay elements without offering anything new throughout.
Assassin’s Creed is a game that has you complete the same tasks in each city for each target. How anyone can compare that to Grand Theft Auto is beyond question. While the story changes and evolves around these tasks, the tasks themselves are the same; pickpocket someone, interrogate someone. It’s all the same. And it’s very, very repetitive. If this game was anything like a GTA title, it would offer different missions in each city. If AC is like anything, it’s Gun and even that wasn’t as repetitive as this.

Gameplay

6.5/10
What really brings Assassin’s Creed score up in this department is the combat system. It’s original and perfectly incorporated. Beyond that, the game gets repetitive fast, the enemy AI is moronic and the story goes somewhere fast and nowhere slow.
Graphics

8.0/10
AC is a great looking title, be it on the 360 or PS3, Ultimately, the problems on the PS3 bring it down a bit. Get to those View Points and check out the cities in their entity; they’re breathtaking!
Sound

7.5/10
Repititive sound effects and a terrible lead voice-actor, but all other voice-acting is great as is the emotional soundtrack.
Value

7.0/10
It’s going to take you about 12 hours to finish if you go through it and complete the minimum amount of tasks and do all nine assassinations. If you want to get 100%, you’ll have to do all of the investigation tasks and find all of the View Points, which can take upwards of 25 hours. Either way, when you finish this title there is no real reason to play through it again.
Overall

7.5/10
Assassin’s Creed is a just a big mixed-bag. When we say mixed-bag, we don’t mean a mixed-bag filled with Gummi Bears and Banana candy, but rather a mixed-bag of cheese and raw meat. There’s just so much disappointment in this title, yet some really great aspects as well and it’s difficult to put your finger onto whether or not this is a good title. If you look at particular elements, like the combat, graphics and story, well then yeah, the game is fantastic, but then you look at the terrible enemy AI, poor sound, overly repetitive mission-based gameplay and the fact that most of the plot twists are revealed early on and you have a fairly mediocre title. Bundle them together and you have an above average title that’s worth a look.



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