Official Website

Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC

Genre: Action Adventure

Number of Players: 1

Support: HD 720p & 1080p

The concept is outstanding. The storyline is intriguing. And in case you haven’t seen the main character Altair yet………..Bad ass looking.  I believe that he will definitely have his own cult following just like the likes of Lara Croft, Boba Fett, and Ico. There are so many great things about this game, but the one thing that plagues this game from the third mission on is repetitiveness.

The two storylines to Assassin’s Creed are intertwined. In fact, when you first start the game, you have a tendency to wonder if you put the wrong game in by accident! The main story is of Desmond, a bartender that is kidnapped by a researcher using a machine called an animus which takes a person memory and decodes them. The main action part of the story is not of Desmond’s memories, but memories of his ancestors that are imbedded into his genetic code that the animus brings to life. The alternate storyline is where all the action resides and takes place in 1191 during The Third Crusade. You play the role as Altair who is part of an Assassin’s Clan. In fact, according to history it could quite possibly be the original “Assassin Clan”. The game is a beautifully rendered sprawling landscape that contains three cities, Damascus, Acres, and Jerusalem. The cities have their own look and feel as you mingle through the crowds. And once they are entirely opened up to you, they are a display of an impressive size and grandeur.

The bustling streets filled with merchants, guards, beggars, and three hundred other different types of citizens (yes, they created three hundred different types of NPC’s just to walk around and fill the city) mingle within one another as you make your way through the city towards your objectives. The voices that carry as you walk along the roads are plentiful, giving the city a feeling of liveliness, but never so much that you  still can’t hear a citizen that is yelling for help or a guard giving you fair warning. The only downfall of this is that you do sometimes hear the same thing being said from a merchant as you walk down the market streets of the cities. It doesn’t really take anything away from the game itself, but since there is so much detail in everything else, it does make it easy to pick out small nuances like this.

Altair’s main mission is to eliminate nine named targets.  Before you can eliminate your targets, you must pick pocket, eavesdrop, and sometimes interrogate people to find the location and the best time to stealthily attack your target. While you run or walk around or above the city across the rooftops looking for these objectives, there are plenty of off-the-beaten path things to do and no time frame to have to do so. You can breeze through the game, just doing the storyline missions or you can walk around rescuing villagers from corrupt guards, finding flags hidden throughout the kingdom, or climb the highest buildings in the area in order to see more of the land, in turn, filling in blank spots on your map.

One of the most impressive attributes of the game, besides the beautifully rendered architecture, is the fact that you can climb almost any of these buildings. If you can jump and reach any small niche in the wall, aka windowsill, little post sticking out or a ledge, it can be climbed. There isn’t any “special” texture that you have to look for to climb. If a crevice sticks out more than two inches, Altair can grab it and start pulling himself up the building.

The controls are fluid and easy to use. You have two different “modes” to use, “Socially acceptable” and “Non-sociably acceptable”. While in the “socially acceptable” mode you can slowly walk through the crowds, cautiously pushing people out of the way. This is also your “stealth” mode. You are hidden within the crowd and not drawing attention to yourself from the guards or other people around you. For the “non-sociably acceptable” mode, you hold the R1 button. This allows you to run through crowds pushing people out of the way knocking them over, jumping, and attacking. All of these actions will gain notice by the guards and in turn, will attack you. You can either choose to stay and fight using your hidden blade, (which really is only successful when you’re being stealthy), with your bare hands, throwing stars (which these only really work from a distance, obviously) or your sword, which is the mainstay weapon you will use most of the game.

Even though this is a “stealth” game it also can be played like an “action” game. You can use either method for fighting guards.  If your using your “non sociably acceptable” approach, blending into the crowd, you can slowly walk up to them and stealthily take them out with your hidden blade before they have a chance to react. Or you can just run up to them with your sword and attack. There is really no penalty for using the “action” style of gameplay other then this makes the game a little tougher to get through. The fight is going to last longer, giving an opportunity for more guards to join, leaving you several to fight. If this happens, your other choice is to flee and run through the crowd to find a hiding spot via a bale of hay, a bench with people sitting on it and plopping down on it, or loosing yourself in the middle of a group of scholars until the guards lose interest.

This game is enormous and majestic, and the story will keep you coming back for more. But unfortunately there are a couple of things that prohibit it from being a great game to being an amazing game.  The missions do get repetitive as you are doing the same pick pocketing, eavesdropping and interrogating to find the information you need for each mission.  This can start to feel tedious and repetitive after about the third or fourth mission. Finding the different types of flags throughout the land is a nice idea, but it’s been done before with every other action game, and finding them all doesn’t relinquish any worthy reward. It’s a feature that could have been left out and you wouldn’t have been the wiser.

The textures and graphics of the game are so realistic and capture the feel of the time period so satisfactorily; it makes the minor blemishes more noticeable. The animations of the people strolling through the city are not as smooth as Altair’s or the main characters that you encounter. Your sub-missions are like little pockets in this universe. The same villager will still be harassed an hour later if you don’t choose to save them right away. Also, if you have an unsuccessful pick pocket, you can leave the area and come back and the little scene will replay itself and you can try it again. This does have its pros and cons. The pros are you can do the sub-missions at your own leisure or if you’re unsuccessful at the pick pocket you can retry it to get the information you need. The cons on the other hand are that it makes what feels at first to be a random and seamless universe not so random. If they could have somehow made random citizens being harassed throughout the cities at different times, as opposed to static citizens being harassed in one spot for hours on end, this could have given the game a whole new realm of gameplay and feeling of reality. And if they would have had more of a variety of ways to get the same information you need to continue the storyline, this also would have helped with the realism of the game and would have helped taken out the repetitiveness feeling that you start to acquire later on in the game.

For the limited edition suckers of games like myself, this one unfortunately can easily be passed up, especially if you know someone that already has it. The Mini-Strategy guide really doesn’t offer much that the game doesn’t already tell you; except for a few minor hints that really doesn’t do you a lot of good. The CD of extras unfortunately leaves you wanting more then what they offer. The Developer Diaries are only two five minute segments on both the storyline and art direction. And the interview with the Creative Director Patrice Desilets is interesting and definitely offers you some background information of the making of the game. But it still wasn’t enough to saturate my appetite for more. The disc also has the grand prize, two runner ups and six finalists of the IFC Short Film Contest winners. Nice bonus, but if I had a choice I would have taken more information on the game and development of it over the short films. The three trailers that appear on the disc are also a nice addition, but if you’ve been following the game, more than likely you’ve already seen them a number of times. (And, AGAIN, I would have taken more on the game itself then trailers that I can download off the internet. J) The small Altair figure that comes with the limited tin edition has a great amount of detail to it considering it is only two and a half, three inches tall and captures the spirit of Altair nicely. It would make a nice addition to anyone’s toy collection or Limited edition collection. It is such a good quality it could be passed off as one of McFarlane’s own figures.

Overall, this is a great game filled with stealth and action. The enveloping environments are created on a grand scale that will keep you occupied for some time, whether you’re running or riding horseback. You can tell that a lot of research of this time period has gone into the making of this game. The clothes that people are wearing, the layout of the cities, and the political and religious banter of crusaders “on their soapbox” to all who are near who will listen to them. The storyline is original and one that will keep you interested in the game. The balance of easy controls and fluid movements of Altair is astounding to watch as you control him. Whether it is changing stances during a fight, or running, climbing, and jumping across the rooftops, it is captivating to watch and control. The feeling you get after a successful one-hit stealth attack is definitely one of satisfaction and you may find yourself just sneaking around, and taking out guards up on the rooftops. Assassin’s Creeds controls will have an impact on how games are made in the future. I highly recommend picking this game up even with its minor flaws. It’s not only a great game to play, but one, like Heavenly Sword, is a great game to show the power of the PS3 off to your friends and families.

-jason-