Assassin's Creed

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Fun: After reviewing items for a few years on Amazon.com I've come to the conclusion that a helpful review should not simply express whether the reviewer likes or dislikes a product. The problem with Amazon.com reviews is that the vast majority are written by people who have decided that a product is the best thing in the world or by other people who think it's the worst. This results in tons of reviews with ratings at each extreme of the range, all of which are completely useless to the potential buyer because they don't aspire to any level of impartiality or critical thought. So, since I usually search for 3-star reviews in order to get an impartial assessment, I concluded that the only way to give a truly serious and helpful review was to give the product an overall score of three stars and try to fit my review to that rating. Before I get to the review I should point out that I have finished the game, so this isn't based on first impressions. Setting and Plot Assassin's Creed is a stealth-based sandbox-style game along the lines of the Thief series of games. It is set in the Holy Land of the 12th Century - an inspired and original setting. In the vast majority of the game the player plays an assassin battling the forces of evil at a time when cities are ruled by corrupt governors due to the absence of popular leadership during the Third Crusade. There is another part of the game that I will let people find out for themselves, although I will say that the game's hyped 'surprise' wasn't all that surprising, at least not to me. This was no KotOR "Oh my God, I'm Darth Revan!" revelation - not even close. So those who like plot surprises, don't get your hopes up - I think the game's 'mystery surprise' issue was probably more a marketing ploy that an intended plot twist. The plot and the character arc are both fairly simple and pretty much 'par for the course' as far as video games go, although I felt the developers did a good job of making the 'evil' characters fairly believable and not stereotypical. In the game you're free to do missions in any order you like on the way to completing an overall linear storyline. Not all the missions are stealth-based, but stealth plays a major role. In terms of skill I'm sort of an average player - not horrible but by no means a genius with the gamepad, so stealth games usually frustrate the heck out of me, but this game was very different - none of the usual frustrations reared their ugly heads, and even though the game has only one difficulty level the game was neither too hard or too simple. I had a few fights that I had to do over, but not so much that I felt like throwing my game disc in the trash, as happened with Rainbow Six Vegas, nor did I breeze through every level without difficulty, so I feel the developers did a fantastic job balancing the skill level of the game. But those who play 24/7 might find this game a little on the easy side. Gameplay The game is very long with between twenty and forty hours of play. Generally speaking, the game is split up into three levels. Each level of the game is completed by doing one assassination mission in each of the game's three major cities. Each assassination mission requires a certain number of investigations to be completed before it can be attempted. The investigations can be eavesdropping missions or pickpocket (easy), missions where you have to rough up a NPC to get information from him (medium difficulty), or missions where you have to take over a lesser assassin's kill mission and do it within a time limit (hard). The game has been criticised for being repetitive and it is, but not overbearingly so. There are a small number of 'things to do' in the game (assassinate, pickpocket, eavesdrop, beat-up, timed assassination, saving citizens from bullying NPCs) but I found that these activities take place in so many different areas and with so many different influences that I really didn't notice the repetitiveness all that much. The game does require the player to use a bit of strategy before every major assassination. Before completing your assassination it's always best to save citizens from bullying NPCs who have accused him or her of theft. When you do this not only do you get points towards gaining endurance in battle but you gain help in escaping too, in the form of scholars that help you hide or ruffians that delay your pursuers. Since the whole city is actively looking for you after an assassination you're going to need all the help you can get. Similarly, it's best to remove rooftop guards wherever you see them, so that they don't become a problem during an escape. Graphics and Sound Visually the game is beautiful, with the Holy Land brought to life very well indeed. Sometimes it's just fun to wander through the streets or over the rooftops just taking in the atmosphere. I really can't criticise the game's graphics too much. They remind me of the Call of Duty series with almost photo-realistic graphics in a perfectly realised environment. Having said that, when I was first playing there would sometimes be points where I would get low resolution walls appearing and NPCs would completely disappear. This bug happened to me two or three times within a few hours of first loading the game disc and it's never happened since, so I don't know what caused it. Each time it happened I would save and quit and restart and that fixed the issue. Sounds are equally excellent and the voice acting is generally good. Accents are patchy though - French and Middle-eastern accents sound good but almost all of the 'English' voices remind me of the pseudo-Cockney that can be heard in Hollywood films from the 1940s and '50s. Similarly the German voices were a little too guttural for my liking - I speak German and I could hardly understand a word because the voice acting was so overdone. But the worst accent was that of the main character - apparently we are supposed to believe that a Middle-Eastern assassin from the 12th century would speak with an American accent. Maybe this was a developer decision - maybe they thought a realistic accent wouldn't go over well in the post-9-11 world - but I would have appreciated a more realistic treatment. Maybe that's being too nitpicky though, since hardly anyone in the 12th century would speak modern english anyway. Control System The control system is a little more complex than other games of this type and the player is often called upon to make simultaneous inputs, with a left stick input as well as a trigger and button input with the right hand. At first I found this a little difficult but I soon got used to it. Again, those skilled with the gamepad will find no problem here, but I found that after a few hours of constant play the fingers of my right hand were very stiff, though it's nowhere near as bad as the thumb soreness I get with many sports games. The game has been accused of being a 'button-mashing' game. I didn't find that to be the case. There are a few simple button combinations which are easy to learn and put into practice. I mainly relied on the simple attack, the counter-attack and the break-grip combos and I never once found myself mashing the buttons at random as I have in some other games. One annoying issue with the controls is the issue of using throwing knives. Often it's very hard to hit your target in that it's often difficult to tell if your target is selected or not (especially when you're trying to get a number of shots off in quick succession): this can result in innocent people getting killed or in knives being thrown uselessly at walls or into the ground or sky. Also, it's easy to accidentally target an innocent NPC that's running past you, so not only is your knife wasted but your view starts to track him too, which pulls your attention from the bad guys. This issue becomes even worse if you're throwing knives down from a rooftop because after every throw the camera moves up on its own away from the action. I think this is the worst criticism I can make of the game as it virtually makes knife-throwing from rooftops impossible. While we're on the issue of weapons, changing from knives to the sword can be clumsy - if you're using throwing knives and your enemies approach too close it's best to change to your sword, but if you're under attack it's very hard to do this as the button doesn't seem to work when you're fending off blows. Another issue is that when you're cornered in a street and you do a special kill move, the auto camera will go into a cinematic of the move and then it places your viewpoint right behind a wooden beam or a wall or canopy, virtually blinding you - this can be upsetting if you're surrounded by enemies and close to death, especially if you're pretty sure you would normally be able to take them. AI The AI in this game has been criticised for being somewhat stupid, but in my view it is very realistic. The AI portray the fear of being in a swordfight with a master swordsman (that's your character) very well indeed. The AI often do not attack until they are goaded into it by their leader, and unless there are two leaders in the fight they will not attempt attacks in combination with another NPC. This is very realistic - in real life poorly-trained people will usually not attack when another person is doing so. All-in-all, on this issue I think many players have been led to expect AI to behave like elite soldiers, but I think that's a false expectation. In this game you are the elite soldier and the AI soldiers are frightened conscripts who need to drum up courage in order to attack you. The voices and animations are very good indeed here, with soldiers cowering in fear after you kill someone and with the leader saying "Attack him you cowards!" or something similar in German or French. Anyway, the fact that the enemy attacks piecemeal one by one helps you out: if it was otherwise this game would be extremely frustrating - you basically wouldn't stand a chance with more than two opponents. Another thing about the AI is that they respond in context - I just love the way they respond when you climb a building, saying a number of phrases like "Why is he doing that?" or "He must be crazy" or "If he gets hurt I won't help him". Some of the comments are quite funny and although there are only a few responses I never got the feeling that they were too repetitive. The Ending I should write a little bit about the ending. In this game it's a little bit odd to find a game that's so appealing with a somewhat disappointing ending. It's hard to write too much about it without giving away 'the secret', but let's just say that the game seems intent on leaving us hungry for a sequel. Personally I wish they would have wrapped it up nicely - heck I'd still be clamouring for a sequel but I wouldn't feel as unfulfilled. Overall All-in-all this game was a great experience for me. With a setting that's both original and interesting the game made me want to study the world of the Crusades more. I love the sandbox format and the graphics are second to none. Gameplay is interesting although a bit repetitive (but I don't know if that's a bad thing) and the bugs and gameplay issues are negligible. Also, I never experienced framerate issues that some reviewers report. With this game and Call of Duty 3 & 4 I think I'm all set for Xbox 360 games for a while. Assassin's Creed doesn't have multiplayer or co-op modes and there's not too much scope for replay value, but it's a heck of a good game so I think I'll be playing it through a few times. Comments (35) | Permalink | (Report this)

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Price: $19.99
Updated on 6-7-2008.