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Sunday 13 January, 2008
SUMMARY
Assassin's Creed is a game where you relive your ancestor's memories of being an assassin in medieval Jerusalem. A corporation is holding you captive and using futuristic technology in order to obtain information on a mysterious treasure. Your missions consist of either eavesdropping, pick-pocketing or interrogating to gather information on a target, and then assassinating the target. The gameplay is open world, so you can choose how quickly you want to complete your missions, or run around looking for hidden flags or saving citizens. The eventual goal is to find out who has the treasure, and all your short term goals build up information on it's location.
GAMEPLAY
Assassin's Creed has a lot of potential to be one of the gold standards of next generation gaming, but some aspects fall short. It's visuals are stunning, with complete cities bustling with people and life. Some of the vantage points allow you to see the entirety of the city, including the walls and the mountain range that borders it. Your assassin, Altair, is in incredible shape, being able to climb almost any building, jump from rooftop to rooftop, and cling to ledges by fingertips. City guards will pursue you throughout the city if they spot you doing something suspicious, but you can hide from them in hay bales or stand and fight them. You can choose to play the game stealthily, trying to avoid the guards and accomplish your missions without raising much suspicion, or you can play it recklessly, killing everyone in your path.
Each city is filled with crazy people who punch you, beggar women who get in your way, and guards who are constantly on lookout for you. Some characters carry knives, and you can pickpocket them. Citizens are being harassed by the city guard, and if you rescue them, they leave helpers behind for you to interact with. Vigilantes hold back the guards who are chasing you, and packs of scholars allow you to hide in their midst. Your primary assassination targets are integral to the storyline, each with a firm foothold in the mysterious story of the game.
As the game progresses, you move from town to town climbing towers to "synchronize" your memory, and then performing one of the aforementioned tasks. This gets incredibly repetitive, as the game drags on and you have to do the same things over and over again. The combat mode is pretty cool, with very gory counterattacks that look very realistic and violent, but it's just alot of button mashing and hitting the x button at the right time. Although it is really satisfying to run your blade through someone's throat, it gets very repetitive.
One of the problems with this game is that there are tons of scenes where you character just talks to another character, with no ability to skip the scene. These dialogues are very boring, and they take up so much time of your game play. They are supposed to add to the story, but it gets very repetitive and boring. Also, all your time spent in the future is spent doing nothing but walking to bed and going to sleep, or walking to the table and going to your ancestor's memories. If there was some sort of action you could do in the future, it would make the game more fun.
DESIGN
The design of the game is beautiful. Like I said, there is a lot of potential here for this to be a fantastic game. The detail is really incredible, with interactive characters spread out throughout the entire game. The ability to scale medieval buildings, swan dive into haystacks hundreds of feet below, and view all that with a 360 degree rotating camera is really impressive. Almost every building is climbable and the city looks completely different from the rooftops. Most of the game is fun to even just watch, with the cringe inducing fight scenes and physically impossible stunts. The world created for you is vast, and thus there is plenty for you to look at and explore.
If I were to improve this game, I would remove the entire story line that involved the future, and focus solely on Altair and the medieval part of the game. If you were rewarded for completing missions with more weapons, like a bow and arrow, or a pike for the parts of the game where you ride a horse, as opposed to just stronger sword ability, there would be some new things you could do. With some more creative missions to complete, and less confusing back and forth time travel, this game would be even more successful than it already is.
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