Very few games come out that I follow from the first day I hear about it. Often I flip open a gamer’s mag or check out a preview on CraveOnline and I just kind of say “that looks great, I wonder when it comes out.” Then I pretty much forget about it and move on, several months later I see it on the shelves and I think “oh yeah! Sweet!” then I purchase it or rent it (usually rent because I’m broke). Every once in a while though a game comes out that I just have to follow every second of, I keep checking up on the release date, I watch all the production diaries, and I pretty much become an expert at the game before I can even buy it.
This latter was the case with Assassin’s Creed, being a big fan of the Prince of Persia franchise, this game caught my attention right away. So for like a year and a half now I have been following and reading, and waiting for this game to finally come out into the public eye and I was the first one in line to pick up yesterday, and while the game is not flawless it meets almost all expectations.
The Good: The game (kind of) follows Altair a cocky yet amazing Assassin in 1191 A.D. during the third Crusade. He fails the Assassin’s clan and to redeem himself he must go take out 9 very prominent leaders during the third crusade. This is actually one of the coolest aspects of this game, because all 9 leaders you take out were actual historic figures, died or mysteriously disappeared during this year giving it this sense that you really are in this era taking out these people.
The entire system though taking a few minutes to get use to ends up being very simple, but that I believe is one of its greatest strengths. When you are running from guards and jumping rooftop to rooftop it is as simple as holding down two buttons at the same time, while some people may feel this is dumbed down and to simple, in reality it makes it a lot nicer that you aren’t stressed out about getting away with super complicated button structures. The fighting system is similar in the sense that you can make it very easy, but yet very cool. Yes you can turn this into a hack and slash game by just free swinging but this will usually end in your demise, but if you time your counterattack right it not only ends in a quick kill, but a pretty amazing looking kill at that.
The whole idea of stealth has been redone for this game as well, in the sense that they call it “social stealth” it is no longer your typical hide in the shadows and wait for target to walk over to you, but it is all about how you blend in with the crowd. Whether it be praying like a priest, or just making sure you’re not causing a scene by scaling a building in front of a crowd, it’s all about not getting noticed. Once you get really good at this you can slowly walk right up to a guard and gut him then walk away without even being noticed. This feature honestly just never gets old.
The Bad: The more you get into the game the more flaws you will start to notice, one of those being that they pretty much ran out of ideas for how to find your target. You will always listen in on a conversation and you will always have to pick pocket. These tasks start to feel super repetitive and even daunting at times. One of the other flaws is the interactive cut scenes, the first few cut scenes are so incredibly long and tedious that you find yourself not paying attention to what is going on with the story and more concerned to how many times you can spin around in a circle before the old guy shuts up.
The Ugly: The voice acting is absolutely incredible all save one, Altair. It seems like they picked their worst voice actor for their coolest character, not only does he speak in an English accent but he is just a terrible actor, they could have pulled a better actor from any B film, or soap opera....oh yeah it’s that bad.
The indifferent: The “Big” twist that ubi managed to keep secret this entire time ended up being the biggest “eh” factor in gaming history. I could really care less about this whole sci-fi twist that they decided to add in, it really doesn’t effect the story, and is honestly just “eh” to me. So it is definitely worth mentioning, it just really didn’t fit into any other section.
So while Assassin’s Creed has its flaws, the meat of the game, which ultimately is the game play and the environments, delivers on all accounts, it is a game that will not only prove to stand the test of time, but have its players begging for sequels.
Final Score: 9/10
