As I’m sure most of you know, Assassins Creed came out November of 2007 for ps3 and xbox360.  It peaked my interest, but not enough to make me do anything about it.  However in April of 2008, Ubisoft released a PC version.  This still wasn’t really enough to make  me do anything about it, due to comments I had heard from others who played it, so I forgot about it and moved on.  Recently however, I’ve been hearing rumors of Assassins Creed 2.  While I haven’t really looked too hard to find anything on it, knowing how Ubisoft works, I won’t be surprised if they do make a sequel.  Anyway, long story short, I figured that if they were actually going to make a sequel to a game where you ran around killing people secretly, the first one must have been at least decent, so I sat down to play it.  This is what I found:

Gameplay

The gameplay is fairly linear in Assassins Creed.  You get a mission from the leader of the Assassins, and you must go take him out.  Before you can do this though, you must research your target and gain info from doing various tasks in each city.  To do this, you must either pickpocket, assassinate some guards, eavesdrop, interrogate, or run around and grab specially placed flags.  After completing these tasks, the person who told you to do it will also tell you something about your target.  Here’s the catch though, on the PC version, they included 4 more tasks.  As fun as the gameplay is, it is redundant. I can only figure more so on a console.  Being repetitive as it was, for some odd reason, I still enjoyed it.  Even though I was doing the same thing, it was never enough to put me off of playing it.

You can also run around saving citizens from the harassment of the guards, not that doing this usually does anything worth while, but see the rant section for more on that.

The best part of the gameplay is how open the city roaming is.  You can climb up buildings, run across rooftops, and jump the gaps in between them with ease.  The great thing is, is that it doesn’t get old.  Never once did I find myself resenting that I had to climb another building to avoid a guard blockade.

The thing that kept me going though, was getting ready for the actual target, the reason I went to the city in the first place.  If you gather all the information from the people in the city, you learn that there is more than one way to try and get the job done.  I quite enjoyed trying to figure out which would be best.

Story

The story is that of Altair, a master assassin, who disobeys the creed and is reborn a novice.  Yes, that’s right, you start off with everything, and then get stripped down to nothing.

You are assigned 9 targets to kill, and by killing one, you get a piece of equipment back, and a rank restored.

As you progressively kill each one, Altair is troubled by the things that they say, and tries to figure out what connects them all.

Oh Wait! Sorry I forgot, the true story is about Desmond, Altair’s ancestor.  He has been kidnapped by a group of people and is forced to relive the memories of Altair, which are stored in his DNA.  A special machine called the Animus, allows you to play through these memories.  At first I thought this rather distracted from gameplay, but later on, it developed it gained it’s own story which is connected to Altair’s story, and became interesting.  While there is a little gameplay as Desmond, there isn’t enough of it to warrant me putting it in the gameplay section, because as I said, It’s more story than anything.

Anyways, I found the story enjoyable enough to keep on playing the game, and you probably would too.

Graphics, Sound, and Stuff

The graphics are decent, not top of the line, but not bad.  The cut sequence when the game starts up was pretty good, but unfortunately those graphics were never seen again, which i found to be a little sad, especially when if they won’t let you skip cut scenes, they might as well at least make them look good.

I never really noticed the music as I played through the game.  Something that I consider to be good and bad.  Good because it means that I was into gameplay enough to not be looking for something else to satisfy me.  Also good because it means it flowed well with the game.  While there isn’t anything really bad, it just means that it wasn’t memorable so take it as you will…..

The menus seemed fine enough to me, as I never actually used them and the map was quite handy, and not really a pain to use.

Rant

This is the only section that is probably worth reading, because it will cover every quarrel I had with the game as well as everything I really liked.  The game started off, went jolly good along, and I learned that I could do a leap of faith, where in, you climb to the top of a viewpoint (very tall building), get details for your map, and then leap off the top into a giant pile of hay.  There are about 6-8 viewpoints in each section of the city, there are 3 cities, and each city has 3 sections.  This never lost any enjoyment for me.  As unrealistic as it may have been compared to the rest of the game, IT WAS FREAKING AWESOME!!!!

As mentioned before I said I would include a section about saving citizens here, so I will.  Like viewpoints, citizens being harassed run the same way, 6-8 in each section of each city.  The guards always say the same thing, “You dare steal in front of me, that will cost you your life.”  Upon saving said citizen, they would say one of 3-5 things.  It got really old.  The only reason to ever save one, is that saving them helps you get more life.  For every 15 things you do, your life is increased.  Saving a citizen counts as 1/15.  Also, each time you do save one, the game will spawn either vigilantes (people who will help stop guards from killing you, so long as you are right next to them,) or scholars (people who will help get you past guards.)  I found vigilantes useless, as I stuck to the rooftops, and I found scholars a luxury, because there’s always another way around the guards.

You can’t skip cut scenes!!!!  This is the thing that got me most about this game.

When I first started playing the game, I alerted the guards to my presence, so they started coming after me.  “This will be easy,” I thought, “I’ll just climb this building, and they won’t be able to get me.”  I soon discovered that I was not some great ninja.  Apperantly everyone in the game goes to ninja school, because guards will follow you as you run, leap and climb across the roofs of the city.  However I justified this.  If they couldn’t follow you, the game would be way to easy, so instead they placed things around the city, that if you get far enough infront of the guards, you can hide in and they won’t search.  While the guards seem retarded for not looking in there for you when it’s the only place you possibly could have gone, it made the game a bit harder, and better in my opinion, as you do actually have to try to avoid the guards.

PC version has more quest options, if you get it go PC.

oPg Factor

While the game is decent, I won’t go out and tell you to play it unless you feel that it might be fun.  Despite it’s flaws, I enjoyed it and am hoping that a sequel will be released.

Would I play this w/ my mother? No
Would I play this w/ the guys? No
Would my dog enjoy this game? I don’t have one, but yours might
Do I wish I had Altair’s skills? Yes
Do I wish I had Altair’s stealth blade? Yes
Do I want to go get targets from people and assassinate them? No

Overall Score:
Gameplay: 7/10
Story: 7/10
Graphics, Music, and Stuff: 7/10
oPgFactor: 7/10

Total: 7/10 = if your bored or can get it cheap, it can’t hurt to check it out.