Assassins Creed. (Assassin's Creed (PS3))

Member Name: butters

Product:	Assassin's Creed (PS3)
Date:	17/06/08 (103 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great controls which in turn makes great gameplay.

Disadvantages: Terrible story and unskippable cutscenes.

Game: Assassins Creed
Release: Q4 2007
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Platforms: PS3, 360, PC
Age Rating: 15+
Price (Amazon): £38 (can be found cheaper elsewhere)

Assassins Creed, a game that generated an amazing amount of hype in the lead up to the game release last Christmas, not only because of the supposed excellent controls and way of moving about, but also due to the story. If you think you are just going to be playing as a medieval assassin you'd be quite wrong. You play as one yes-but the actual story of the game is set in 2012, where the character Desmond is kidnapped and hooked up to a machine used to extract DNA which supposedly holds memories of descendants. Altair, an assassin is the guy you play as here, in a much more interesting part of the story where you assassinate nine historical figures. The story does advance a bit further, though that would be heading into some spoilers.

The story, straight away in a big negative point to the game. A game where you just want to play as an Assassin you are made to sit through tedious cut scenes describing things about Desmond and the connection to Altair which are really quite uninteresting, and not a patch on more interesting cut scenes in games such as Metal Gear Solid. And you are made to sit through these scenes, because cut scenes are unskippable, quite an annoyance when you really want to only play as Altair, yet have to sit through this, and play as Desmond for a few minutes if only to walk to your room where you are held captive.
Being a supposed trilogy of games, the story will obviously advance further in later games and may be more interesting, but when playing as Altair is all you want to so, the story is just an annoyance, and at the time, just seems like a cheap way to block of certain parts of the environment, so called "memory bocks" to stop you having all the fun too fast.

When you get over that though, you are in for fun, as Altair, the assassin is amazing to control. Slowly arming himself with more weapons over time the weapons are a long and short blade, throwing knives and an assassination knife used for silent assassinations-connected to his wrist. Moving him around is extremely fun because you can just scale buildings with ease-you really can scale buildings with the click of a button and moving the analogue stick to where you want Altair to climb further. It not only aids with running away, but definitely makes you want to free roam because you don't have to click loads of buttons to climb walls-it is effortless and extremely easy to get used to.
And it better be too because in a game where the most fun is exploring the cities by rooftop you are going to attract the attention of some guards who won't hold back on chasing you. Now when this happens you have two choices, to either run away or stand your ground, both of which is controlled with the ease of moving up walls.
Running is done in 'high profile' mode where you press and hold R1 in order to run and climb buildings. When far enough away you can find hiding places such as hay stacks until the guards alert goes down, or you can blend in with the crowd and hope the guards don't notice you.
If you decide to fight again, it is done with ease, just holding down the high profile button again, and pressing one button to attack and one to throw. It sounds extremely simplistic which isn't always the best in games when you actually want to use some skill, though in reality isn't like that at all. It involves throwing and dodging, and then managing to use one of your weapons-with the one equipped leading to a slight different style of fighting needed. It allows for counter attacks and counter throws also which does add a certain depth to the fighting system. The guard AI is pretty decent, and they will put up a bit of a fight, especially some of the harder guards though the main problem only comes when they attack in large numbers.

A large problem with the guards though is that they appear too suspicious at times. It appears mainly in the later parts of the game in towns, though when you are moving from city to city you generally use a horse. This is where the guards get annoying, because so much as running, or going at a jogging speed with a horse brings unwanted attention, which generally means if you want to stay under the radar you have the horse walking. It is damn annoying because you are out in the open when you think you can have a bit of fun, though this fun comes at an unnecessary price.

Then of course the environment gets annoying sometimes. Except for the memory block which really does take away any realism whilst exploring-when a large transparent wall is in the way-annoying when you are being chased, the loading screens between cities also detract from the gameplay. There are cities in the game though when travelling from one city to another you pass under an archway before it asks which city is your destination, before a loading screen comes up. It just takes away the fun of exploring. The cities themselves are amazing though, extremely detailed and are very aesthetically pleasing. They're quite similar, though it really isn't a problem because exploring them is still fun.

Now on to the missions, which are assassinations. To do an assassination you must first research the person a little which generally involves pick pocketing, eavesdropping and things similar. You don't have to do them all for every assassination (you get a choice in how many you want to do) which is quite a good thing because it gets quite repetitive. The assassinations themselves are quite fun, someone is in a public area and you have to use your hidden blade, either in low or high profile. It is an enjoyable, and challenging experience because although it is easy to run in, quickly fight and then assassinate and run again until you are safe, a low profile assassination is far more effective and to do so you can create distractions such as throwing a guard off of a building and then assassinate whilst guards are preoccupied. However, it is extremely hard to pull off because guards are extremely suspicious, especially later in the game, and getting close, yet alone killing the target is hard to do by stealth. One example would be me, standing extremely high above my target, checking out the situation, not bringing any unwanted attention. Bringing out my hidden knife, which you really can not see at all, especially with the distance I was away, attracted all the attention possible and it lead to a huge fight in order to assassinate. However, in general they are fun none-the-less and running away after an assassination, and even fighting is fun just because of the fighting and running system. I just do wish that silent assassinations were made a bit easier-they seem near impossible.

The replay value of the game is quite average. You can replay certain parts of the game again-so can re-assassinate people which is always fun-to see if you can get that stealth kill in, and there are 60 Templars to kill which makes for some fun assassination targets. Then of course there is just the free-roaming which is always fun to do. There are also flags to collect but that never adds replay value in reality and I don't know why developers do it. Sometimes they get it right, such as the Golden Skulltula in Ocarina of Time but hunting for flags doesn't really add replay value to the game-the amount of flags you get really depends on how much you explore.

Overall it is a very good game. The environments are amazing to explore, so fun, so free and whilst you are jumping from rooftop to rooftop the game is amazing, and you can literally spend hours just exploring places and moving around, occasionally assassinating guards and causing fights. The game definitely has flaws, a lot of minor flaws such as the less-than-free environment between cities and, in the same place, the overly suspicious guards, and fixing those would make the game even better. It has flaws, but none the less it is a very good game. The game itself is quite short, which works well for it because it is quite repetitive. But repetitive is not always bad, the assassinations are good, and because of the great environment to explore, you can easily play the main game for a bit, and then explore in order to bulk out the gameplay. Because the environment is so good, you're not forced to do one repetitive mission after the next, but can easily just explore for hours until you feel ready to do missions again.
It is a great game, one I would recommend to anyone with a PS3 or 360.

Summary: A great game with minor flaws.