Does it live up to the pre-release hype? (Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360))

Member Name: speedingbullet

Product:	Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360)
Date:	17/12/07 (117 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amazing graphics, innovative combat system, fun ways to kill.

Disadvantages: Unnecessary addition of a poor story line, repetative, poor AI in places.

Assasins Creed probably one of the most hyped up games for the next generation consoles. It promosied much, unique gameplay, free roaming, amazing graphics, an exciting story line, lastability and much more. Now its finally being realeased does it live up to its hype?

-------------------STORYLINE --------------------------------

It's quite hard to talk about the story line without giving away, well .... the story line, but here we go. The beginning of the game is set in 2012, "wait a minute!", I hear you cry, "isn't this a game about an assasin in the past?" just bear with me on this, its a shocker and when I turned on the game and started playing it almost made me wonder what I had done in buying this game. Anyway, so its set in 2012 and you are Desmond miles who has been kidnapped by a company. The company needs to know somehting about your past and have built a machine to read your memory, you then act out his memory in the past through this game. I found this a ridiculous and unecessary addition to the game, why not just have the memory as the main story?

The memory story: This is not as bad, and would have made the game much better if it was kept as the main story. You play Altaïr who is a member of an Assasins guild during the time of Richard the Lionheart and the crusades. At first you are the highest rank of assassin however you start the game by failing a mission, not assasinating your target, and you are demoted to the lowest level of the guild, the rest of the game you do 9 assasinations trying to gain back your rank. There are a few twists and turns and overall the memory part of the game makes for a fairly good story line.

OVERVIEW: An unecessary addition of a futuristic story really ruins the feal of the story line and drags down the potentially awesome story line of Altaïr.

Story line: 6/10 (could have been 8/10 easily if it wasnt for the futuristic overtone).

-------------------------GRAPHICS and SOUND--------------------------------

There is nothing to complain about here, OUTSTANDING, lives up to and beats Oblivion in my opinion. The cities are beautiful places, they are fairly accurately depicted from the the time (apparently) and are stunning. There are massive churches, buildings, which take minutes to climb and then you can just gaze across the big city in all its beauty. The characters are well designed and there is quite a variety.

It looks amazing in HD, and still looks good in normal mode, unlike a few of the games so far.

The only disappointing thing is the futuristic feel they added, when you lock onto someone there is stupid futurisc symbols that float around.

Sound - There isn't much to say about sound, its as you expect, has fairly good music, the voices are good and the action sounds are good. Im not personally one who thinks sound can make a massive different, its either fits with the game or it doesnt and this sound does.

OVERVIEW: Outstanding graphics, if you want to look at something beautiful get this game.

Graphics and sound: 10/10

----------------------GAMEPLAY------------------- ------------------

I have very mixed feelings about the gameplay on the one hand its outsanding and the other very disappointing. *stop contradicting yourself!!** yeah yeah, I'll explain:

The combat system is awesome. You have 4 weapons, short sword, a longer sword, hidden dagger and fists. Each weapon has different ways of assasinating people (except fists) and different ways of attacking and counter attacking. The system works so that when you are in hostile environment and lock onto someone you go into a combat mode, its very easy to get out of (you just have to unlock your target) and run away if need me. Whilst in this "mode" you can attack, and you have the ability to do an instant kill, if you are skilled enough, there are pleanty of variations of instant kills to keep you entertained. You can also counterattack and this often results in them dying with yet again a variety of different ways.

The assasinations are also fun, you can use throwing knives, throw people of the top of buildings, or use your hidden knife to slit their throat or stab them in the chest. Sadly although this cleary should be the main focus of the game you actually spend most of the time in combat which leads us to one of the main faults of the game, the missions.

Don't get me wrong the main 9 assasination missions are outstanding, you get to watch from rooftops and jump down to assasinate, you get follow them down dark alleys, battle them one on one and more. However between each assasination you have to do litle sub missions to gain information, these include saving citizens, pick pocketing, eaves dropping, flag collecting, view points and sometimes mini assasinations each with their own flaws:

Saving Citizens - all in all you must do about 50 of these in the game, all it is, is a random citizen standing in between a group of 3-5 guards who are bullying them in the exact same way each time. You run up to them get to assasinate 2 of them before you are caught and then you spend the rest of the time fighting in the combat mode around 3-7 guards depending on how many are in the area. Once you complete you get 4 generic guys who look all the same to "help you" if a guard comes along. They do help but they are boring and exactly the same each time. After about the 4th one you get bored of it and there still about 46 to go!

Pick pocketing - you listen to a conversation which is linked to the story line and then you pickpocket an item which is relevant, mainly a letter containing some information. Again there is about 20 of them and they are not hard to do. The thing that really annoyed me is as soon as you pick pocket them, they realise they have been pick pocketed they dont know its you (even if u stand right behind them). I suppose this is a bit of a personal annoyance, why wold every pick pocketee know they had been pick pocketed straight away? This also gets boring quickly.

Eves dropping - you have to sit on a bench between two people everytime you dont even have to remember the information. Again lots of them and boring.

Flag collecting - pointless . the only thing it helps is to improve your free running skills. Its not too bad as ther arnt many in the game.

Mini assasinations - Fun you have to assasinate guard, or a templar who are after your friends however sadly there arn't many.

View points- Good as you get to see a stunning view of the city, what you do is climb to the top of a high building hten get to jump of it into a pile of hay (called the leap of faith, this is fun also) however lots of them get quite boring after a while.

The reason I made such a big deal of this is because it takes up most of the game and it really isnt that fun, it makes it repetitive and really ruins the feel of the game.

Another annoying part of the game is the AI, they are really inconsistant sometimes being alerted by just walking part and other times you can beat someone up in front of them and they do nothing. They are also very easy to beat even at the end, if you just wait for them to attack and then counter attack you are pretty much invincible.

One aspect of the game which is fun is free running you can run up pretty much any wall and building and jump between buildings killing guards running and hiding from guards. This is a great part of the game.

However despite all of this the game is great fun if you ignore the mini missions and you can have hours of fun running around assasinating and killing guards. My negative attitude is more of a disappointment in what the game is compared to its hype and what I expected it to be. Its still worth of its 8/10 review overall.

OVERVIEW: Repetitive in a lot of places, however a really good combat system saves the day.

Gameplay - 7.5/10

-------------------Lastability------------------- ---------------

Once you've completed it there isnt really much to do you've already spent hours killing guards the whole time and apart from maybe collecting some hidden flags and finding templars to kill you really wouldnt want to play the game much longer. The game however is fairly long and as long as you dont rush through and you do do all of the mini missions it will be, in terms of longevity worth the money.

7.5/10

-----------------------FINAL WORDS -------------------------------------

Amazing graphics, a repetitive yet innovative gameplay. Overall its worth playing and buying and its really a game which if built upon could make an outstanding sequel. Does it live up to the pre-release hype though? In my opinion no, it could have been so much more.

Overall: 8/10

Summary: A must rent really.