Experience the daily routine of the Assassin... which is not necessarily a good thing.
To avoid any controversy, a warning "This work of fiction was designed, developed and produced by a multi cultural team of various faiths and beliefs", which basically legalize for "Hey, I`m not a racist, I have lots of Muslim friends."
The game starts with (a lenghty install and horrific load times) one of those great, surreal "Being John Malkovich" moments that makes you go all "What just happened?" After some weird visions, the protagonist, Desmond Miles, wakes up in Tom Hank`s apartment from "Big". It is near future and our hero turns out to be kidnapped by some scientists, who are recklessly testing the ethical boundaries of humanity but will get their comeuppance in a terrifyingly ironic way. Anyway, they force Desmond to go through his ancestors - a Middle-Age assassin`s - memories to find "the thing"... Well, probably some Deus Ex machina responsible for any unexplained event in history of mankind.
Meanwhile, a few hundred years back, during the Third Crusade, Desmond`s gran-gran-granpa Altair (Flying Eagle in Arabian) is sent to recover "treasure" from recently discovered temple ruins. Unfortunately, Altair, acting as his usual self, that is, being an overconfident and arrogant dick, screws everything up, leaves his two mates in death and flees like a chicken. Luckily, God doesn`t turn a blind eye on him, so Altair is stabbed by a blunt steak knife and stripped from his rank by Al Mualim, the Assassin Brotherhood`s chief. In order to regain his honour, our muumuu clad hero must kill nine powerful men, who stir things up between Muslims and Crusaders.
You might think that "future-past" game design would be cheesy, but you`re wrong. Hexagons, blue colour palette and Middle East cities goes together surprisingly well and the game`s overall design seems very harmonic. I`ll allow myself to praise the storyline a bit - it is good, intelligent and well written, YET everything is presented poorly - cutscenes are shown in stupid, distant angles, we can`t see characters and their emotions too well, also there is something like QTE - during a scene, press any button when you see hexagons popping up. The camera shows more interesting angles, but only for short periods, it also distracts the attention. Yeah, in some scenes you can switch view points by pressing L1 ot R1 but that doesn`t save them from being boring as hell. CGI cutscenes would have been so much better. Also, you can`t skip any of the conversations.
OK, enough about the plot. I think everyone expected to see Hitman, set in Holy Land. Nope, all Altair has to do is:
1. Chief tells you the victim`s name and you ride to the city where the bastard is, if you`ve already been there, fast travel icon appears.
2.You must blend in with scholars to enter the city. Nope, no other way in. It applies to ALL cities at ALL times.
3.If you`re new in town, find a high tower ("View Point") and locate the Assassin`s Bureau.
4. Get to the Bureau an the chief tells you where to start investigating.
5. Randomly wander around or gather VP`s to find missions.
6. Complete 3 of them (there are about six but what`s the point of doing all of them? - Info is pretty much the same) and return to the Bureau leader to get the approval to kill the target.
7. Get to the victim`s place (even if you didn`t collect the info where he is).
8. Watch a cutscene and go for the target. If you`re quick enough, you won`t have to chase the bastard through entire city and fight a sh*tload of guards.
9. Watch another cutscene where the dying person abuses you.
10. Get lost of the tail and return to the Bureau. Then you can fast-forward to HQ and chatter to Al Mualim.
And there we go again, until the Nine are dead.
There are 4 types of missions - Eavesdropping, Interrogation, Pick Pocketing and Challenge.
Eavesdropping - In Assassins Creed it`s not all about killing. Sometimes you have to sit down and listen. Find two dudes, sit on a bench, listen to their blabbering and try to make anything out of it.
Interrogation - This is where Assassins Creed ends and Apollo Creed starts. Target a preacher who praises your target, follow him to a secluded area and beat him up like a baby. Unfortunately this idea fails ultimately. Designers may have made a narrow alley, but but the programmers royally screw everything up. People show up randomly, for example in main square there may be 3 people in total, but in a God-forgotten corner it looks like a damn post-office worker demonstration.
Pick Pocketing - Even merciless killers aren`t above the level of simple crime. Listen to two dudes talking and when they stop, sneak up to one of the one who has the paper and steal an incriminating letter from his 12th century fanny pack. Brilliant. NOT! Altair can`t read (surprisingly he can give an NBC quality Public Service Announcement speech about tolerance and literacy), so letters are useless, even those who "show" the position of target`s guards. I guess I`m a total idiot if I can`t make them show up in my map.
Challenges - Not all assassins are as professional as Altair. In fact they are lazy, arrogant douches who can`t wait to thrust their work upon someone else, in this case, Altair. There are two types of challenges - timed assassinations and flag collecting on time. I found timed assassinations to be the most interesting missions in the game. There is a downside to that - all your "brothers" can tell you is useless rubbish, such as "don`t attract the guard`s attention". How the hell they even got hired?
There are side quests also. Three of them, actually. You can kill a bunch of guards who harass an innocent citizen (they`re ALWAYS innocent). Point? Some vigilantes who help you to stop the guards or scholar locations. Next, View Point collecting. They reveal the map and missions, but I did it mostly because climbing towers was fun. The last one is truly embarrassing. It`s flag collecting. Yep you heard it right. It gives nothing else than Achievements on XBox360 version, otherwise they are complete rubbish. In fact, the game`s creative director Patrice Desilets "suggested he could have done without them, but others on his team thought that players would enjoy gathering them". So, because game`s director didn`t have enough balls to tell someone "no", we`re stuck wasting hours of collecting flags.
Damn, I almost forgot slaying Templars. Basically they are the Elite fighters and can blow your cover instantly. I can`t count how many times I failed a mission because some dickweed designer decided to put them all over the game world.
If you fart the wrong direction, prepare to get chased by guards. Here I laugh. Just lose their sight and sit in a nearby bench, hide in straw carts, roof gardens or scholar company. Seriously, how can one not remember a dude in a white cape, red belt and an entire weapons arsenal on his back? In case if you decide to fight, Altair turns into a one man, 12th century panzer tank bad ass who is able to make a frontal assault on the entire Crusader army. Hell, you can fight, like, 50 dudes at a time, but don`t fret - it doesn`t matter if they are two or twenty - only one of them attacks you at a time. The combat system is nice, but when you learn counter attacks, all you`ll do is wait for a guard to attack and then press L1 to do an awesome counterattack move.
There are 4 well detailed, crowded and fully interactive cities.The interactiveness means that Altair can interact with any surface just as any normal dude would. Sprinting through cities rooftops is quite fun for a while, but there is nothing else to do in this sandbox. The game uses Havoc engine, I want to full use of it! Why I cant turn on crowd surfing mode, pick up a barell and go crowd bowling? I wanna throw bodies from rooftops in crowds (you cant move bodies in AC, what the hell?) and ride my horse in a mob of guards. I want to have fun! Assassins Creed almost doesn`t have any replay value because a lack of bonuses of any kind.
I forgot to mention that between the cities is a huge, richly detailed area - the Kingdom. All you can do is collect flags, slay templars, find more View Points and amuse yourself imagining how the designers who were assigned to do the area, feel when all their hard work is obsoleted by the "Select your destination" menu.
It`s not only vile guards and innocent civilians populating the world of Assassins Creed. Besides random people, there are thugs (you can pick picket them for throwing knives), restless, greedy beggars and my favourite - insane lepers. The raving mad street crazy pushes you and ONLY you around, exposing you to guards more than you`d like. Considering this game was made in Montreal, and having my friend visited there a few times, I have no doubt that the city`s bums were quite the influence. My friend told me that, when he went to an outdoor film screening, this one bum stumbled up to the screen and pointed at the lead character and repeatedly yelled to the crowd: "That`s me! That`s me!"
Visually, Assassins Creed looks so damn kickass that I was completely blown away when playing it for the first time. Everything from the crazy lepers to any back alley is rendered soooo beautifully. Yet, there is a heavy price for that - game often freezes (5 times in 12 hour play time - that`s much), framerate hiccups, glitches, disappearing people and texture pop-ins. Load times are disastrous, even with the 1.3 GB install. If Ubisoft Montreal would have worked just a little longer on this one, it all could have been disposed of.
Music is composed by Jesper Kyd, so I have nowhere to squabble. Different is voice acting. Muslim accents are voiced well, in Acre you can hear residents speaking with an eastern London cockney, like playing a Peter Molyneux game, not to mention the totally Monty Phyton conversation in one of the pickpocketing missions. The weakest point is Altair/Desmond himself. His voice doesn`t fit in, it`s not awfully professional either. I have something on the Templars also - who is Robert de Sable kidding with his French accent? Was he the best French voice actor Ubisoft could find in Montreal? I kinda expected he would randomly say "baguette" and "croissant." And Sibrand`s "tweasure iz pwouf" German? Oh snap.
Assassins Creed seems the best game ever in the first two-three hours. Then you realize that you`re doing the same thing over and over again until it makes you sick. Having AC in your collection is cool, but I recommend to rent it, since one-part Dan Brown, one-part Matrix storyline (with a miserable cliffhanger ending) is great and rooftop ballet is slightly amusing and may hold you to the end of the game.