The first hour or so is amazing...afterwards the game falls into receptivity and becomes a boring, uninvolved mess
The story is a rather interesting premise: you're actually a dude in modern times reliving the memories of an ancestor during the times of the crusades. Some of the characters and set pieces are great. The one that sticks out in my mind is the dude in the hospital. It was quite a haunting experience walking around people who were not only physically ill, but seemed to be mentally ill as well. People were getting beaten up for trying to escape and the doctor – our target – for all his mistreatment of his patients, honestly thinks he is helping them. If the game play was as good as the story seemed to be, we would have been on to a winner here. Unfortunately, with this kind of a game, you only get story elements at certain points, and how do you get to those points? Info-gathering mission! God DAMN! Also, because this game is actually set in a modern/near future settings, menu's and the HUD are presented in more of a Sci-Fi style. This, I think, is a major mistake, since the game is suppose to take place in the time of the crusades, a Sci-Fi style display doesn't do anything to help you loose yourself in the streets of Jerusalem. If the game makers wanted to remind the player that this was all just a memory being relived, why not just have more subtle reminders, things that specifically had to do with Desmond in the Animus? Why not have Altair look at a paper map? Ubisoft kept going on about how you'll lose yourself in the game, but it's hard to do that when your life meter looks like it should be on the controls of Luke Skywalker's X-Wing.
Combat was boring. It's really just a case of getting your timing right to block a blow or swing your sword at someone. It was visually really cool to watch limbs getting chopped off, but the lack of any real involvement in the fight means it never really feels satisfying. You rarely come away from a fight thinking you're a kick ass cool assassin, except maybe the first time. Games like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid work under the premise of 'stay quiet and stay hidden', but even they know when there's a time for stealth and a time for full on action, and it made that action engaging and dramatic. Something you tried to avoid, but still enjoyed when it happened.
Altair moves around these cities by Free Running. This is very visually entertaining, and allows for a bit of showing off for next generation consoles. Things have moved on a lot since Lara Croft had to line up her jumps back in 1996. Now we have characters leaping gracefully from rooftop to rooftop and climbing up the side as of buildings, and doing it all as if it were a dance. It really is amazing to watch as no building is an obstacle, rather a tool to get you from point A to point B. What's my problem with it? It's as dull as the combat. All you do is hold down a button, aim the analogue stick in the general direction you want to go, then sit back an watch. Like the combat, it's so hands off it doesn't really feel like you're doing it.
The actual assassinations are a joke. The idea with this social stealth thing is that you could walk right by someone and they wouldn't look twice at you. Then why can I not get near my target without every guard in the area going insane? The game forces me to take a stealthy approach. But get this – no matter how quietly you take down your target an ALARM will start blaring and you have to get away from your enemies. Why? Why can I slice a generic person down without anyone realising till I'm long gone but I cant quietly kill my target then walk away into a crowd before the guards realise what's happened? What kind of a stealth game doesn't reward you for taking the quiet option? What kind of a stealth game kicks you in the metaphorical balls when you do EXACTLY WHAT THE GAME REQUIRES YOU TO DO? What I ended up doing was - as soon as I got the dull, crappy, boring, info-gathering out of the way - I ran up to my target, pulled my sword out and just hacked and slashed. Then I ran my ass away as fast as I could away from danger. Stealthy! In Assassins Creed, the missions are repetitive, the combat is boring and the assassinations are a joke. There's a sequel in the works, but do you know something? Unless Ubisoft deal with some of the major issues that I – and many others – had with this first game, they can forget about me caring about their sequel