A tech demo with a great concept artist is probably the nicest thing I have to say about this non-game.
While Assassin's delivers the free-running experience that we were all hoping for, the gameplay is simply too monotonous for my tastes. Once you've climbed one building you've climbed them all. Holding down a button and pushing up on the stick doesn't really provide much of a challenge. None of the brilliant game-play we've previously seen from this studio seem to have been brought to this title.
The storyline is poorly presented with sparsely populated cut-scenes giving the feeling that the story line was bolted in at the last minute.
The one redeeming feature of Altaire's romp in "haystack land" is the astonishingly cinematic combat system. This glimmer of hope in an otherwise bland offering leaves me with a warm fuzzy feeling. After all, these are the same people that are working on Prince of Persia 4. Hopefully some of this wonderfully conceived element of A.C will make it through with them.
I just hope this game makes other developers realise that no matter how much eye-candy you put into a title, no matter how non-linear you try to make a game, if you don't keep the player stimulated they will evetually switch off or worse yet give it a bad review.
Sorry Ms Raymond, this one just didn't cut the mustard I'm giving it a 6.0 based solely on the combat system and the tasty graphics (yum).