Played it, beat it, don't see what the fuss is about...
This game soars on both sides of good and bad. It does a lot of things right, but does so many little things wrong. I'll start off with the good.
The graphics are beautiful. Everything looks great. The people in the city, while not eventually becomming repetitive, are lifelike. When the combat system works how you want it, it is a great idea. Other than assassinations, i rarely found myself locking onto enemies, and the small sword did not seem much different from the larger one.
The fluid movement system,not unlike the combat, is a blessing and a curse. When it works it makes everything so much smoother. You don't have to press buttons to move everywhere and it often makes it easy to move across the rooftops of the city.
By the end, the story gets a little interesting, but they revealed the sci fi element way too early. It would have been better to pull you out to the present mid way into the game or more towards the end.
Which brings me to the bad. Everything may seem like nit picking, but they were more than enough to make me hate the game on more than one occasion.
The combat:
As I said before, the combat was good...when it worked. There would be times I just stopped blocking attacks. the combat system would often aim me somewhere other than were i pointed the stick and i'd attack the wrong person. This made some assassinations take much longer than the should have and made me die plenty of times.
The camera:
Most of the time the camera is fine. It's nothing new, nothing special, but it would sometimes get stuck on things and leave you blind. Often it was tilted down from a top look, which made it very difficult to manuever the building tops fast or to see enemies,
Movement system:
Like the combat, when it works it's great. It is a very intuitive way to move. When it messed up though, it cause me to die too often to be ignored. Altair would jump different directions than what i aimed at. This affected me most in combat situations but a few times I fell to my death. More than once he decided to jump a different direction and aparently assassins can't swim.
Saving:
The save points are sparse so when the movement system messes up you will be forced to start over again no matter how much you accomplished.
Cutscenes:
Never would i have thought that a game about assassins in the crusades would have such boring dialogue and cutscenes. The actors feel uninspired and bring the momentum of the game down. The fact that they are unskippable and boring makes it even worse, especially when the game f's you over and causes you to die and then forces you to watch the same ug cutscene again and again.
Game itself:
Assassinations are fun. Planning the strike, eliminating guardsmen before hand. Unfortunatly a "recording" begins and you are forced to stand there andwatch the target talk...and miss out on obvious oppertunities to kill him then forced to use a crapfest for the kill.
Gathering the info before the assassination is boring and tedious. You will get spotted for no reason sometimes and be forced to fight off hordes of guards. The game forces you to gain intel again and again. As a matter of fact...the whole game is basically the same exact thing over and over.
My biggest gripe with this game...it froze...often. I know there has been talk about it already and it was supposed to be fixed...but it isn't. This is inexcusable...especially since the game was originally a ps3 exclusive.
SUMMARY:
This game is a definate rental, but doesn't deserve all the hype it's been getting. It excels in some parts like the movement system and fighing, but those are also a big reason it is bad. The game is slightly above average. The minor kinks bring it down and the cut scenes, combined with lame voice acting are boring. The story is alright and it will be interesting to see where they take it in the sequel. The game freezing is inexcusable and definatly hurt the score. As of now, this game feels like a warm up for the real show: Assassins creed 2.