Assassin's Creed is an awesome game it's just sad the fun only lasts so long.
Well the story kicks right off blowing one of the biggest secrets in the game. You start the game off sort of as Altair an elite assassin. But not really as a scifi twist you are Desmund Miles, some guy that is looking back in time to help a medical company take over the world because he got teh kidnapped. You've been careless on one of your missions and get demoted. You get a bit of "Metroid" syndrome out of Assassin's Creed as your weapons are taken away and you have to obtain them once again. Weapons and stuff is alright to take away, but please explain this to me. How can you take away my ability to counter attack. WTF? Do the Assassin's have the ability to take away knowledge from you? Anyway speaking about combat, the combat is okay when you get near the end (sort of). But in the beginning it's really frustrating try to hit these combos where you have to hit the buttons right on as your sword hits. Sure it seems simple in concept, but when you are fighting with 7 guards surrounding Altair, the last thing you want to try and do is try and hit oddly timed hits to kill enemies. In fact once you get counter attack there's no point in being aggressive and changing your attack pattern. Literally all you have to do is sit there holding the block button and wait as one by one every guard attacks you. Then you counter and it's almost always an instant kill. Even if the enemy isn't killed, the foe is knocked on the ground (basically helpless) as you swing at him with your sword to kill him in 2 swings. The game does a nice job with the tutorials and help you (try) to master the combat system which you can go back and replay if you ever want to master those annoying combo kills. Anyway enough whining about the annoying part of the game and lets talk about the fun part of the game which there is plenty of.
The game for the most part is FUN. Don't get me wrong by my previous paragraph this game is by no means a bad game, it's just the combat is to me flawed. The bulk of the game isn't fighting though (until the end) but rather running around on rooftops and assassinating evil guards and men. This is FUN. The controls in Assassin's Creed are pretty well done for the most part. The game introduces a "puppeteer" control system where you can control the head with Y (this allows you into a first person mode which you can use to see guards, assassination targets, and other useful folks), the hands with X and B (X is for assassinating folks and combat and B is for tackling and grabbing folks), and A is for feets (blending and sprinting). The game also feature two modes. One mode is stealthy Altair where you can blend in with crowds and walk past guards without them whining. Fast Altair can run up buildings and sprint and do things that piss guards off. The controls for this are pretty well thought out and with exceptions are good. You don't have hit A every time you want to jump. You just hold R and you can free step to wherever you need to go. However climbing a bunch of boxes and trying to do this can be annoying and I've had some errors where I couldn't climb somewhere I was supposed to be able to get too. It's not too bad because usually there is another way to get up there. But when I have a bunch of crusaders throwing stones at the back of my head I found it to be quite annoying. Speaking about crusaders trying to do ungodly things to you one of the funnest things to do is escaping from guards. Having a high speed chase on a rooftop is something never stops being fun in Assassin's Creed. In order to escape guards there are 3 ways. One is to kill them all and then you return to your regular anonymous self. Two is finding some place to hide once you get out of the guards sight (which is shown near your health) which is probably the funnest way to end the fight even if it's the hardest. The third (and annoyingest) is to leave the city. Although this is really not fun to try to get back into the city once you leave you have to go back on your horse and reenter the city...which is really really really annoying. In order to piss off the guards enough to chase you there are a couple of ways. One is pretty
obvious and that would be using any violence with weapons. They don't care about fist fights apparently. However it is extremely annoying trying not to kill some people. You get these drunks that run up and push you and they always do it at the worst of places. Like near water (which Altair is an elite assassin that trains in every single thing...but can't swim lmao). Or near a bunch of pissed off guards looking for any trouble. Then I stab the guy with my blade (and lose like half my health b/c you aren't supposed to kill innocents...innocent my ass when he tried to drown me like 40 times) and all of the guards run up and start stabbing me. What the hell. Another way to piss off guards is moving really fast. Now on foot I can totally understand when there are a **** of people and some dudes running insanely fast knocking people down...and then getting shot. But when you are on a **** horse the point is to move fast. But if you go any faster than a snails pace around guards on a horse they'll cut your horses legs and then maul you. WTF? So eventually I said **** it and just galloped as fast as possible to every city out running all the guards. There are other minor things you can do like punching beggars (fun) and causing jar carriers to drop their jars...and popping them in the face when they **** about it.
I'll talk a bit about how each mission basically starts out with. You sit in a room listening to your master which is unskipable. You then go down talk to the weapons dude to master any new (technically old) moves you have learned. Then you go down into the assassin's town and run down the mountain. Every time. Although this can be fun if you look for the hidden flags every time you go down...or kill your own guards...love doing that. Then you get on a horse and ride down into the crossroads. From there you look on your map and ride toward whatever town you have to go too. After trotting down to the town (you have too otherwise the guards think it's too suspicious that you are riding a horse and you are faster then them...jealous pricks) you have to then enter the city because for whatever reason they have a line of armed guards not letting anyone in or out of the city (wtf?). There are a couple ways I found to do this. One just going above there heads and then pointing and laughing as you land behind them. Two is killing them (my favorite since they are complete dicks). Three is getting some hippies...I mean scholars to let you in. Four is to kill some random smuck and when the guards go to investigate walk in while they are gone. All work pretty well. After all that and you still haven't gotten your mission. Then you have to climb one of the many view points in the city and look to update your map. I have a bit of a bone to pick with view points, almost all of them are the **** same! I mean which one was your favorite one to climb, the fort, the church, the spire thing, or regular tower. Granted there are a couple of unique ones like a lighthouse but there are 91 of the things! How many times do you want to climb the same tower? It even wouldn't be so bad if they changed the design of the building at least but seriously every spire tower looks the same with the same tiles in the same place. What the hell. Anyway afterwards you can take a leap of faith (one of the coolest things in Assassin's Creed) where you jump of the building and land in some hay. Apparently the middle east has a **** of hay too because there are haycarts around every corner (not that I'm complaining when I can do kick ass leaps of fate). After all of that you go up into the Assassin's Bureau and talk to the guy with another unskippable cutscene. I wouldn't mind it so much if they weren't so long and if I could skip them after watching them once like in Conker. But no of course not. Anyway after that you go around town looking for any leads on your target and there are a number of ways to do so. For one you can eavesdrop on a person which is basically sitting in a bench listening to some **** talking (by far the easiest task). For two you can pickpocket information from some **** (also easy). For three you can interrogate some **** and put your fist to their face but with the combat system it makes it sort of annoying. For four you can talk to one of your **** assassin friends and they send you around town collecting flags and killing guards. These tasks repeat themselves throughout the whole game and they never get old as long as you just don't always do eavesdrop and pickpocketing all the time (wussies =P). After getting enough information you can then get to the fun **** part of the game. You then from the Bureau go to the targets area. Now depending on the situation you can choose how to get into the area which is also fun. Instead of getting stabby I actually enjoyed sneaking on the rooftops and dropping into the area. You then go into another unskippable cutscene but that's fine because at least in these cutscenes someone almost always dies (or gets their legs broken =D). After that you have to sneak past the guards and assassinate your victim which is always fun as hell. After they die you get another long unskippable cutscene that is boring again cause there is no more stabbing. Something I didn't get while I was watching this is why while the **** were blabbing on about their life story a guard didn't come up behind me and stab me in my back. But anyway after that cutscene you have to make a getaway from the guards by either killing them or by escaping. After having fun with that you go back to the Bureau hiding from every guard you pass and then guess what? You go through another long and unskippable **** cutscene. Damnit. I want to talk briefly about some of the glitches and the AI in this game. There are some glitches in the game. They aren't nessassarily as bad as Mass Effect but there are definitely some annoying ones. Like I mentioned before there are occasionally points where I should be able to climb to but can't and have to find other ways around or drop down. Also there are some glitches with the bonus missions. For example I killed a Templar (I'll talk about bonus missions in the next paragraph so skip down a bit if you want to look) and for whatever reason it didn't count it and I double checked it. That's bull. I was 37 templars in and now I have to start a new game to get that one because of a glitch. That also happened to me with a flag. I was a 100% sure I grabbed all the flags in the Hospital district. I went on youtube and gamespot and all that **** **** I even bought the $20 strategy guide for the game but I still couldn't find the flag. I'm pretty sure it was a glitch that caused it seeing as I wasted 5 hours searching for the damn thing. Anyway I'm sure these glitches will be patched soon (or lets just say I'll be paying Ubisoft a visit) and the issue will be resolved. The AI can be horribly, horribly retarded at times. Seriously. I can walk up behind some guard. Then stand there in blend right on top of the dead body, a guard will run up and shout "WHO DID THIS!" then I will just walk up behind him and stab him in the back until I kill all of the guards. It's retarded. Then when you are in combat they will completely surround you with 12 to 1 and then take turns attacking me. At which point I laugh and counterattack them. But when I attack someone they go oh hell no! They grow some balls and attack me in the back. WTF? So apparently it's less frightening to attack someone attacking another person with a sword then a guy holding still. W/e.
There are also a couple of bonus tasks you can undertake for achievements and for aiding yourself. One of the bonus tasks that is probably the most benifcial is helping random people that are getting mauled by thugs. Most of the time this means combat unless if you have throwing knives (AKA instant kill). Once you save the sad ****s they either gather scholars (a moving cover through guards or a hiding spot) or vigilantes (they hold guards). Both are useful but I'd recommend saving the scholar ones if you feel like a minimalist. You can also go around going on the viewpoints which are useful seeing missions and save civilians. Again they repeat each other a lot so get used to climbing the same spire over and over. You also can go on a templar killing spree which will net you a 40 point achievement. Other than that there isn't too much reason to do so and there is a glitch I experienced where I killed a templar and it didn't count. Finally if you are extremely bored you can find all of the flags. There are 20 in the assassin's city and 100 in every city and in the kingdom. Again unless if you really want the 1,000/1,000 I wouldn't waste too much time with them even with a guide.
Overall the game is pretty easy and you shouldn't have any trouble difficulty wise...until the end. In the end they took everything that made the game sweet and sort of threw it down the toilet...then threw a pipebomb in the pipe...and then feed the leftovers to my dog. Seriously. All of the last part of the game is combat. Which normally wouldn't be so bad if there weren't **** archers around shooting you in the back while I'm trying to fight some chick and her 60 troops. Overkill much.
Graphics:
I'm usually not one to judge a game based of it's graphics...and I'm still not. But I will say the graphics in this game are amazing. The cities look rich and nice. Hell even my friend who said Halo looked like **** was amazed by the detail in this game. You don't have too much of a problem with everyone looking too alike and the models are sweet. Hell even repetitive as **** view points looked sweet...even after the 43rd time climbing the damn thing. Where you can see the beauty the most is on top of the view points. Then the eagle jump afterwards is sweet. Again I'm not much to dwell too much on the graphic so I won't touch too much into it but you have to see the game to believe it.
Sound:
The music is decent in the game. However the beggars are annoying as all hell. If they meant for it to be that way then good job...cause it worked and made me throw every beggar I saw into a river. The sound in the cutscenes is good I sort of wish they had subtitles as an option though because I hate trying to hear them when I'm playing at night and my families asleep. It's annoying.
Achievements:
The achievements for the most part are simple enough in concept. Kill 50 guys by killing them with combo attacks, throwing knives, and counterattacks. Then there's the completing the bonus missions thing like saving all the civilians, killing all the templars, climbing all the viewpoints, and finding all the flags. 2 things, one finding the flags is annoying and 2 the glitches make this annoying to do without venting your frustration and destroying the TV (at least for me). Then there are the story ones. Then are the fun achievements like run away from guards for 10 minutes straight and take on 25 guys at once. For a complete list check out on of the stickies in the Assassin's Creed forum.
Playability and Replayability:
The game is definitely playable and fun. As I've proved in the like 3 page summary before this. The only frustrating thing is the combat, all the missions to get to the killing, and some minor glitches. The running around and stuff great and works pretty well. How much enjoyment you get out of the game is up to you. You could easily blow thorough Assassin's Creed in like 6 or 7 hours but that wouldn't be FUN. You have to sit down and enjoy running thourough the city doing random **** or you aren't going to have FUN which is what I feel a lot of reviews did when they were reviewing the game...*cough* IGN *cough*. If you go throughout the game choosing all of the brainless tasks you aren't going to have fun. And if you don't read everything that you can as far as extras in the story you aren't going to understand the ending (although I still don't understand a part of it to be fair).
As far as how much you can replay the game is up to the player. If you want to go around looking for flags and hidden **** your in for replay mania! If you aren't you might want to replay it a couple of times to see storyline stuff that you might have missed or kill more people. However there's no denying that Assassin's Creed will probably have an expiration date on your console.
FINAL REVIEW:
Story: 8 b/c of the ending and unskippable cutscenes
Gameplay: 8.5 combat is bearable but annoying and there some minor glitches
Graphics: 9.5 **** amazing
Sound: 8.5 beggars are t3h annoying
Replayabillty: 7.8 there's nothing too much to go back for besides extra flags and templars
Achievements: 9 there are some pretty fun ones tho go for.
Overall: 8.5
The Good: Awesome gameplay as far as platforming goes. Fun assassinations. Beautiful graphics. Just a very creative game that is nice to see as apposed to all the FPSs.
The Bad: Unskippable cutscenes that I have to watch even after I beat the game. Repetitive viewpoints and sometimes investigation missions. Combat sucks except countering system which make Altair a god.
WTF: Crawled up IGN's butt and died?
Other last words:
I just have to say seriously. IGN considers this one of the top 5 disappointing games? I can give them 5.
Vampire Rain
Splinter Cell Double Agent
Shadowrun
Hour of Victory
Halo 3 (as far as disappointments)
IGN needs to chill.