Beautiful Game Held Back By The Lowest Common Denominator
Then the developers formed a committee and threw in the worst pages from Far Cry and Crysis in the form an incredibly tacked on story element. You're "really" a modern day bar keep, kidnapped by atheistic evil scientists bent on using your 12th century assassin's memories to control society in a rational, sensible way; free from religous rivalries and bigotry. Bleep me! Why didn't they just throw in some Trigents or Aliens?
More Silly story elements: Running around the fantastic levels saving one cloned citizen in trouble after another, collecting flags (they apprently couldn't quite bring themselves to put health packs and power ups in). Climbing to the top of WAY TOO many towers for the purpose of "updating" a superfluous GPS map, and finding out where the next cloned citizen in trouble is, group of slow moving "scholars" , or rowdy vigilantes are. And, my personal favorite; the occasional "Templar" standing around ALL by the themselves in odd places; waiting for you to come along and assassinate them (because they're in oppostion to your good guy group of assasins, who're trying to straighten things out in 12th century Palestine). The silliest of these waiting for death to arrive Templars, are the one's who're unbelievably placed in Muslim controlled areas. How about the methamphetamine crazed guards, who can keep up with you on your galloping horse? How about easily beating the snot outta WAY too many opponents (something you'll all to frequently be doing if you rescue more than the minimum number of distressed citizens, walk too close to the guards, or bump too many citizens in a crowd)?
Technical issues: Doesn't play well with many hardware configurations, and IS NOT DX10 friendly. There are a lot of unhappy campers who own AC for PC; because it crashes, burns, and CTDs on far TOO MANY rigs! Yes, those will probably be fixed with a patch or two.............not much consolation to those who own this graphical gem and CAN'T start, load, or play it. Did I mention I'm playing mine in Vista 64 bit with DX10 compliant GFX cards and up to date drivers...............only I HAVE to play it in DX9 because the game blue screeen EVERY time I start it in DX10?
Console Port issues: Think this isn't a console game that's been violently diverted onto the PC. Well you will, after you've played it a bit, and read the SHOCKING bit of advice, on the back of the game box, that your NEW $50.00 PC game plays better with an XBox 360 controller for Windows! WTBleep???? Yes, you can remap the keyboard and mouse commands.................but they're still half hearted attempts at making this a PC game. Imagine you're picking up your new car, and the salesperson tells you the steering wheel, foot pedals, and switches doen't work very well, and too buy a mortorcycle handlebar and controls so you can drive it effectively?
Far too many canned story elements: I frequently get the feeling the Devs really wanted to install a "play" button on this game. So you could press it at the beginning; then go get groceries, or paint the house.
In the end..............the beautiful and inspirational "core" assassin story and level design prevail against the tacked on animus/malignant scientist element, and other designed by twelve year olds, story components. If only......................they'd let the adults on the Dev Team.....................have more of a say.