A contradicting masterpiece where atmosphere wins over gameplay for one simple reason: It's unique.
Assassin's Creed had been one of the most anticipated games of 2007-2009. It offered unique approaches in virtually everything: Gameplay, setting, story. The hype was overwhelming, and when it finally reached the shelves many critics bombarded the game with negative reviews mostly based on the repetitiveness of the gameplay and the lack of motivation in the game. Many others, on the contrary, praised the magical atmosphere and a clever story, naming it one of the biggest steps in the genre. Without a doubt, Assassin's Creed has been one of the most contradicting products to come out lately, and it's also obvious that all of the critics and positive reviewers mentioned above were right in their own ways. Right now I'll try to combine their little objectiveness with mine and finally classify this interesting game.
The story. 2012, we are Desmond Miles, a descendant of an ancient brotherhood of Assassins, currently a boring bartender. At the beginning of the game Desmond is captured by a mysterious company, Abstergo, and is held in a laboratory to undergo a top-secret experiment involving the Animus, a powerful machine that can render genetic memories in 3D. The only two scientists Desmond meets are a professor who leads the program and his assistant, Lucy. They will eventually strap Desmond in the machine and promise him freedom by the end of the experiment. From the beginning it is clear that Abstergo is looking something in the assassin's memories, and with little breaks Desmond has to witness a long mission of a medieval Assassin named Altair(Flying Eagle from Arabic). It is from his perspective that we see the most of the game. The "sci-fi aspect" of the story in intriguing, but you soon realize that it's shallow and apart from a minor plot twist at the end, plain boring.
Now the medieval(1189-1191 to be more exact) part is clearly more interesting. Altair, an assassin of high status, fails a critical mission in obtaining a mysterious artifact in Jerusalem. The reason for his failure are the Templars, and their leader, Robert De'Sable, who are also after the treasure. Returning at Masyaf with his tail between his legs, Altair is stripped of his rank and soon after deflecting a major attack on his stronghold from the Templars, is declared a traitor and a violator of all of the Assassins tenants. He is, however, given a second chance. His master, Al-Mualim, sends him on a peacemaking mission, which involved assassinating 9 leaders of both the Crusaders as well as the Saracens. By slowly progressing through his mission, Altair understands that the men he kills believe in their cause too greatly to mean any harm. There are constant contradictions in his character, but before he gets to a logical conclusion a major twist happens, and that;s as much as I can go without spoiling anything.
Now clearly the two aspects of the story are very different, and the constant jumping between these two phases are what makes the story not boring, but quite irritating. There are also major mistakes in history. The leader of the Assassins at the given time was a Sinan, a man who did not support Christianity(Which is what the assassins are according to the game). Robert De'Sable also was a mysterious person, no one knows if he even was a Templar for sure. But, even with all these flaws, the story magically explains the existence of Templars, Assassins, Religions and the world order at that time. It is a very clever idea, but is told badly, so it is easy to overlook.
All in all, the story is decent and great for a videogame, providing we look lightheartedly at the sci-fi aspect and appreciate the labor put in the medieval part.
The most contradicting element, however, is clearly the gameplay. Now, I don't talk about wandering in labs and stealing computer passwords, the sci-fi moments are story-driven and provide little gameplay experience. It's the medieval part that's interesting. First, let's see what were we promised: Vast, open cities, realistic crowd, building scaling and interesting assassinations. We got about half of that.
We have basically 5 major areas to traverse: Masyaf, Acre, Damascus, Jerusalem, and the land that connects them, simply called Kingdom. There's also a scripted trip to Arsuf, but it's nothing great. The cities themselves are quite big, and offer quite some freedom.
Now, as an assassin, Altair is very acrobatic, and nailing his parkour moves will be the first thing you'll need to do. The controls are simplified to the bone: we have a button that literally changes our stance, from aggressive to neutral. The latter makes the hero walk casually, carefully push citizens out of the way and act normally, without attracting attention. As soon as you trigger the aggressive stance though, all of the buttons change their meaning for the sake of confrontations: You can run, sprint, haul people out of the way on the run, and so on. Basically it's all that's needed to alert the guards, and if you bump into one, the fun starts.
The combat is another contradicting part of the game. It sounds realistic, but looks funny as hell: 15 guards surround Altair, and carefully attack one by one. Altair, on the other hand, dances like a hurricane amongst them, performing some of the most brutal countermoves. When you get bored from the damp mechanic, you can run away. Just for fun. Because you can ALWAYS fight your way to freedom, and almost always without much of a sweat. But running is what makes this game worth of my score.
Autodesk's HumanIK technology, which Ubisoft has managed to implement here, works perfectly. Scaling buildings, for instance, is as realistic as ever, with Altair grabbing on every architectural detail with utmost precision. It is as easy as it sounds, with directional controls controlling, well, the direction of your ascend/descend, and a few more buttons to release a ledge or jump to another one.
Now I'll talk about something that was clearly the reason for the game's downfall for critics. The side-missions. They are basically mini-quests for gathering information about your assassination target. There are 5 of them to complete for each killing, but 3 are enough to get over with it. Because they really are boring. The funniest elements are the reasons of the missions. "Altair, I'm scared ****less, could you kill a few guards for me?","Altair, I've hidden a few flags around here, collect them if you can in 3 minutes!","Altair, I gave your information to another informant who will magically disappear from the middle of the city in two and a half minutes, so hurry!" - Of course I added some necessary words, but basically that's the structure. Apart from being silly, they really are repetitive(You'll basically have to complete each of those 9 times through the game), and four additional types don't help the case at all.
There also are optional missions, like rescuing citizens who then send their brothers to break up pursuits for you or call monks with whom you can blend and pass in guarded areas. The major assassinations are quite diverse, but most of the time it comes down to getting to one person without attracting attention, but it you did, to hell with it, the dumb AI's not a problem anyway. There's even a universal formula to escape foes in the Kingdom: Find a horse, and gallop the hell out of there. Because, reason unknown, the legendary Templars, Saracens and Crusaders don't even know what a horse is, or how to ride it.
I would also like to criticize the much acclaimed crowd system. The crowd is NOT realistic in my opinion, not only of similar replics and unnatural behavior, but because there really isn't a system to "blend in" with them. The guards don't give a damn if you're in the middle of a crowded street or on a rooftop. If they see you, they'll get you. Eventually.
Now to sum things up. The gameplay clearly lacks variety and motivation, free running can never become interesting enough to be the pushing force of a game from beginning to the end. We need more interesting situations. We need more ideas for Horse riding apart from just traveling. We need more variety in the gameplay as a whole, additional missions are not the key, they only underline the negative features. We can go on forever. Regardless, rating the gaming process here is almost impossible. Some people play it because of historical interests, others for benchmarking, while most of them just for fun. As always. But those elements are too contradicting here for the people mentioned above to make similar ratings. That, I believe, was the reason for the drama regarding Assassin's Creed. The gameplay here, is opinion-based.
And now, meet the savior of the game, the presentation. The amazingly detailed cities, copied from their realistic counterparts to the millimeter, jaw-dropping architecture of the middle ages, beautiful artistic design. Every city even has it's own atmosphere charged with a different color gamma. The graphics are very good, showing unprecedented detail on big distances, the animations are one of the best in the business, with Altair alone having 700 different scripted moves, and about the same number of possibilites at scaling thanks to HumanIK. Even the horse's animations indicate that Ubisoft had the poor animal strapped in a mocap(Motion Capture) suit to make them. All of these elements combine in an atmosphere so strong, that sometimes you fall head-in into the game, accepting all of it's flaws and repetitiveness for the sake of the visuals. Anvil Scimitar, the game engine, is optimized perfectly, showing the cities, streets, and nature in all of their glory, without even a hint to a framerate drop.
The same goes for sound design, which also works for the atmosphere. As mentioned above, many replicas from citizens are the same, but the voices constantly differ. Ambient and background sounds are astonishing, capturing blurry voices of citizens arguing at markets, birds flapping their wings nearby, merchants calling in customers. The actors did their job magnificently, mimicking the distinctive pronunciation. The score mesmerizes, and is also unique to each city.
Assassin's Creed came off as a living example of a game which can be great with mediocre gameplay, but with everything else working for atmosphere and immersion. Bringing in a little more subjectiveness, I think it's worth all of those missions just to live in the unique world of the 1190-s, offered by Assassin's Creed. Now, look at the score, and try to say that you don't understand me.
P.S. I'm not sure if the review came out as long as the one I wrote for Fallout 3, but I apologize anyway, and again repeat that my text compression skills are poor. Hope you enjoyed the read anyway!