[8.75/10] Repetitiveness is a small price to pay for this games Beautiful story and Original Free-Run Mechanic.
-- Story -- 100/100 --
Assassin's Creed is set in the year 1191, when "The Third Crusade" occurred within the cities of Jerusalem, Damascus and Acre. The Third Crusade took place between the years 1189 and 1192, and began due to Christians and Muslims fighting to take control of what was known as "The Holy Land". During this era of history, the religion you believed in played a huge role in your lifestyle, from the way you were treated to what your everyday activities would be. The Third Crusade has become a very important event in history due to allowing the English to discover such materials as salt and silk, and also ending feudalism which occurred during the Middle Ages.
-- Visuals -- 100/100 --
The 4 cities and the kingdom in Assassins Creed look superb, with every building carry incredible detail and looking different from the next. The scale of the cities is spectacular, and the view points allow you to see for miles; I wish I had these breathtaking views out of my bedroom window! Last but not least, the new Scimitar Engine that Ubisoft developed allows a huge amount of characters to be on the screen at one time. This feature helps to make the cities feel believable and extremely realistic.
-- Audio -- 90/100 --
A lot of time and effort has been put into the audio in Assassins Creed. The games audio reacts to how you play, and makes you think twice about the decisions you make. This is the first time I have come across a game which uses audio to affect gameplay, and Assassins Creed does this incredibly well.
-- Gameplay -- 80/100 --
The Assassins Creed adventure will take you around 15 hours to complete if you just do the minimum amount required to assassinate your targets. If you decide to complete all tasks, view points, and save all citizens before each assassination, it will take you at least 20 hours to complete the game. Add upon this the daunting feat of collecting all the 400+ flags scattered around the vast world, and you have another 20 hours of gameplay. 40 hours of gameplay is an extremely good amount of gameplay for an action-adventure game. The game is nicely presented to the gamer, with barely any menu system which allows you to quickly get into the game. When you enter the Animus, you can clearly click continue game, or choose a memory block to access if you feel the need to repeat a part of the game. The loading times may become annoying after a while, but there have certainly been worse in other titles.
-- Final Verdict -- 8.5/10 --
Assassins Creed was a highly anticipated title with a huge amount of hype surrounding it for a number of years. Fortunately, I can say that the game lived up to the hype. Stunning visuals and unique gameplay is offered to the gamer, but is slightly let down with a bland combat system and gameplay that can become repetitive after a while. These two disadvantages of the game do not take away from the fact that this game is an epic title.