"Nothing is true, everything is permitted" in this masterfully crafted game.
So let's start with this mysterious story. What so special about it that Ubisoft kept it in secret for such a long time? Well, it's really hard to tell without spoiling the whole plot but as you might already know it's not exactly a medieval-based game. There are sort of two timelines, one of them is actually medieval but the other presents modern times or rather very modern cause it takes places several years ahead at the end of (in)famous year of 2012. There's not a word about the end of the world this time but you can tell that something big is going to happen in just a few days. You play as Desmond Miles, a young guy captured and imprisoned in a scientific facility for at first unknown purpose. Soon you find out about animus project which allows to recover memories of Desmond's ancestors from his genetic code. And unfortunately it happened that Desmond's ancestor was a guy named Altair who was a medieval assassin fighting with a group of people craving world domination. It gets far more complicated than this but like I said, it's better you reveal all the secrets and twists of it by yourself (well, obviously). The game ends in a confusing way but in a good meaning of the word leaving the player hungry for the sequel. And yes, I can't wait!
The story is absolutely great featuring interesting characters with pretty solid voice acting.
But even the greatest story wouldn't be of any good without some awesome gameplay. And, oh dear "Assassins's Creed" has loads of it. I already mentioned free-running which is both easy and fun. There's more challenge seeking the right path to escape your pursuers than to actually execute climbing, jumping, running through the crowd etc. You don't need to think which buttons to tap in what moment to do this or that. You just pull the right trigger and occasionally hit A button and that's just about it.
Parkour is one thing but there's of course much more to do in "Assassin's Creed". Every missions has three stages, research, assassination, escape. In preparations you need to collect some info about your target and you can do it by eavesdropping, interrogating people, pickpocketing or acquiring info from the informers. When it comes to assassination, you can do it silently with your hidden blade or just run and hack and slash through the guards to reach your assassination target. Either way, after the killing is done you just need to run like hell, loose the tail and hide till guards stop hunting you. Besides that there are also side missions like helping citizens or you can hunt some templars or search for flags, reach high points and so on. It all adds to some of the variety between the main missions.
Also very important part of the game is combat. It's just as easy as free-running and it's just as fun. With every mission you gain new abilities and equipment so it's not like you've seen all at the beginning of the game.
The audio-visual presentation of the game is very impressive as well. Gorgeous music, detailed sound effects and absolutely beautifully rendered cities will amaze you with its complexity and genuine feeling that they "live".
"Assassin's Creed" is one of the best gaming experiences in the recent memory and is a must play for just about everyone.