The most awe-inspiring game of the year is hindered by repetitive tasks and an undeveloped character, but still delivers
As always I will at first go with the good.
The environments are lush and beautiful, quite possibly offering the best visuals in a game to date. Altair moves more realistically than I would have thought possible, and you wouldn't believe how much this makes the game feel alive.
Free-running: The best game concept ever. I would not have thought any game would be able to pull this off well, but Assassin's Creed does just that. Nothing is quite as pleasing as making a grand escape after an assassination, while your opponents fall short (well sometimes...but we'll touch on that later).
Combat...just wow. This is how it should be done. No tricky combo memorizations, just push this, then that and BAAM! The variety in attacks is fantastic, and always flashy yet somehow believable. If you get good enough, you will literally be able to stand there and take down anyone that attacks you. Very pleasing.
Voice acting is pretty steady. Nothing too bad, but then again no gripping performances either.
The story line is....interesting. It is reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid 2, in that at the end you'll kind of scratch your head and go "...really? It went that direction, huh? Hmm..." At least that's how I ended up.
And now...the bad.
Those amazing chase scenes I told you about? Well for some reason, ordinary guards can actually at times keep up with you as you leap from rooftop to rooftop, and if you watch them from a hiding space, you will see they run on the same character motions as Altair, jumping gracefully from place to place without much issue. This seems kind of odd in that Altair is supposed to be a top notch assassin, and yet your every day town guard can more or less follow you place to place. Bugged me a little.
The missions. Fun the first time...horrible after about 4 hours of doing them over and over and over. You will never once see an original mission outside of the assassination. They are always the same. The only reward is reading the backstory provided through these little jobs. Hopefully this will be fixed in the sequel. Sometimes the missions seem to have no bearing at all, such as meeting a fellow assassin who has "dropped flags all over" and now you have to get them in 2 minutes so he will tell you things......why!? Why would that be pertinent?
The unbelievable stealth system. And I don't mean this as it's "unbelievably good"...it's just more like "Yeah right!" For instance, in later missions merely bowing your head as if in prayer would help you avoid suspicion...yet you have throwing daggers on your back, a large knife and a sword, all in plain view...and no other townspeople have any of these. And yet, I'm expected to believe that they can't recognize me as an assassin because 4 guys in white are standing around me? 'Eh...I'm not buying it.
Along those lines are the hiding mechanics. You have a few options: hide in a roof garden (which anyone with an IQ above 8 would check almost immediately), sit on a bench next to some random people (..you're a guy with a sword sitting on a bench...c'mon), hide among scholars (already talked about that), and then you can hide in hay stacks (only believable option). If you want me to believe he is some social stealth guy, he should be changing his outfit a whole lot.
And then there are the assassinations. Fun and amazing...until you pull them off. First off, there is usually a 3-5 minute dialogue with the guy you just killed. He explains his motives..then dies. Okay...so why is nobody stabbing you as you sit there talking to a guy you just stabbed in the throat?
And then there is the fact that every assassination ends the same: run away! You'd think he'd find a way to kill him and get away before anyone noticed...say by using his throwing daggers or a crossbow or something. Sensible? Apparently not.
And then there is the "open world" where you are between towns.....absolutely without reason. One minute you're riding, the next minute someone is screaming at you and shooting arrows at you because you were riding your horse too fast. I have played this game 3 times now and found no way to avoid arousing suspicion.
Also, we find ourselves being nostalgic of sega-days when you try to escape by jumping in the water....and you die. Apparently, Assassin's don't swim.
Overall this game is great. It does not have much replay value, but it is highly entertaining and the story is actually quite good. The characters could really have used some fleshing out, but we'll just have to see what happens next time around!