Assassin's Creed is the type of game where you'll watch its trailer and wonder to yourself "this game looks so awesome, how could I not enjoy this? I'd have fun just jumping on roof tops and walk around enjoying the visually orgasmic environment." Well stay true to that sentiment because that's what may keep Assassin's Creed fun for you.
AC follows the story of Altair, a mild-mannered assassin working for one of the billion underground organizations in the land of... wherever. When you can't find Altair being an under-developed protagonist, you could probably find him jumping off of rooftops, landing in a small haystack, or possibly X years into the future, where it turns out he is just the memory of some guy that was kidnapped by some other guy. As it turns out, some guy has the DNA of an ancient assassin from the seemingly early AC era. Some guy was kidnapped by a scientist, who tries to force some guy to relive his memories as Altair for..... well I don't really know why but let's be serious, does it really matter? All of this was just some ploy to push this heavy boulder of a story uphill. I'd care a lot more about the development of the story and characters if they, themselves actually gave off some semblance of caring what I give a **** about them.
Honestly though, the game just seems to want to push itself along. Its pacing seems way off. It's almost as if the developers were too busy anking-way off to the gorgeous environments that they lost track of their deadline for the game and just decided to rush the story along just to finish it up. It does seem that they took more time on its overall presentation than they did on the game play. Some of it feels really absurd. For example, the game has an amazing stage design and you will have so much fun simply getting from point A to point B, via jumping off of building. But you can't do that because realism kicks in and the Nazi-esque guards will go on a manhunt and track you down for acting disorderly. Such problems virtually defeats the point of this large, and gorgeous environment and puts that "look but don't touch" rule on things.
Oh and I mentioned something about horrible development earlier, but I feel it's enough of a gripe in this game to touch on some more. The game does not give you time to really feel for the character that you're playing as. You are already a willing member, because Altair looks pretty badass, if I do say so myself (and I just did), but his personality is just so dull and he doesn't really do anything that you wouldn't expect. I'm not going to say that what he does is predictable, let's just leave it as - you won't be surprised by his actions. Oh and I forgot to mention that the main objective of the game is to find and assassinate 9 a-holes. All I really didn't have much of a reason to assassinate, besides the game telling me to do so. You don't get to really have time to hate them, because as soon as you see them, they're pretty much dead. Perhaps I'd feel a lot more like killing them had the developers included more cut scenes of them kicky little puppies or calling MGS4 boring.
Overall, this hasn't been the best first impression of a video-game. I've only killed a few of the main targets and I'm trying desperately to watch and understand every part of the story, but it all feels worthless. The entire game feels like it took steps in the wrong direction, one too many times. Its game play can feel like a contradiction at times, sending you off on a long journey to the other side of the world, all while forcing you to follow a 5 miles p/ hour speed limit. I am very optimistic though, and I know right here that I'll give it at least a 8/10 but for a game that looks so amazing, it's leaving more to be desired than I desire.
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