Age rating:
16+ (PEGI)
What is it?
A 12th Century Grand Theft Auto, but with horses and parkour
Is it fun?
Yes.
Is it worth the money? £39.99
Yes.
Why?
Just for the sheer enjoyment of being totally submersed in a beautifully realised game world. This really is a game that you can play for hours and hours without really noticing. It’s quite easy to spend an entire day leaping around the rooftops, collecting flags (for gamer points on the 360) and killing guards. The whole thing is so much fun. Your character, Altaïr, has a wonderful array of moves at his disposal which allow you to climb and leap over pretty much anything. This is the main attraction of the game and provides many, many hours of climbing fun. Also as Altaïr gains more skills you really feel him develop into an incredibly lethal assassin. This coupled with a simple control method (with quite a bit of help from the game) results in some spectacular looking kills and moves.
However, it seems the effort of creating this beautiful environment has resulted in Ubisoft skimping on the game play. It all seems so fantastic at the start. You initially travel to a lovely looking city (by horse) and complete some or all of the following tasks:
- Climb all the viewpoints
- Save the citizens
- Eavesdrop on a conversation or two
- Pickpocket someone
- Collect a set number of flags within a time limit
- Kill 3-5 targets within a time limit
- Kill your main assassination target
And that’s it. Repeat about 11 times (4 cities x 3 main targets to assassinate) and then some battles at the end. Surprisingly, I didn’t find the crushing repetitiveness of the game play annoying at all. In fact, it was all quite relaxing. You don’t have to think about what to do next, you just know what to do. This means you can sit back, enjoy the scenery and get on with the killing. Oh, apart from the unbelievably annoying voice artists they hired for the beggar women. Grrr, after you’ve heard them beg for the 10,000th time it really does grate.
Also you can’t skip any of the dialogue in the game, and believe me there is A LOT OF DIALOGUE. It’s so bad that I used the talky-talky bits as bathroom/food/phone a mate breaks. What’s worse is that everyone’s an asshole. They are all thoroughly unpleasant people, even your character. I didn’t feel the slightest bit of empathy, or desire to help him in anyway.
Another gripe, is the totally unnecessary scenes set in the present day. You see, you are actually playing a game in a game. Not only is this silly and pointless, but you can’t do anything other than walk around 1 room and sleep in your bed. Why? I fail to see what this adds to the game other than to annoying you even more. Oh, yeah, everyone’s an asshole in the present day too.
And finally, it’s a next-gen game without a single quick time event (QTE). Oh, the joy!
In summary: A good game (even with its many flaws) that could have been an amazing game had the developers spent more time on the game play.
Screenshots:
Assassins Creed is available now on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in March 08 with Assassins Creed – Altaïr’s Chronicles coming to the DS in Feb 08.
February 9th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Interesting that the game has no ‘nice guys’. I know Kane and Lynch is just the same… But obviously a far worse game.
February 10th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Yeah, I felt that the dialogue worked against the game as a whole. I don’t know what they were thinking when they wrote it.
I’ve only briefly played the Kane and Lynch demo, before I could take no more. Boring and rubbish. So I can’t really comment on the similarities between the 2 games.
February 15th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
The reason for the Assassin’s Creed modern day segments is of course for the inevitable sequel and the game after that – it’s going to be a trilogy don’t you know!
February 16th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
what do u get for collecting all the flags
February 16th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Matt – You just get achievements (gamerpoints)
May 25th, 2008 at 9:43 am
I’ve seen some mixed reviews of this Assassin’s Creed – some people say that there’s very little actual gameplay and things to do in the game, would you say it’s a good tech demo that’s been given some playable sections?
May 25th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
@Zath
Yeah, it is fantastic technical achievement, even if the all the cites look very similar graphically. Enjoying the environment is pretty much what kept me playing till the end rather tan the basic gameplay.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Hey, love the site, but I’m afraid I love this game even more.
It’s true that there is too much dialogue, and it’s true that it’s much more fun to run around stabbing people (it sounds violent but just you wait till you get the game) or jumping into rivers but it’s a brilliant game non the less.
I’ve never been very good at the “missions” but I really enjoyed all the sort of side games like collecting the flags or killing the Templars.
So to sum up… This is an Awesome game even if I am rubbish at it.