Assassin's Creed puts you in the role of Altair, an assassin in the holy land during the third crusade. You travel between the cities of the region assassinating a list of targets for your order. The game has historical figures as your targets and the cities are historically accurate in their layouts. The game world is large and the story begins simply enough but becomes more intricate as the game progresses.
The tale begins as Altair leads a team of assassin's into Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem to retrieve an ancient item. Altair, through his own mistakes loses the item to the templars and the mission is a failure. Altair is demoted as a result and the rest of the game is spent attempting to reedeem your place in the assassin's order. Your mentor gives you a list of powerful individuals in the region to eliminate, and as you do this the story becomes more twisted and interesting. The game tastefully includes historical figures without insulting anyone, including delicately handling the issue of religious conflict which the game touches on. Altair develops as a character as the game progresses. What was a major surprise when the game released was that all the medieval happening's of the game are taking place in a machine called the animus in modern times from a descendant of Altair named Desmond. The conflict which is happening in the background in Altair's tome links directly into Desmond's and this surprise really adds to the story.
Assassin's Creed was an amazing looking game when it released in 2007, and it still looks fantastic graphically. The fidelity and crisp nature of the textures and scenes are outstanding. The lighting is rich and the areas you move through are generally brilliantly designed and all look gorgeous. The character animations and movement are particularly note worthy. Characters, especially Altair, move fluidly and realistically. The characters have a weight as they move, and the running and traversing terrain all looks incredible.
The music of the game is well done, with ambient sounds suitable for the setting and time. It feels like a legitimate representation of the holy land, and the music greatly adds to this without overly intruding into the gameplay. The voice acting is not on the same level of quality. Most of the voices have American accents which sound completely out of place in a game with such a strong historical feel as this. Altair in particular suffers from this. The characters all speak in English, which is a shame as I feel that if they had done it in Arabic and French with subtitles the games atmosphere would have been enhanced.
Gameplay is heavily focused on traversal of buildings and third person melee combat. The free flowing movement and freedom of the game is great for the game play. You can traverse the cities doing side missions and collecting flags as you climb the impressive architecture and enjoy the sights. The problem with playing the game is not the fast flowing combat or free climbing, but the repetition of missions and general linearity of the actual assassinations. You will always have to complete the same 2 or 3 quests before you can carry out an assassination of a target. This gets tiresome over the course of a 12-15 hour game. This is a real shame, as the concept of Assassin's Creed is brilliant and innovative, it just failed to reach its potential in this first title in the series [ this has been remedied in the sequels].
The layout of the cities and the way the game actually runs is all fast and feels right. Nearly all the buildings are climbable and the feeling you get as you move across the structures is just brilliant, and the sheer size of the cities makes this achievement all the more impressive. If only the mission structure of the game had been more interesting and less repetitive the game would have been a complete design masterpiece. I also want to mention that the way some AI characters behave is very strange and annoying, in particular beggars. The beggars have pushed me into guards, and most annoyingly of all pushed me into water which is an INSTANT kill......
Assassin's Creed is a brilliantly presented game with a lengthy campaign and fantastic free gameplay. The combat is excellent and works well, the graphics are fantastic and the atmosphere is engrossing. The problems with the game nearly all arise from the lack of variety and choice in the actual assassinations and main missions, which is a huge disappointment. The game is seriously dragged down by this, as despite its excellent story and premise it can be difficult to play to the ending due to the missions by rote design of the quest. Overall, Assassin's Creed had huge potential which it failed to reach, but is still an excellent game and well worth trying.
Pros:
- Freedom to explore
- Climbing buildings is fun
- Historically accurate cities
- Well woven story with twists
- The graphics are great
Cons:
- Bad and repetitive missions
- Little to no freedom in assassinations in the main quest
- Collectibles are unrewarding
- Voice accents hurt the immersion
- Sometimes the controls can be frustrating
- Enemy AI can be poor
- The fucking beggars.....
Wtf:
- A life-long and deadly assassin cannot swim?
- 6/10