Assassin's Creed is a historical third-person action-adventure game
which was released late last year for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation
3 to mixed reviews from the general gaming public. The game has finally
made its transition onto desktop PCs with a few additions in the form
of a Director's Cut Edition as well as enhanced graphics to take
advantages of the PCs computing power. However, most of the
less-desirable aspects from the console versions that were responsible
for the negative press end up on this PC version too and they keep
Assassin's Creed from being the classic it should've been.
Arguably the best aspect of Assassin's Creed is the wonderful and
unique world created for you to explore and roam around in. The world
is authentic and precise in its attention to detail and the three major
cities during the crusades – Damascus, Jerusalem and Acre – have been
brought to life in all their glory. Archers patrol rooftops, beggars
annoy you with their constant whining for money and citizens cry for
help at being harassed by guards. The game also gives you complete
freedom to move around these cities in any way you please with the most
impressive aspect being that never does it feel as if the developers
are artificially providing you with cracks and ledges to climb on. The
cracks and ledges are present as part of the architecture of these
various buildings with you being able to take advantage of them because
of your impressive abilities. The game is also very immersive as a
result of the above aspects – citizens will pause and wonder what you
are doing if you don't use ladders to scale rooftops and guards will
draw their blade if you run into soldiers or cause havoc too often.
If the developers show their eye for detail in the world they have
created immaculately, then it is even more evident in the game's story
which is presented in two parts. In the modern world, not many years in
the near future, a bartender named Desmond Miles has been abducted by a
mysterious group proclaiming that he holds precious information
required by them. A tool called the Animus will help the group get hold
of this information which is embedded Desmond's DNA as memories of his
ancestors. In the past, the year is 1191 AD and the game takes place
right in the middle of the crusades for the Holy Land. You are Altair,
a well-trained assassin working as part of a group of… well, assassins.
After a certain mishap, you are stripped of all your weapons and
abilities and reduced to the level of initiate within the brotherhood
and tasked with assassinating certain targets to reclaim your lost rank
and pride by your master. As you proceed with these missions, both the
protagonists will come to understand their part in this gripping story,
and so will you as you will also build up an emotional bond with them.
The core gameplay is pretty involving in the early portions of the game
but becomes quite monotonous later on where you will just want to
complete them in order to get on with the story. The missions typically
require you to perform a series of investigations before you can get on
with the actual assassination itself. Four new investigations have been
added for the PC director's cut apart from the three – pickpocketing,
eavesdropping and interrogating – which were present in the console
versions. These typically involve you helping other assassins with
various tasks such as destroying a set number of merchant stands or
escorting them to safety after which they provide you with the
information you require. Though these new missions keep things from
getting repetitive for a while, they do not involve investigating of
any form (as compared with the original three) and hence feel quite
detached from the rest of the game. Once you complete a set number of
investigations, you can proceed with the assassination which mainly
requires you to focus on combat and free-running.
Combat in the game controls incredibly well with the keyboard and mouse
scheme provided in the game. When the game starts off with you being
stripped of all your weapons and abilities, combat can take a bit of
getting used to. However, as you level up in rank and regain access to
such weapons as the short blade and throwing knives, as well as the
ability to counterattack and dodge, the combat becomes a bit too easy
and the lack of any depth becomes blatantly evident. The counterattack
especially becomes overpowering as it will enable you to tackle huge
numbers of enemies with considerable ease. However, one can argue that
these abilities do keep the combat from ever being too frustrating and
the action portions of the game are always enjoyable as a result.
Free-running is really the forte of Assassin's Creed and is perfectly
implemented thanks to the architecture of the game's various buildings
and Altair's fluid animations. It is also a bit of a relief that
free-running is as good as it is because your general enjoyment of the
game really depends on how much you like this particular aspect as well
as how good you are at it. However, it is not only a gimmick because
whenever you are spotted to be an assassin by the guards, the only way
to get on with things is to become anonymous again by running yourself
and finding safety in one of the many hiding spots available to you
which is easier said than done.
Combat and free-running aside, there are certain other aspects that
help keep Assassin's Creed fresh and unique when compared to other
games out there. Health is shown to be the level of synchronization you
have with your ancestor's memories via the animus. This can reduce due
to a number of different factors and whenever you fully lose
synchronization, you die and have to reload from the most recent
checkpoint. There are also many extra missions that you can look to
complete though they do not provide any bonuses as such. Saving
citizens being harassed by guards provides you with vigilantes who
block guards chasing you or scholars who can be used to hide within.
Climbing viewpoints which are always the tallest buildings within
cities to reveal various parts of the map as well as investigation
missions is a pleasure throughout, although even these begin to repeat
over time. Apart from the above two which are slightly essential to the
game, you can also collect various flags which are strewn all over the
cities and the countryside in-between them and attempt to scale all the
view points in the map and so forth. All these extras combined with
free-running will help keep your attention to the game till the end and
actually compensate for some of the game's other flaws.
Assassin's Creed is raised from good to great thanks to its
presentation. If you have a pretty high-end PC and can crank all the
settings all the way up and have access to higher resolutions, then you
are in for a visual treat. Buildings are crisply detailed with all the
cracks and crevasses showing perfectly. Each city has a unique look
with a visual style to complement even though it is not hard to note
the fact that building architectures do repeat over cities. Character
models are near-perfect and combined with the game's wonderful
animations across the board, really do add to the unique setting the
game takes place in. Lighting and shadowing is also pretty effective
and standing on top of a view point with the sunlight streaming over
Altair casting his shadow on the ground is always a wonderful picture.
There are minor glitches here and there and some of the textures are a
bit weak because of the game's console roots but they aren't major
enough to break the deal. Also, the game is always displayed in 16:9
aspect ratio, so people with 4:3 or 16:10 monitors will see a lot of
letterboxing. It is pretty frustrating that Ubisoft put a lot of effort
into porting it for the PC but still ended up missing this key aspect
which has not been fixed even in the 1.02 patch. However, the game is
pretty stable as of the 1.02 patch and not once did it crash on my
system which cannot be said of console-to-PC ports too often. All said
and done, the highly polished graphics really help in bringing the game
world to life as well providing it with a level of believability with
the only minus being you do require quite a beefed up PC to enjoy the
game in its entire visual splendor.
If the graphics are top-notch, then the sound is even better. Jesper
Kyd has composed some of the best soundtracks of all-time for games
such as Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and Freedom Fighters, so it should
come as no surprise that his music for this game is again brilliant and
nicely complements the subject matter. The music, which is suitably
mellow and subtle when you are running around the city or riding on
horseback in the countryside, becomes quite bombastic during battles
with the usage of heavy percussion to get you pumped up. The sound
probably contributes even more than the visuals to making the world as
immersive as it is. On top the game's largest buildings, the sound of
an eagle will fill your ears along with the smooth gush of the wind and
the citizen's cry will be but a faint moan. But it's the minor details
that really grab one's attention such as the sound of Altair's
footsteps or the sound of the moan he utters when he scales a difficult
ledge or the sounds of citizens shouting in awe at the dead body you
just flung to the ground. The voice-acting is also top-notch for each
of the game's major characters and really does help in getting you
involved in the story right away. Albeit, the voices of citizens do
begin to repeat over time but it is understandable given the number of
citizens that populate these cities. There are stuttering and hitches
in the sound too but there are various workarounds floating around the
web that help in fixing a majority of the issues in the game. However,
these issues are more annoyances than anything else and they do not
bring down the overall quality of the sound which is consistently
excellent throughout.
Assassin's Creed is not without its flaws, however. As mentioned, the
investigation missions do become monotonous over time and the combat
mechanics, while being easy, do not have enough depth to be intensely
satisfying over the course of the game. There are also no manual saves
of any sort and the game automatically saves your progress using a
checkpoint system which can take a bit of getting used to. Another
non-gameplay related minus is that it takes an eternity to quit the
game by normal means which really asks a lot questions at the Ubisoft
testing department. Thankfully, there is a shorter method to quit the
game via pressing Alt+F4, however it never should come down to such
shortcuts and it would be wise for Ubisoft to fix this via a patch. On
other notes, if you play only the story part of the game, you can be
done within 15-20 hours. Although, going out of your way to collect the
flags and save every citizen does help in extending the time to about
25-30 hours. However, even then the game does not have enough replay
value to warrant a second playthrough as the missions themselves cannot
be completed in any other drastically different manner. It is to be
noted that these issues only prevent the game from ever being a classic
but in no way do they spoil all the fun that is to be had with it.
Assassin's Creed is still a wonderful game that most anyone can enjoy
thanks to its top-notch presentation, wonderful implementation of
free-running, two-faceted gripping story and probably the most unique
game world ever created.
