Assassin's Creed is a great game that due to a few small technical
problems is held back from being the ambitious experience it wants to
be.
It looks amazing visually. The animations for the main
character are very intricate and detailed, and this detail is
consistent with every other person you come across throughout the game.
Outside of the animation, the ancient Middle East atmosphere that the
game is set in is extremely immersive. The first moment that you gaze
off into the distance from the top of the tallest tower in Jerusalem,
you will see how amazing the city recreations are.
But for every awesome moment there is always something equally as
annoying or frustrating waiting just around the corner, sometimes
literally.
The story in concept is very intriguing. Full of
mysteries and conspiracies about the world, it will definitely keep you
wondering what happens next. But these sequences only make up about
twenty percent of the game. The rest of it is...well, I guess a little
bit of explanation is necessary first. You play as Desmond, a bartender
who is being held prisoner by the Abstergo Corporation while they test
a machine called an Animus on him. Without going into spoilerific
detail, the Animus is basically a big TV screen screen on which you
play your ancestor's memories. There is no gameplay outside the Animus,
aside from slowly walking around and talking to the doctors who work
the machine. Even though this is all you can do, the storytelling here
is the best in the game, and its only about twenty percent of it. Once
you lay your buzzcut, hoodie-wearing head down on the Animus, you play
a completely different game. One that isn't remotely as compelling.
Inside the Animus is where you actually play the
game. You become an ancestor to Desmond, named Altair. Altair is a
member of the Brotherhood of Assassin's, or, at least that's what I
think it's called. The story in this main portion of the game is a
mixture of boring ancient speaking styles, long hard-to-pronounce
names, and plot changes that seem to have already been discussed before
you realize that they even happened. But where the story falls short is
made up for by the actual assassinations that you carry out, you are an
assassin after all.
The assassinations are undoubtedly the best part of the gameplay. The
feeling of anticipation as you climb the walls and roofs to your
target's hiding spot, or hide in the nearby crowd as they move closer
to you is something that isn't done very often, and definitely not with
this much original style. Unfortunately, you only do about nine of
these throughout a 10 to 15 hour game. The rest of the time is spent
walking around the three main cities gathering information about the
target. Only a few of these reconnaissance activities actually have to
be done in order to go ahead with the assassination, but to know
everything you can, you have to do all six of them. It's not so bad,
until you realize that there are only five types in the entire game.
This amount of repetition tends to ruin the overall pace of the game,
making it a struggle sometimes to want to advance the already weak
story.
The game's strength's lie in the way that Altair moves
about the city. His range of movement coupled with the level of detail
in the animation makes the simple act of climbing and even walking fun.
One of the original ideas introduced in Assassin's Creed is the
Altair's ability to use parkour to quickly get from one end of the city
to the other. It is extremely simple to control, but sometimes a little
too simple, to the point where it can cause more problems than solve
them. To use this ability, you simply hold one button while you run,
and point in the direction that you want to go. Pretty simple right?
But apparently Altair doesn't have any common sense when it comes to
knowing how to stop. Not pulling back on the speed in enough time, and
we're talking a window of less than a second here, will cause him to
reach the end of a ledge or rooftop and just jump to his death. This
can be especially frustrating in a late game section where you are
required to jump across a couple of small perches over water, and you
can't swim. Climbing uses the same easy hold-and-point mechanic as
parkour does. It feels a little better here though, since the speed in
which Altair climbs is much slower and methodical. Occasionally, being
a few millimeters off on the the analog stick when you are ascending a
wall will cause you to stop and be stuck there as you fumble with the
controller trying to finding the right direction, even though the
handhold you are trying to get to is right next to Altair. This can be
a little troublesome when you are trying to escape from guards, since
they will throw rocks at you that immediately knock you back to the
ground if hit. Overall though, these are small issues that aren't
gamebreaking in the least.
Even with its few flaws, Assassin's Creed has such a unique concept and
gameplay style that they make up for much of the story and movement
problems that sometimes keep the game from flowing well. While Altair's
story was pretty lackluster, Desmond's excellent one opens up much more
by the end and it becomes clear that the developers have great plans
for the inevitable sequel. If there is anything that can be taken from
Assassin's Creed, it is excitement for what Ubisoft will do with this
franchise in the future, both in gameplay and in story. But until then,
this is a great starting point.
