I finished Assassins Creed the other day and managed to get everything in the game. Which means I'm finally qualified to review it. Let's take a look.
Assassins Creed is available for the Xbox 360, PS3 and now the PC. I wouldn't recommend the PC version, as its requirements make Crysis look like Solitaire. Not quite so bad, but you get my point.
The first thing you'll notice about the game is the way Altair (pronounced All-tie-ear) moves it's very fluid, almost as if you aren't directly controlling him but more guiding his actions. Sort of like Ico if you ever played that. The game refers to this as the "puppeteer" system. With A controlling his legs, B his free hand, X his weapon hand and Y for his head. Basically use X to use your weapon, B to gently move people in your way, A to blend into the crowd and Y to enter first person view. Holding the Right Trigger (RT) will switch to high profile mode which turns all those controls into ninja assassin versions of themselves. Blend turns into sprint, attack turns into deadly counters, push turns into grab etc.
You don't need to control every single action Altair does, just holding RT and A will send Altair climbing buildings and jumping across rooftop beams with ease, making you feel like a badass as these actions flow from your deft finger movements.
The graphics vary from pretty awesome to jaw dropping. The first time you climb the citadel tower in Acre and swivel your view across the landscape seeing every building in the entire city (and if you're eagle-eyed enough, spotting hidden flags on rooftops you may have missed) clear as day without so much as a hint of the distance fog of games of old your jaw will most certainly drop.Then you jump the 500ft off the tower into a tiny wagon full of hay you can just barely make out without so much as a scratch on you. Make sure you jumped off the right side though, no hay means a dead assassin to be scraped off the concrete.
Combat seems to be one of the main problems people had with this game. Most people are content to just sit and wait for each enemy to attack and counter each hit for a kill. That's all well and good, but it can easily get repetitive if you do that. I thought combat was a blast, but I spent most of my time in battle switching between weapons and pulling off cool moves. I don't ignore counters, they are a lot of fun, but there is so much more, guard breaks, combo kills, throwing knives, short blade, hidden blade, long blade, grabs, counters, counter counters, disarms, etc. Sure it's a little harder when you don't keep countering, forcing enemies to attack one at a time and actually go on the offensive, but at least the combat feels fresh like that. You feel so incredibly awesome tearing enemies apart, countering any attacks they try to make and picking off further away enemies with throwing knives and coming out unharmed, or even better, sending the remaining few guards scrambling away to escape the white-robed demon. Then chasing them down and planting a blade in the back of his skull.
Another problem I've heard people talking about is glitches. I haven't heard specific glitches people have encountered, because frankly they don't say. I can say from personal experience that I've come across two glitches. The first was when I was trying to escape a guard and was killed when trying to jump up a corner in Masyaf. I fell face first into the wall and promptly fell through the game map to the glowing embrace of afterlife below. I only encountered it once, and I was already dead when it happened. The second glitch happened twice in the city of Damascus. As I entered the Assassins Bureau the person behind the desk is supposed to acknowledge my presence and ask for the information I gathered on my target. He didn't though. I just walked in and out a few times until he finally started to speak. It happened again after I finished the hit and was trying to check in afterward at the Bureau. Once I left Damascus I never encountered a glitch again though.
Finally the ending, people hated the ending. Hate hate hate hate, with a dash or RAGE. Honestly, I didn't mind it so much. Altair's story is wrapped up nicely, the only cliffhanger is with Desmond Miles, Altair's descendant. His story is just beginning and honestly, you got just enough info to stave off any pressing concerns about what's going on without unwrapping the entire story in one game. There's a lot of room for a sequel, and if you look carefully you should have no problems finding lots of hints on where the next game is going to take us (My guess, Japan).
All in all, I've praised the game enough. The game isn't perfect, and there's a chance I just got lucky with glitches. One thing that hinders the game is that there's really not a lot of room for replay value. I restarted the game about halfway through so I could redo things I screwed up my first time with my improved assassin skills. Redoing those early missions again was tolerable at best, and besides collecting the 420~ flags and murdering the 60 templars hidden around the game world there's not much to do once you've finished everything. It took me almost exactly one week from the day I bought the game to the day I got 1000/1000 gamerscore, and I split my time playing with Lost Odyssey (review to come soon) trying to make the game last longer.It's also a short-lived experience, with only 9 targets in the game spread amongst 3 cities cut in 3 pieces each.
For my final word I say the game shines the first time you place it in the disctray. And throughout the experience you'll continue to mutter to yourself just how cool that move you pulled was. After you beat everything though, there's not much incentive to go back and do it all again. And the lack of a second save file is just shameful these days.
I give Assassins Creed for the 360/PS3/PC four stoic-looking red stick men with oversized heads out of five.
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