Assassin’s Creed Review – Xbox 360

I can’t remember the last time a single player game without a number in its name captivated me quite like Assassin’s Creed. In spite of its shortcomings, it is probably one of the most immersive experiences to grace the gaming world in quite a while yet. With its own take on the almost superhuman art of Parkour, made so famous in games by Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, it gives for a lasting piece of entertainment that is a worthy addition to any 360 owner’s collection of games.

After the blatant similarity to PoP’s wall running and jumping filled gameplay it comes as no surprise that the ones in charge of AC’s creation were none other than Ubisoft. In other words, they knew what they were doing – the world of third person Parkour games is not unfamiliar territory and that’s certainly a good thing. One could easily see AC as being the successor to the Prince, only without the same old character who, quite frankly, had begun to grind somewhat by the third instalment. In spite of AC borrowing this main element off of a rather aged franchise, it does what it does fantastically well – even better than its predecessor, I might add.

The first thing that comes to mind when dealing with AC’s storyline is convoluted. When watching all those videos and pictures of Altaïr, the main character, doing so many assassin-y type things back to front and upside down, I had no idea I was going to be greeted by a storyline mainly consisting of sci-fi elements involving forms of time travel and other things that aren’t immediately related to the assassination elements I was promised. In spite of this, it still serves its purpose well; while playing games in which I’m meant to play the role of the hero who saves the world without breaking a sweat, I often feel like I’ve somehow let down the storyline by dying or failing an objective, as if I’m not playing my part properly. AC deals with failure simply by acting as though it’s a technical fault on behalf of the device linking you to Altaïr and resets itself to the last known working location, namely a checkpoint. It’s still a bit of a letdown, but at least the game takes it in its stride. The primary plot points of the entire game are quite easy to follow regardless of this slight twist, and overall serve to provide quite an interesting follow-through as you slog through the missions. One aspect I am particularly fond of through all of the game’s progress is the large amount of character development that goes on from start to finish; granted it isn’t something so deep that you’d necessarily find in some psychology paper, but very few of the characters are what you would call shallow. Each assassination has an interesting dialogue with the victim following it, in which Altaïr slowly unfolds further truths regarding his actions. Although it’s a well written way to advance the plot, it would have also been nice to have a way to skip these scenes along with the rest of the exasperatingly long cutscenes, particularly those with that self righteous sod, Al Mualim. In spite of the well written dialogue and deep characters surrounding him, the main protagonist in the modern day scenario of the game is quite dim overall, and it only served to annoy me how utterly oblivious he is to all the happenings around him in spite of the considerable exposition I had to wade through to find out about them for myself.

I cannot stress this enough, the visuals in AC are simply beautiful. I’ve seen few things in videogames quite as breathtaking as looking down at all of Damascus (albeit a fictional one) from the top of the highest point in the city – which was really, really high. I am hardly exaggerating when I say you can see everything in the city beneath you, save for the people in the streets. What’s really impressive is that anything you can see from up there, you can explore. There’s very little there just for show and I love it. Naturally, for the console to be able to handle all that stuff at one go, the detail has to drop the further away a certain object gets. It handles this quite well too, as there is hardly ever a performance drop when exploring the game, no matter if you’re in a crowded street or soaring down from the heavens in the most unbelievably exaggerated leap of faith from that highest point in Damascus. It’s pretty impressive considering the detail, but sometimes the distance at which detail drops off is made blatantly clear as lighting and other sprites magically grow sharper as you walk towards them from a mere few feet away. Thankfully, this is rarely so noticeable. When you do get down into the streets, close enough to look at all the details, everybody there looks like a clone of one another, in particular the soldiers you enjoy the company of so much through the game. The sounds accompanying the visuals in AC overall aid the experience, but they’re nothing I would necessarily call a treat after the first hour of the game. So help me god, if I hear the phrases “Praise be Salahadin!” “Infedel, you must die!” and “I beg of you please, could you spare a coin?” again, it will be too soon.

The best analogy I could possibly attribute AC’s gameplay to is a fantastic Handjob from a hot, scantily clad babe. At first it’s a fantastic and intense experience, but after the first couple of climaxes it only starts to chafe and tire you somewhat. Even I will admit it; the missions are monotonous. Painfully so. But there’s just one thing that just dulls the pain like a huge tube of K-Y jelly slathered on there like gravy on a roast pig – the free running. I will say it right now and without a doubt: I’ve never, ever played a third person game with controls that are even marginally as tight and responsive as those in AC. It’s simply the way Altaïr performs movements, that miss Lara Croft couldn’t shake a stick at, to your every command with the press of merely three buttons that impressed me from the start to the very last moments of the game – not just from a gameplay standpoint but with respects to the implementation. I’ll admit I’m not exactly an experienced programmer, but how the Prince of Persia couldn’t even bloody well grab onto that specific ledge after a series of jumps that are as compulsory to progressing in game as breathing is for us to live, I will never understand. Yet Altaïr does every thing, every time, every where you may tell him to, exactly as you tell him to without fail – at least most of the time. Admittedly, it’s a little difficult to believe some of the things he does, especially since it’s all based on the real art of Parkour but in that case, if someone like a certain Mister Prince of fucking Persia is going to act like some sort of god of gravity defiance with his wall walking, ledge jumping and general showing off, he should at least learn how to catch onto a goddamn ledge since his life depends on it so much. Altaïr, however, rarely has such troubles, and seeing how his movements are far more unpredictable than those of the Prince, it is an extremely admirable feat on behalf of Al Mualim for training the Ubisoft team for programming him so well. I realise that I’m comparing this game to something that’s several years old by now, but it just goes to show how far we’ve come since then.

While I will gladly tattoo myself with the statement that AC’s freerunning is awesome, the constant fighting is not. I simply cannot express the extent of my frustration when I accidentally discovered that you can counter with the assassination dagger equipped, resulting in an instant kill of whoever attacked you… after I’d finished the game. It would have made the entire thing a total cakewalk, but no. They decided to make Altaïr insist that he use his sword the moment you lock onto somebody in battle. Now I know this is the logical thing to do, for safety of the players – but when you see this sort of thing happen you normally come to the conclusion that the dagger is simply not an option to use in a fight. Well, that’s wrong. If you’re still half way through AC, do yourself a fucking favour and whip out that dagger after every time you lock onto a target, and practice those counter kills. You’ll thank me later. Then again, if you already have the game, what are you doing reading this

Which brings me to what should have been the main element of AC’s gameplay, but instead takes only a minor sliver of the total playing time of the entire thing – the actual assassinations. These things are in every sense the culmination of all your repetitive efforts in preparation for that one final kill, and let me tell you – setting up the perfect assassination is bloody hard, but so exhilarating. After discovering how to view the maps and documents you obtain from the investigation missions leading up to the kill, I put a bit more thought into preparing it than usual, and right away the difference was evident. It’s generally bad practice for developers to make a game pretend to be challenging by packing it with unnecessary obstacles or distractions that cannot be circumvented with simple skill – which this game does anyway in other places – but the way I was instantly rewarded for planning my actions from beforehand gave a clear message. It was challenging for the right reasons right there and then.

Unfortunately it’s not always the case. I’m talking about those godawful, annoying sods, the beggars and stupid mental patients or whatever the hell they’re supposed to be. Those creepy weirdoes that plod around shirtless and shove you, and only you, around for no bloody reason. Then the moment they push you into a guard or a mission objective, you’re suddenly public enemy number one and you fail your mission a thousand times over because some cuntface decided it would be funny to shove you in a random direction on the basis that you don’t look like everybody else in the goddamn city. To make matters worse, god forbid that you pay them back in any way – you lose some health if you so much as throw them out of your way, and almost half of the maximum if you decide to kill them off to permanently get them out of your hair. At one point in the game I started doing so as a fair tradeoff of health in order to succeed in my missions with less hassle, but these assholes were the one thing that made me hate the game. I know the guys at Ubisoft acknowledged this fact, because once you finish the game, you’re no longer punished for killing “innocents” (as Altaïr so naïvely calls them). Yeah, a little late there Ubisoft, but guess who went on a killing spree then, eh?

In spite of the repetitiveness of the game’s missions, I had very little trouble with getting myself to play this game to the very end. The fact that each assassination gives you more places to explore – which I’ve clearly expressed to be my favourite thing in this game – is a huge incentive to keep going. Besides this, you do actually benefit from completing missions in ways other than “do this because you can’t go on otherwise,” or some stupid, undervalued achievement on Xbox Live. While the compulsory missions give you information that helps you plan your assassination, the optional ones aid you by locating where the compulsory missions are, revealing the map to help you navigate, and adding some civilians that aren’t just a bunch of dicks that push you around and block your path, but rather do the same to your enemies, which is awesome. Besides that, just having the game effectively tell you, “hey, take your time and make yourself at home,” makes you want to make the most of it in a way, which I did.

When it came to breaking my immersion while playing, there were very few things that were done on purpose. While I appreciate the fact that getting down from a viewpoint will take me about twice as long as it did for me to get up to it, seeing Altaïr jump from about a kilometer above the ground into a tiny pile of hay without so much as a ruined hairdo had me rolling my eyes more than once. That, and his amazing cyborg power grip which allows him to grab ledges no matter at what speed he’s falling kind of broke me out of that state of suspended disbelief – but in a way I’m still thankful for them as they did save my ass from the occasional glitch or redoing particularly long sections of climbing. Other than that, the main culprits for spoiling my otherwise amazing experience were the occasional glitch and bug in game and even then, all they ever seemed to do was amuse me as they usually consisted of civilians and enemies acting like utter fools, which is always fun.

All in all, as I’ve already stated, Assassin’s Creed is not without its faults, but if you can survive a game being rather repetitive – but then again, which game isn’t – it is an experience that is truly not to be missed. Forget the hype, forget what you think the game might be like and you’re almost guaranteed a good time. I recommend it.