Assassin's Creed (Sony Playstation 3, 2007)

Assassin's Creed is a third-person stealth game in which the player assumes the role of Desmond Miles, an average bartender who is the last descendant of a long family line of assassins. Desmond has been taken to a facility where he is forced to use the Animus, a machine that traces and recreates the memories of his ancestors during the Third Crusade. Through these genetic memories, the player controls Altaïr ibn La-Ahad (الطائر ابن لا أحد , Arabic, "The Flying One, Son of None"), a member of the Hashshashin (The Assassin Brotherhood) which is allied with one of the sides during the third crusade. Altaïr's objective in the game is to slay nine historical figures propagating the Crusades in the year 1191. (According to Ubisoft developers, all of the main character's targets are historical figures who died or disappeared in 1191, although not necessarily by assassination.)

The primary goal of the game is to complete nine assassinations. To achieve this goal, the player must use stealth and a variety of intelligence gathering tactics to collect information on their target. These tactics include eavesdropping, forceful interrogation, pickpocketing, and completing tasks for Informers (other assassins who will give you information in exchange for assassinating targets or collecting flags).

The game takes place primarily in the Holy Land. It consists of four main cities: Jerusalem, Acre, Damascus and Masyaf, the assassins' stronghold; all but Masyaf contain three sections that are unlocked over the course of the game. An approximation of the land lying between these areas is present in the game as "The Kingdom." The game's developers claim the environments are all historically accurate. Each city features a highly detailed environment populated by many people of different types, and as the player interacts with his/her environment, the people around Altaïr respond in logical and predictable ways. For example, when Altaïr climbs buildings without the use of a ladder, the local citizens pause, gather round the building he is climbing and comment on his unusual behavior, or how they won't help him if he hurts himself. Certain actions, such as harming an innocent can attract the unwanted attention of nearby guards, who may then choose to attack him. Neither Richard the Lionheart's forces, nor Saladin's forces are particularly friendly towards Altaïr - If he comes into contact with any guards outside the main cities, he will be chased off, no matter which side.

Assassin's Creed is the next-gen game developed by Ubisoft Montreal that will redefine the action genre. While other games claim to be next-gen with impressive graphics and physics, Assassin's Creed merges technology, game design, theme, and emotions into a world where you instigate chaos and become a vulnerable, yet powerful, agent of change.

Assassin's Creed will stay with you long after you finish it. Here is one of the most unique gameworlds ever created: beautiful, memorable, and alive. Every crack and crevasse is filled with gorgeous, subtle details, from astounding visual flourishes to overheard cries for help. But it's more than just a world--it's a fun and exciting action game with a ton of stuff to do and places to explore, rounded out with silky-smooth controls and a complex story that will slowly grab you the more you play. Make no mistake. Assassin's Creed is one of the best efforts of the year and a must-own game.

Not enough can be said about the living, breathing world that you'll inhabit in Assassin's Creed. As assassin extraordinaire Altaïr, you'll explore three major cities of the Holy Land in the 12th century: Jerusalem, Damascus, and Acre. Each city is beautifully rendered from top to bottom and features meticulously crafted towers that reach for the sky, bustling market squares, and quiet corners where citizens converse and drunks lie in wait to accost you. As you wander the streets (and rooftops), you'll push your way through crowds of women carrying jars on their heads, hear orators shout political and religious wisdom, and watch town guards harass innocent victims. Altaïr has a profound effect on this world, but the cities are entities all their own, with their own flows and personalities.

The visual design has a lot to do with how believably organic everything feels. The cities are absolutely huge, and though you don't get full exploration privileges in the first few chapters, they eventually open up to let you travel seamlessly from one side to another. Everything is beautifully lit with just the right amount of bloom effect, and almost everything casts a shadow, from tall pillars to Altaïr's cloak. In fact, sometimes the shadows get to be a bit much and may make you think for a moment that there is artifacting on your screen, when in fact it's a character's head casting a shadow on his or her own neck. Every object, from scaffolds to pottery, is textured so finely you feel as if you could reach out and touch it. Animations are almost as equally well done. Altaïr scales walls, leaps majestically from towers, and engages in swashbuckling swordfights that would make Errol Flynn proud. And he does it all with fluid ease, generally moving from one pose to another without a hitch. Minor characters move gracefully as well, though one of the game's few visual drawbacks is the occasional jerky animation on the part of a citizen. However, it's easy to forgive, considering that the cities are populated with thousands and thousands of individuals. In fact, these tiny blemishes are noticeable only because everything else looks so incredible.

Assassin's Creed is a bloody dive into a beautiful world of warriors and the assassins who hate them. Beautiful animation, stylish low-saturation graphics, and city-wide chases are all fundamentally wonderful in Creed. There really isn't another game quite like it. Unfortunately, there isn't another game with issues quite like Creed's, either. Assassin's Creed tries to be a stealth game, an action game, a stealth kill game and a platformer, and to innovate in each category. But for each amazing step forward, Creed takes a half-step back.

Quietly Killing Time

Assassin's Creed revolves around the assassinations of nine key targets in the Third Crusade (as well as some "other" points in history). Acre, Jerusalem, and Damascus are rendered in beautiful grays and earth tones, creating the effect of free-running across a giant tomb. It's in the free-running that you'll find the game's most original and satisfying gameplay, tearing across cities as medieval hitman Altair.

By holding down a trigger and the action button, Altair can nimbly ascend anything. Once you're free-running, gameplay becomes about maintaining a perfect line of motion rather than hitting the jump button at just the right time. There's a very steep learning curve, because these free-running portions look more like platforming than they actually play. The basic idea is to hold down the free-running buttons and point Altair in the right direction. Your job isn't to micromanage jumps; your job is to point Altair towards his victims and make sure they die cleanly.


In order to secure your targets' deaths, you have to climb a few "synchronization points," the tallest buildings in a city's district. Each district has half a dozen or more of these, with each city divided into three districts. Climbing to the very highest point of these structures is really fun. There isn't any other game that quite captures the heart-pounding pleasure of simply ascending, endlessly, with nothing but your wits and fingertips to guide you.

Each sync point unveils a roundup of choices on your mini-map, including citizens to rescue (who'll then help you later) and various clues you'll have to unlock in order to earn permission to kill your target. You might have to interrogate an enemy agent, pickpocket a map, or simply kill a few Templars without being caught -- and within a time limit.
While that sounds like a forgiving, interesting way to represent "investigating" your target, the mission types all blur into a homogenous mix of unskippable introductory cut-scenes and difficulty that is always too hard or too easy. Until mission seven, the toughest job you're likely to have is to go to your HUD marker, sit at the bench, and hit the Y button to listen in on a conversation.

I've Never Run

But once you hit the seventh mission, the timed stealth murder sprees become trial and error, simply hoping you can make your hits before some random guard bumps into you, forcing you to redo the entire mission. They're not long, but it's an irritant to repeat the same mini-mission over and over again. More disappointing, chances to explain why your target deserves to die are passed up for simple chatter. Each mini-mission's cut-scene is merely exposition, always telling instead of showing.

Missions in free-roaming, open-world games give the player a sense of direction, a sense of not being lost in the world.
Overall Rating- 10/10

Really liked the name...and the premise, however, it does take a bit to get to the actual game play and then its another spin off of Final Fantasy. At least it feels alot like it... Although it is somewhat drawn out it's not a bad game for baby sitting the kids or incarcerated individuals doing a short stint or just anyone with time to burn. The big sell is the violence aspect of this game and honestly it probably needed that just to get the attention that it did.
Good graphics and effects, for a PS2 platform, should have been much better
for the PS3.
Story line is a little weak but easy enough to follow.
Bosses...didn't notice any.
Is slow to move along, regarding the story (FF ref.),
Probably should have came out on PS2 but there was money to be made off of the PS3...right...no matter
It gets a 2.5 out of a possible 5,and that is being generous...very generous.
I give this rating because given the platform(PS3)it should have been sooo much better.
So if you have 2 or 3 feet of fresh snow and the roads are bad and this is the only game that you can rent,(DEFINATELY RENT PRIOR TO BUYING, you'll thank me later),please give this game a shot and enjoy your naps as well, like I said it's slow. Anyway, no one will remember it in a year or so...thank goodness for short term memory loss...I must say this review was almost cathartic;)


Mack

November 13, 2007 - Assassin's Creed could easily have been one of the best games of 2007. It is, without question, impressive on several fronts. But developer Ubisoft Montreal took some missteps along the way and squandered the immense potential of its pseudo-stealth action title. A bad story, repetitive gameplay elements, and poor AI lead to the downfall of one of the more promising games in recent memory. Assassin's Creed could have been one of the great games of this generation. Instead, it turned into just another action title.

You play as Altair, a member of the Hashshashin (or Assassins), a real-life group that performed politically-motivated murders between the 11th and 13th centuries. Set in the Middle East during the third crusade, Assassin's Creed is steeped in historical fact. Each of the three main cities was well-researched and beautifully recreated. The nine men Altair is charged with dispatching did, in fact, all die or disappear around the time the game takes place. The attention paid to creating an accurate representation of Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus is commendable. Were it not for the "anomalies" that flitter around characters, you would have little reason to ever question that this is indeed what these cities and people looked like centuries ago.

Though Assassin's Creed is an action game, the story plays a considerable role from start to finish. This is a story-heavy title, which proves a detriment in the long run. There is a major twist in the Assassin's story, the kind that (if it hasn't already been spoiled for you on the Internet) would likely blow the lid covering your brain. That is if this big twist were revealed towards the end of the story and not in the first five minutes. Ubisoft's decision to introduce the only major surprise just a few minutes into Assassin's Creed proves costly. Imagine if you were watching the Sixth Sense and ten minutes in the movie told you Bruce Willis is a ghost. It would deaden the remainder of the story. This is exactly what happens with Assassin's. The moments with Altair are well-told and interesting (though perhaps a bit too drawn out), but every time the "twist" elements come into play, the entire game grinds to a halt. Over a 10- or 12-hour gaming experience, that becomes grating. So much so that all of the clever story elements begin to play against Assassin's Creed rather than elevating it to high art as seems to have been the intention.