DigitalBattle.com

Many have said that this November has been one of the best months to be a gamer in a long time. The amount of top-notch, highly anticipated titles released in these past few weeks alone has been remarkable.

Among those eagerly awaited titles is Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed. After four years of development the action adventure title has, after much anticipation, been released. Is Assassin’s Creed the first true next generation title as some have claimed? Find out after the jump.

Story

Before someone goes around assassinating and exploring, they need to have a compelling reason. Fortunately, Assassin’s Creed’s story is intuitive, captivating, and motivational. You play as Altair, a disgraced master assassin who needs to kill nine targets to regain his honor. However, as anyone who has access the Internet knows, there’s a catch. Altair has been dead for hundreds upon hundreds of years, which brings us to the best aspect of the story, the sci-fi. The science fiction setting is actually the real setting of the game; the game makes no attempt to trick you into thinking otherwise. The truth is, you actually play as Desmond Miles who plays as Altair, a disgraced master assassin. Since History and Science fiction are two very opposite genres, Ubisoft has done a commendable job melding the two in perfect harmony. In both settings, the story is told in amazingly crafted event, in which the player always has some form of interactivity. There are no practically cut scenes whatsoever. At very least you will be able to pick which camera angle suits you best. Usually the player will have control of the character as well. While it may seem insignificant, it actually helps form the mood. Altair can be nervous, defiant, intrigued, etc; all based on how he’s being moved. The story even takes a turn later in the game, and it affected the way I played the game even though the game play didn’t change.

Game Play

Speaking of how the game play doesn’t change, Assassin’s Creed has simply awful repetition problems. As fun and exhilarating fighting, free running, and assassinations are, it’s all countered by the “investigation” portion of game play. Before being able to experience the satisfying assassination of your target, the player has to “investigate” them first, via either pick pocketing, “interrogating”, eaves dropping, or with the help of an informer. I imagine someone at Ubisoft thought that they were smart for thinking of this, but frankly, it’s the game’s worst part. At first pick pocketing and interrogating seem interesting, but around the second time the player has to do this it becomes a burden. Pick pocketing someone usually takes several attempts to complete successfully. It feels more like a mini-game, mostly because it takes no skill to either find a subject (your map has a huge icon on it so you can’t get lost), or pickpocket them. Interrogations wouldn’t be so bad either if the person being interrogated wasn’t the exact some person almost every time. Eavesdropping is the only investigation technique that’s implemented correctly and makes sense. Unfortunately, it’s too easy, so Ubisoft made sure it was rarer than the others. Out of everything, though, informers are the worst part of the game. Usually an informer (who is also the same person all the time) will ask you to assassinate several people for him. This is fine, if not one-dimensional. Sometimes though, he will ask you to pick up flags for him in a certain amount of time. Magically numerous flags will appear in somewhat of a path for you to collect. Not only is this absolutely no fun, but also breaks the game’s immersion completely, and doesn’t even follow Ubisoft’s own rule of “real world rules”.

Fortunately, Assassin’s Creed is somewhat redeemed by free running and fighting. Fighting isn’t unique in any one way, but is implemented perfectly into the game. I hate to say it but fighting truly is easy to learn, but hard to master. The same applies to free running, which is the best part of Assassin’s Creed. The way the free running portion is implemented is extremely intuitive. Essentially, the player decides what to do, while the game takes care of figuring out how to do it. Not to mention that any and all, parts of buildings that stick out two inches can be grabbed. Despite the creative free running mechanic, the game play for Assassin’s Creed still leaves a lot to be desired.

Technology
The things the Assassin’s Creed engine accomplishes are astonishing. Entire cities can be viewed with real-time shadows being cast over the whole city, all at once, without so much as a hiccup in the frame rate. Assassin’s Creed also has one of the best clothing simulations I’ve seen. Clothes look like they have individual threads; armor looks like it’s made up of individual links etc. There are five main areas, Jerusalem, Masyaf, Damascus, Acre, “kingdom”, and the sci-fi location. Once a player goes through an interesting practice area, which “masks” loading for about a minute or two (the longest I’ve ever seen an area load was north of four minutes), they are then able to explore to their heart’s content without any more loads. That is, there are slight pauses occasionally, which last less than a second, but even during combat, it isn’t enough to break the flow of game play. Even the camera has an interesting focusing effect that makes the subject(s) in question sharper than the rest of the scene.

To be fair, Assassin’s Creed has a small problem with popping textures and environment elements. Nine out of ten times, it isn’t distracting, and doesn’t present any problems. Once, however, during a chase an entire tree “popped” into existence while I was being chased. In a one in a million chance, I happened to be in between it, and a wall. Unfortunately, I having no choice but to turn off my console in order to proceed. Another issue I had was when my game froze during a “do not turn your console off” save. Once again I was forced to turn off my console, deleting my save file in the process. Considering how 360’s are not the most reliable systems, I’m not sure whether the game or the console is to blame.

The AI, like many parts of the game, starts out amazingly good, but becomes quickly repetitive. The first time guards throw rocks at the player; it’s surprising an unexpected. Once it’s apparent that rock throwing is their only reaction to you climbing walls, however, it’s not very impressive. The guards on the roofs specifically are just plain stupid.

Audio

Audio in Assassin’s Creed is a bit of a double edge sword. On the one hand, music is dealt with very delicately and creatively. When necessary there is a great score. While being chased, for example or when approaching a city, there is extremely thematic music. The music for the fights especially feels somehow, paced with the combat. While simply walking through a city, however, there is an absence of music. This feels right, and doesn’t degrade the experience at all.

The music is satisfying, but on the other hand, the dialog is strenuously, you guessed it, repetitive after a while. Individual characters aren’t the problem. The lip-syncing is good, and the tone fits the character’s personalities. For the crowd however, there are less then ten different lines of dialog. It feels as though a saved civilian is limited to saying “thank you mister, another minute and they would have done away with me” or “thanks for the help, but don’t think I couldn’t have taken care of it myself”, and in the same voice no less. Another problem with dialog is that it can’t be skipped, which is a problem when a player wants to casually play the game.

Replay Value

Surprisingly enough, replaying the game, after completing it is, in many ways, more fun than playing it through the first time. Once the game is complete, the player is free of Assassin’s Creed’s worst elements. Without being forced to do investigations, or listen to targets drag on about how they are doing what is right, the game’s true appeal, freedom, can be fully appreciated. Assassin’s Creed does loose the fun factor if started over from the beginning. The way the game is designed is so that a player actually learns things like free running, and fighting, rather than earning them. While the tutorials, dialog, etc; are well paced for being played for the first time, it is unnecessary to experience them a second time.

In Conclusion

Assassin’s Creed has an amazing environment, a well-realized style and setting, and an unprecedented scope all of which help to immerse the player. The story is also really creative and original. Unfortunately, the game play does little to hold it the experience together. As it is, Assassin’s Creed feels more like a first step for a series than a stand-alone title. Unfortunately, this doesn’t just apply to the story, but the game play as well, which needs a lot of refining.

The Good

- Immersive environments
- Overwhelming scope
- Satisfying combat system
- Intriguing story

The Bad

- Repetitive gameplay
- Repetitive AI
- Repetitive NPC Dialog

Final Score 8.0