Review: Assassin's Creed

Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 10
Sound: 9
Value: 9
Overall: 9.6

The Good:
· Great sword fighting action that you don’t see enough of
· Awesome scenery

The Bad:
· It’s Stupid when you trip over benches and shit...
· Sometimes the mission structures can be a little bit repetitive

Assassin’s Creed has been in development at Ubisoft’s Montreal studio since they released Prince of Persia: Sands of time back in 2003. For a couple of years now Producer Jade Raymond has been going round various trade shows, and if you’ve been keeping up to date with the industry recently you’ll probably have seen her talking about the game passionately. Well Jade, now the game’s out and you know what? You had reason to be so passionate about your stuff, because Assassin’s Creed is the most realised and beautiful game to make its way to store shelves this year.

In Assassin’s Creed you play as Altair, a cold hearted killer in the 1100’s, the time of the Third Crusade. In the crusades, European countries went to war with the east to recover the Holy land, and in Assassin’s Creed it is your job as Altair to follow the laws of the Guild of Assassins and take out nine leaders in the Cities of Jerusalem, Damascus and Acre who are causing problems for the people. At the beginning of the game you are sent on a special task to retrieve a special item that is required by the master of the Assassins Guild, and unfortunately things don’t go as expected and Altair is stripped of his ranks as Master Assassin and is released of his weapons and moves. You’ll probably recognise this kind of structure, where you start off with everything, loose it all, and then have to gain it back again, and yes, usually it sucks. However, in Assassin’s Creed, it works really well because the points in the game where you get your weapons and moves back are usually times in the game where you’re starting to feel like you could use a new item or move and so the mechanic helps to keep the gameplay fresh and at a perfect difficulty, which is saying something, seen as just to get through the story of the game it’s going to take you around about 20 hours.

So, the basic concept in the game is to make your way through the Cities of Jerusalem, Damascus and Acre and eliminate your nine targets. That sounds simple enough right? Well, it isn’t as easy as that. Before you are able to find each target you’ll have to do a series of missions beforehand to figure out the location of your prey. These can range from simple “listen in” missions, where you have to sit on a bench and listen to two people have a conversation about something relevant to your quest. These are the weirdest kinds of missions because sometimes it’s hard to get a focus on your target from where you’re sitting. As well as those though there are a variety of other missions that are actually a bit more realised that the “listen in” ones, for example you’ll have the option to rescue innocent citizens from being attacked by the local guards, which is a really neat idea. Guards in the game are one of the most realised aspects of the gameplay. As well as being part of various missions, the guards have no problem with coming over and telling you if you’re doing something that you shouldn’t be, and if you do something exceptionally bad, like killing somebody, they’ll chase after you and call for re-enforcements and the enemy artificial intelligence has no issues with chasing you and finding you.

When you find yourself in one of these chase sequences, which you will do frequently, your best option is to bust out Altair’s ace card and show off your free running moves. You see, Assassin’s Creed is about three things: Combat, story-telling and exploration. Exploration is probably the most fun thing about Assassin’s Creed and in the chase sequences you’re going to have to do a lot of it to get to a hiding place where you can escape the guards who are in pursuit of you. The cities in Assassin’s Creed are huge. Really, you’ve never seen anything like this in a game before. What’s awesome is that every building, bridge and pillar can be climbed to help you to navigate the landscape better. When you’re being chased, one of the best things to do is to climb up the side of a building and find a hiding spot, which are dotted all over the map in the forms of little curtained off rooms, benches and bales of hay.

Climbing around the three huge cities never gets old or boring. In fact, the three cities are not their own little individual locations, they’re joined by Kingdom, which is also fully explorable and includes its own little villages that are kept a watchful eye over by guards. There’s also Maysaf, the location of the Assassin’s headquarters and you’ll have to go there after every assassination, so I hope you like it there. The world of Assassin’s Creed is huge, so huge in fact, that to get to each city it would take you ten or so minutes to get there, thankfully Ubisoft cave us a choice of how to get there because you can either use a horse or teleport once you’ve been to every city, which makes getting to each location that little bit less tedious.

The graphic presentation of Assassin’s creed is one of the most impressive elements about the game. From a purely visual standpoint the game is excellent. Every character you see looks different and you’ll rarely recognise a character model, except for the people who you rescue in the “rescue” missions who all look the same, which is disappointing. Asides from that, not a bad word can be said about the presentation of the game. When you climb up one of the many tall buildings and access a viewpoint, which is a small cinematic moment where Altair stands aloft a really massive building and the camera pans round him, you’ll be able to see not only every detail on the town, but also the surrounding landscape. Basically what I’m trying to say is that the draw distance of Assassin’s Creed is amazing. Another great thing about the game’s graphical presentation is the actual buildings themselves. Ubisoft must have hired a bunch of architects because the City layouts are phenomenal. Not one building looks out of place, from the brick work to the tapestries and roofs; the level of detail is quite astonishing. In each city there is a poor, middle and rich district and as you progress through the game you’ll unlock different sections to the cities until you have them all open. With this, you’ll be able to free roam around and do as you please for as long as you want and that free roam sand box gameplay is what makes Assassin’s Creed so fun.

From a technical standpoint, the game is also really impressive. The frame-rate barely drops at all keeping the free running smooth; allowing you to focus on whatever it is you’re doing. When it does drop, it’s only for half a second and it’s usually because the game is loading the city up, but it does not affect the gameplay and when you’re inside one of the game’s cities you can be assured that you won’t see any loading screens at all, which is quite impressive considering the size of the cities and the amount of things that are going on at any one time. The textures are again, really impressive and you’ll find yourself feeling as though everything in the game is tangible which just makes the experience more immersive.

The audio quality is up there with that of the graphics. The original score used in the game is extremely fitting with the locations and also what’s happening to you at any one time, so for example, when you get into a chase the tempo will increase and when you go in to assassinate your target the music will quieten down which drives up the tension. Sound effects are also really great, when you stab somebody it feels really satisfying which makes all of your hard work seem all the more worthwhile.

On the note of stabbing, the sword fighting and overall combat in the game is great. You know when you just can’t be bothered running away, you can pull out your sword and fight everybody off and later off in the game this becomes necessary for reasons I’m not going to explain (spoiler free). The fighting works on a combo and counter basis. At the beginning of the game it would be acceptable for you to just button mash at your enemies to take them down but as you progress further through the game it will become essential to learn how to do combos and counters, which at first are quite hard to learn, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes almost too easy, and so in that respect, maybe the counter system is a little too overpowering. However, the counters are really awesome to pull off. To do one of these moves you have to block and then just as your enemy is about to strike you strike at them. If you do this correctly, the camera will pull in and the game will let you watch as you dispose of your foe in one of many different ways. One of my favourites is where Altair puts his sword into the enemy’s foot and as he looks down he pulls his sword up in a sweeping motion cutting your enemy from toe to head. Blood effects are pretty good as well, but they look a little bit cloudy, maybe that’s how Ubisoft gained the game a 15 and over Certificate and if that’s the case, then good for you.

I’ve talked a little bit about the game’s story, but I don’t want to spoil any of it for you. If you’ve been keeping up to date with Assassin’s Creed you’ll probably know that there’s a sci-fi element to the game’s story but alas, I am not here to tell you the whole story, so if you want to know about that you’re going to have to play the game for yourself. Trust me though when I say that you won’t be disappointed in the narrative. The story is done through the use of real time game sequences which make the experience all the more immersive.

Overall, Assassin’s Creed is an exceptionally memorable experience that you’ll want to play from beginning to end to uncover the games unique story. The great combat, platforming and narrative all pull together to make one of the most memorable and delightfully refreshing packages that the Xbox 360 has had to offer consumers this year, and if you’re a bit tired of the relentless assault of shooters that Microsoft seems to be throwing at us at the moment then this is definitely a game to suit you, and anyone else who loves a good action game.

--Tom Rhodes, 360Stage Editor--