Moody Gamer

What you get when you slap Prince of Persia gameplay with Grand Theft Auto freedom, historical setting and DirectX9/10 graphics? You end up with Ubisoft’s new and ambitious game Assassin’s Creed.

Ambitious as the game may be, it ended with a big flaw I will address later in the review. The game is set around Jerusalem (Al Quds) and just around the third crusade war. You play as an Assassin who works his way to take out key personnel to make sure that the war is under control. Of course Ubisoft are using fictional characters and story even though the setting is historical and so are some characters (Saladin and King Richard). They did a very good job of blending such a setting with a story of their own. So whatever you will be doing in game, it really didn’t happen in reality. In addition, you are actually playing in a simulated history kind of way. The main character is put into a machine that allows you to go back into the characters past, up to whatever grand-grand father memory and few his memory. In our case, the memory goes back to the third crusade era and your great grandfather is actually an assassin. The story might seem complex but it really is simple and there are hardly any twists in it.

If you have ever played Prince of Persia (The Sands of Time Trilogy) then you will be right at home with the controls of Altair (The assassin you control). The idea is that you are give names to go and assassinate but you aren’t pointed to who or where they are. So it is your task to look around in the city for clues. They are given by other assassin’s who work with you in your Creed. A step before that is to find where they are and is done by climbing a View-Point. These are tall buildings (Marked on your map) that you can scale in a remarkable way to get a view of your surroundings. Which also allows you to see any information giver that allows you to get closer to your assassination target in addition of getting more details about how to get to them with the least trouble. The View-Points also allow you to see other “side quests” such as helping citizens, roof-top race against time, assassinating some guards. The missions span three major cities and each city is literally huge with a lot of people going about their daily lives, preachers, guards and even pigeons.

The game graphics is marvelous and so are the character animations (at least the main character). The graphics support high textures and awesome use of HDR and bloom effect. This game is one of the very few that properly implements these settings so that they really contribute to the immersion. You really just can’t believe how well a city looks with all the people in it until you see the game in motion. This brings us to the animation part of the game which is so smooth and realistic that walking in the cities is jaw dropping. Add to that some great roof top maneuvers and jumping and you can see how much fun it is to move around in the city without doing much anything.

The visual effect is combined with some great music that really fits that game and changes based on the event, whether you are being chased, stalking someone or fighting.

The biggest flaw in the game, and I am sorry to say so considering how much I praised it, is that it is very repetitive. You can argue that most games are repetitive, but Assassin’s Creed repetition is so obvious. The main mission asks you to gather information and assassinate a person, which is almost the same every time. The side quests are worse. Hardly any variety from the same scale that tower, help that citizen, get that flag (which is useless for both the PC and PS3 versions), kill that templar and so on. If you do all of these quests, you can easily clock over 50 hours of play, though you will feel that you are forcing yourself to do them rather than trying to have fun doing them.

So a great game with great ambition but plagued with hideous repetition. I still recommend this game but don’t force yourself to do all the side quests after you experienced the main ones, since it gets repetitive after that.