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Assassin’s Creed took a little over four years to complete and the results speak for themselves. Assassin’s Creed delivers a unique living, breathing game environment which draws in the player from beginning to end. Top that off with precise and intuitive game controls, a compelling story, somewhat rewarding combat and a new approach to action adventure games, Assassin’s Creed would appear to be a must have for gamers. But appearances are sometimes deceiving and while Assassin’s Creed does deliver a beautifully rendered world to explore, it also harbours some rather derivative gameplay.

Story

Contrary to my assumption that I would be playing an assassin in the Middle East during Crusade times, you actually take on the role of Desmond Miles, a bartender who is a descendant of a long line of assassins. Desmond is captured by Abstergo Industries (Abstergo being Latin for “to cleanse”) who is working on the Animus Project. The Animus allows for the user to “replay” memories of their ancestors by extracting memories through the user’s DNA. Desmond was kidnapped by Abstergo and forced to replay the memories of his ancestor Altaïr (الطائر in Arabic, which translates to “Flying One”) which Abstergo is interested in. Altaïr, the ancestor of Desmond, is part of a brotherhood of assassins during the Third Crusade period.

The Animus has the ability to translate any language to English. Not only does it translate but it also account for accents but what I found peculiar is that when Altaïr speaks, he has an American accent which seems a little odd for someone living in the Holy Land.

The majority of the game takes place in the memories of Desmond’s ancestor, Altaïr but there are small sections where you are outside the Animus and can interact with two Abstergo employees, Dr. Vidic and Lucy. These sequences give you brief clues as to the purpose of why Desmond is experiencing Altaïr’s memories and more information concerning Abstergo.

The plot is rather well done and served as a large motivator for me to complete the game. I was a little disappointed at the end to discover that many questions were left unanswered along with a few that weren’t even touched upon. The game was obviously left open for a sequel but I felt there were some loose ends that needed tying up. Assassin’s Creed also borrowed a segment from The Matrix Reloaded for its ending.

Gameplay

With a game named Assassin’s Creed, one would assume that there would be assassinations and perhaps a creed that the assassin must follow. While there are assassinations in Assassin’s Creed, the assassinations compromise only a small percentage of the game. The majority of your time in Assassin’s Creed will be spent on missions and scaling rooftops. The creed that Altaïr must follow might as well have been written on a used dinner napkin as it really has no impact in the game. Altaïr is instructed not to harm innocent civilians but you can go around murdering as many as you like with no consequences or plot changes. The only penalty you receive from harming civilians is losing some of your health or “sync”.

Assassin’s Creed forgoes the traditional health bar and instead uses something called synchronization. Basically health is registered by the level of synchronization that Desmond shares with Altaïr’s memories. Taking damage results in Desmond losing sync with Altaïr’s memories and losing all sync points means Desmond must restart from his last save point. Additionally if your sync bar is maxed, a special ability is available for Altaïr called Eagle Vision which highlights all visible characters in colours corresponding to their significance to you (red meaning enemy, yellow meaning assassination target). This is of course a highly situational tool and not overly useful.

The bulk of the gameplay consists of you completing missions that eventually lead to an assassination mission. These smaller missions consist of pick pocketing, interrogations, eavesdropping, assassinating guards and oddly enough collecting flags. In addition to these main missions, there are a variety of side quests such as rescuing citizens from harassing city guards and also mapping out the city by climbing tall towers and getting a bird’s eye view of the city.

Anything in Assassin’s Creed is interactive meaning you can scale just about any building, hut, stand, cart, church etc… Half the fun of Assassin’s Creed is climbing buildings and jumping from rooftop to rooftop. For those who’ve watched the most recent James Bond film (Casino Royale), picture the parkour style chase scene at the beginning of the film between Bond and the bomber. Now picture this scene done in the Middle East, a thousand years earlier and this is effectively Assassin’s Creed. This aspect of the game allows for some rather entertaining chase sequences along with the ability to perform rather unique escape methods.

While missions sound fun and they are - the first few times - you quickly realize that for each new town you enter, you have to repeat the exact same mission over and over again. This is a rather lazy design choice overall for the designers to not even alter the missions types. Not only are the missions repetitive but some are just downright easy. For instance, any pick pocketing mission lasts about 3-10 seconds tops as you can casually stroll up to your target, hold the pickpocket button and complete the mission. There is little challenge to any of the missions which brings me to my next point.

The game is too easy overall. Combat in Assassin’s Creed is very simplistic requiring the tremendous ability to press one to two buttons repeatedly. There are a variety of skills you are given as you progress along with a variety of weapons but one skill in particular renders you almost completely untouchable. Coupled with mediocre AI, I found myself trying to gather as many guards as I could to actually have a challenge. Never have I failed so miserably at trying to get myself killed in a videogame. Counter-attack (your godlike skill) allows you to sit back as hordes of guards will come at you one by one as you dispatch them with ease. This is reminiscent of a bad martial arts film where the hero takes on legions of ninjas who inexplicably are unable to attack at the same time. This simplistic combat is alleviated somewhat by the rather nice and fluid execution kills that Altaïr can perform, giving some gratification to a rather shallow experience.

Assassinations are some of the best parts of the game. I’m not sure if this is a result of a change in pace from the rather monotonous missions required to unlock the assassination or that they’re just genuinely well done but I felt these sections truly shined. I was rather disappointed that Ubisoft didn’t focus more on this aspect of the game. Assassinations are in some regard similar to the Hitman series albeit on a much more simplistic basis. Usually you’re tasked with sneaking into some section of the city, followed by a cut scene and then you’re left to dispatch your target any way you like. After assassinating your target, the city is put on high alert meaning guards will be breathing down your neck until you leave the city.

Graphics

Ubisoft has created a beautiful world to explore in Assassin’s Creed. It’s rather apparent they spent a lot of time meticulously recreating parts of the Middle East from Crusade Times. On top of that I experienced no slow downs even during the most intense of combat scenes where they’d be 20 or so enemies on the screen. The Glitch style memory clouds are rather gorgeous but sometimes a drag to run into during a chase. The ability to customize your GUI interface is a nice touch and adds a challenge if you want to turn it off completely.

Conclusion

Assassin’s Creed is one of those games in which it’s rather easy to overlook some of its flaws. While the game does contain derivative gameplay, a shallow combat system and almost no replayability, it does deliver something fresh and new to the gaming world. Assassin’s Creed delivers a well polished, beautiful, fully interactive world and satisfying experience overall. Assassin’s Creed is well worth a play through.

Verdict

9/10