Assassin's Creed Review
- Posted December 8th, 2007 at 06:31 EDT by
- 46 Comments
Review Score
- PSU Review Score
- 8.5
- Avg. user review score:
Summary
Despite some notable faults, Assassins’ Creed is an amazing experience, delivering the perfect amalgam of story telling and immersive gameplay. With the chance to take control of a 12th century assassin, this is a gaming opportunity that simply cannot be passed up.
We like
- Great story
- Superb graphics
- Historical accuracy
We dislike
- Repetitive gameplay
- Freezing issues
- Mediocre voice acting
See PSU's review on Metacritic & GameRankings
Jade Raymond. Now that she is out of the way we can go ahead.
Designed for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC; Assassin's Creed takes current-gen gaming to the next level with stunning graphics and an immersive story. The game itself actually takes place in the present, where a bartender named Desmond has been taken hostage by scientists who are trying to get a specific memory from his mind. The only problem is, the memory isn't his. It is one of his ancestors.
The scientists continually get Desmond, who was once an assassin, to lie down on a machine called the Animus. The Animus allows Desmond to see memories of his ancestors, and in this specific case, a person named Altair (all-tie-ear), which is Arabic for "The Flying One". Altair lived during the Third Crusade in 1191 and is a member of the Hashshashin that roughly translates to "assassin".
The game starts off with Desmond's first memory, which is of Altair and two fellow assassins’ on their way to recover a treasure and slay Robert de Sable, the Grand Master of the Templar Knights. On his way in, Altair leaves no man standing assassinating innocent by standers as he makes his way through. Once he finds de Sable, an un-stealth like move gets Altair thrown into the next room and one of his fellow assassin's killed while de Sable leaves with the treasure.
Because of this, Altair is then demoted to the lowest rank in the Assassin Order and all of his skills and weapons taken away. Now, Altair must travel to different cities such as Jerusalem and Acre and assassinate nine men in order to redeem himself. This is where the game truly starts.
Before setting of on each mission, Altair speaks with Al Mualim, the leader of the Assassins, who informs Altair on where to go and restores a weapon and a new skill. After speaking to him you can then leave the building and train your new skill, which only takes a couple of minutes and is definitely worth it. Once you get down to the gates you can get a horse and ride through what is known as "The Kingdom" which is pretty much the land that joins all the cities.
Throughout The Kingdom there will be random enemies to practice your skills with and viewpoints to climb up to light up your map or help in the completion of side quests. The Kingdom itself is rather large and can be bit confusing at first. You may find yourselves constantly pushing "select" to view the map to make sure you are taking the right path. If you want to get straight to the action then don't worry, after the first couple of assassinations, the game allows you to fast-forward your memory and will re-sync at the city entrance.
As you make your way through cities during each mission, it’s not hard to find yourself impressed at the amount of work and detail that went into creating them, especially when perched on a viewpoint where you get a glimpse of nearly the entire city. In a normal game you may notice the same couple of people placed everywhere or the same couple of buildings placed around in a city, but you won't find that in Assassin's Creed. Granted, the human models are used more than once and I'm sure the building models are used just as much as well. However, the point is that you will have a hard time noticing two of the exact same models. The amount of detail that is placed in Assassin's Creed really enhances the sensation that you are part of a living, breathing community.
Each city easily contains hundreds of civilians, guards, and buildings. If you kill someone, the people will scream. If you climb a building, onlookers will become curious and crowd the ground below you. It also seems that each and every possible roof to roof jump was meticulously planned out to deliver an adrenaline-filled experience; just be careful though as you may injure yourself from falling too far or in our case, drowning in a canal because we were more interested in performing parkour.
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Comments
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lurkingshadow89
- 2:37am EST - December 8th, 2007
- 3
A really great game only thing that could have been better was the movement are a little ps2 like with things like the horse. Besides that though the overall game is a most buy.
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outwar6010
- 6:02am EST - December 8th, 2007
- 12
whats wrong with you guys the game was amazing despite freezes itis 9/10 10/10 if freeze issue was resolved
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Wintee
- 6:49am EST - December 8th, 2007
- 13
Although it's a visually awesome game, and the roof/building running is near flawless I'm only giving this a 7.
Why? Because of the sheer lack of things to do.
You can ride a horse, sword fight, stealth kill, hide in some hay, sit on a bench, mug someone, interrogate and eavesdrop. Oh and climb things.
And that's about it. For the whole game. And it's the same tasks over and over again. Once you have completed the first two or three challenges there is a desperate lack of originality in what follows. Basically the game tries to be a historical mix of hitman in an open-ended grand theft auto city scape. And GTA is as far as they should have looked for gameplay. Dozens of sub-games to keep you happy. New original stuff cropping up all the way through the game.
Someone else commented on the forums about the fact that he can't duck. And while this doesn't spoil the game it would have been a sensible thing to add. Assassin, trying to hide. Hmm let's duck behind this wall. Nope, can't do that.
How about stealing someone's clothes? Nope.
How about concealing the body? Nope.
How about swimming - no, cos that would just be silly.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad game. The gameplay that they have provided is highly enjoyable. The fights are superb and you can relish performing a counter-movement with your sword and wasting an opponent with one blow.
If you have a fear of height, this game will have your stomach clenching when you perform death defying leaps from the top of a minarette.
The plot is tight and intriguing, infact it kept me playing the game far further than I expected to, after being dulled by the repetition.
Hopefully ubisoft will pick up on people's comments and improve the next one even more. I'd be more than happy to try again with some improvements.
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InfernoReaper
- 9:02am EST - December 8th, 2007
- 15
Wow. Good thing someone put spoilers right in the first paragraph for someone who HASN'T BOUGHT THE GAME YET! Thanks for the spoiler warning, Phil...
Now I have to go somewhere else to find a spoiler-free review. Great...
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Battlecraft
- 9:28am EST - December 8th, 2007
- 19
i thought the voice acting in FFVII was the worst in history
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