• Posted December 8th, 2007 at 06:31 EDT by
• 46 Comments

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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