Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft Montreal’s long awaited action-adventure title, offers an innovative story, incredible graphics, and a ground-breaking control scheme that takes context sensitivity to new heights. However, despite these strengths, the game falls just short of greatness by failing to deliver enough mission variety to keep players completely engaged for the entire 15 to 20 hour experience. That’s not to say that Assassin’s Creed isn’t a wonderful experience overall… it’s certainly worth your time. It’s just that for all of Assassin’s Creed polish and innovation on the graphics and storytelling side of things, there is a surprising lack of game play variety that becomes tiresome as the game builds to its finale.
Set during the tail end of the 3rd Crusade in 12th century, Assassin’s Creed style and subject matter are heavily inspired by the film Kingdom of Heaven. You play the role of Altair, a cocksure assassin who has recently been stripped of his rank and forced to prove himself by killing key figures who are instrumental in continuing the battle for Jerusalem. The cities and surrounding country side are as sizable and open ended as Grand Theft Auto or Crackdown, and are chocked full of thousands of NPCs wandering around to challenge players who must navigate the sea of bit-mapped faces. In addition to Masyaf, the Assassin stronghold, you will have access to 3 of the massive cities: Acre, which is controlled by the Christians and comprised primarily of castles and stone structures, Damascus, which is held by Saladin’s Muslim forces and has a distinctly Middle Eastern feel, and picturesque Jerusalem, also occupied by the Muslims and home to numerous religious landmarks. Each of these cities is gorgeous and immersive, and constructed such that the player can climb most any surface with skills on par with the likes of Spiderman. Altair finds handhelds without questionable animations or physics breaking your extension of disbelief as he climbs vertical surfaces, and this mechanic is probably most entertaining aspect of the game.
In addition to unlocking areas of the map, the reward for climbing tall structures is the exhilirating leap you get to make afterwards. Luckily, there’s a soft pile of hay wating at the bottom.
The graphics are, in a word, spectacular. Ambient lighting changes based on the position of the clouds, character models are detailed and lifelike, animations are superb across the board, and the authenticity of the art design makes you feel as though you’ve been transported to another world. Depth of field is realistically subtle, and light filters provide a great deal of emotion to the proceedings. All in all, I’d say this is the best looking game Ubisoft has ever produced, which is really saying something considering how good the Splinter Cell games have always looked. When you arrive at a new city and are treated with a panoramic view without the tiniest bit of slowdown, you know you’re playing a special game.
Each of the game’s 3 cities contains a trio of historic figures which you are tasked with murdering. Although many people were worried that Assassin’s Creed was going to be little more than a game where a Muslim murders Christians simply for the sake of being controversial, Ubisoft Montreal wisely sidestepped such culturally sensitive material by having Altair assassinate both Christians and Muslims, ostensibly as a means of ending the 3rd Crusade. He’s an assassin of peace, ironically… something Altair becomes painfully aware of during post-assassination dream-sequences in which his victims soliloquize and plead their cases to him from beyond the grave.
Where Assassin’s Creed really excels is in the way it manages context sensitivity. Considering how fluidly the game plays despite the sheer amount of movement and combat options available to players, this game really breaks new ground and raises the bar for action-adventure platforming. Assassin’s Creed features one of the most parsimonious interfaces I’ve ever seen, and it’s a delight to play simply because the mechanics work so damn well. The animations flow together and look so spot-on that simply navigating around the gorgeous environments is an absolute blast, and the best part is that none of this shucking and jiving requires a complicated control scheme.
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Great game, but I just had to give it less than a 9. It’s close, though. More like an 8.9999999 lol.