Assassin's Creed Review

Assassin's Creed


Genre: Action/Adventure
R.R.P: £40 - £50
Age Rating: 15
Release Date: Out Now
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Format: Xbox 360, PS3

Welcome to the Third Crusade, the setting of Assassin's Creed and home to some of the most retarded guards in exsistance. I'm serious they're on par, if not dumber, than MGS 2's guards of "What was that just now?" ilk. Now anyone who reads my reviews knows that I generally don't open with a rant, but I just had to get that of my chest, I'll be normal now.

Assassin's plot (dare I call it that) has been quoted within the range of "Deep and meaningful" to "complete and utter bull", I tend to agree with the latter. Altair is one of the most unimaginative characters in exsistance, and lines such as "You kidnapped me! I don't even know you!" kinda finish the guy off. I'm sure that any great story teller will assure that it's a bad move to reveal the main plot twist at the beginning of the narrative, Assasins Creed ignores this and therefore nothing is gripping, mysterious or anything else!

Plot and AI aside, the game holds up fairly well. The graphics are lush, with cities brimming with life, and burning in the sun. Indeed Assassin's graphics are among the best I've ever seen, with the games only noticable graphical flaws being clipping and decent facial animation. The occaisional weak patch of graphics occur in between assasination but other than that the game is beautiful and runs without lag.

Combat works well, but could have been tougher. As guards only attack one at a time and rarely employ any tactics other than circling the player, you can happily resort to counter attacks and take on thousands of guards at the same time. This would be an excellent point to explain the controls, if they were easy to explain, all you need to know is that they are perfect and intuitive.

Finally climbing, which is what Assassins Creed is all about really. Altair can climb on anything, and more importantly he actually climbs on it! His feet actually touch everything they're meant to, as do his hands. Although this is astounding and all it should have been done years ago. Having said that I do Ubisoft for doing it.

Unfortunatly Assassin's good points end here. Missions follow an incredibly repetitive structure where the player gathers information by pickpocketing, eaves dropping, interogations and on occasion doing favours for informants (the more bizarre of these being the collection of flags), an then undertakes the assasination. Unfortunatley thats all there is to do, which begs me to ask the question, why give us the sandbox? My first answer would be to kill indiscriminantly, but killing civilians hurts you, meaning the sandbox world completely and utterly bemuses me.

7/10 - Assassin's Creed isn't exactly special, but it remains buyable or at the very least rentable.