Review: Assassin’s Creed

Game: Assassin’s Creed
Format: XBox 360
Developer: EA Montreal
Publisher: Electronic Arts

November is always a very exciting time of year in the gaming calender. Mostly because every man and his bloody dog decides to release their game in November in an attempt to garner a few extra sales thanks to Christmas and the January sales. This year being no different of course, we’ve had the likes Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 all coming  within a week or two of each other. This means us nerds have had to file for bankruptcy just in time to start the Christmas shopping.

I’ll admit, I do have them all. Left 4 Dead 2, Dragon Age: Origins (although I did trade it in on the account that the Xbox 360 version is rubbish), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and most strangely Assassin’s Creed 2. “Why most strangely?” I hear you ask? Because, to be honest, at the time I wasn’t into the whole Assassin’s Creed thing; I simply went out on a whim and bought it… and am I ever glad I did!? Assassin’s Creed 2 for me is the best of the November bunch, and quite possibly the best game I’ve played all year.

However this isn’t a review of Assassin’s Creed 2, this is the review of it’s predecessor. A game which I hadn’t played until a month or two ago, and a game that was kindly donated to me from a friend of mine. I say friend, he is now my most bitter enemy for putting me through such torture. “Such torture?” you cry? Yes I can safely say that playing this game was the single most torturous experience I’ve ever felt. I’d have rather been Chinese water boarded than play this game. In other words…. I don’t like this game.

There you go. Review done. Bye.

In fact, saying I don’t like this game is actually putting it quite mildly. What I mean to say is I absolutely, 100%, with every bone in my body loathe this bloody game!!!! Why? Well lets get to that in a minute, but first let us discuss the positives you can take from the game (from which there are very few).

First of all the game is simply stunning. I’ve recently joined the ranks of you graphics whores out there and now find myself with a great big HD TV sitting on my desk (not by my own will might I add, it was bought for me, as a birthday present). Assassin’s Creed was the first game I had loaded up on the brand new TV. To say I was blown away by a) everything looks a trillion times better on an HD TV and b) how awesome the game itself actually looked. Yes, the game looks great. OK, better than great. Graphically it’s superior to most of November 2009′s big hitters, and this game is 2 years old. This is a remarkable achievement.

The lush setting is very refreshing and beautiful.

So there are the positives. Now for all the negatives. Actually I joke, there’s one other thing that you can say about the game in a positive light; the concept is brilliant. It’s utterly unique and fresh, there is no other game like it. However, I can’t even begin to imagine how they would pitch a game like this to the big wigs at Ubisoft, but I think it went a bit like this:

So right we’ve got this idea for a game, right? You wake up in this unknown place; you don’t know where you are and you have to follow orders from some strange bearded guy and a suspiciously good looking girl… And what happens is you get in this KERAZY machine that takes you back in time where you play out the memories of your ancestor, who is an assassin… And it turns out that it’s all a big conspiracy; the bearded guy is working for the templars, who are after pieces of eden in order to control the world. But you have to do as he says or he will kill… And in fact even when you’re done and your ancestor’s memory leads them to where the pieces of eden are, they will kill you anyway because they’re at war with the assassins… And it turns out that you yourself are an assassin. So what do you think?

Anyway, whilst the game concept is brilliant; the story itself is poorly executed. It’s far too predictable and any twists in the plot (of which there is one right at the end - but I won’t spoil it for you) can be seen a mile off. It doesn’t help when two of the main characters are so irritating that every time they open their mouths to speak you want to pull them out of the TV by the scruff of the neck and repeatedly headbutt them ’til their face turns to mush. Your boss, Al Mualim (pronounced Al-Moo-Al-Him) is the typical b*stard in waiting. The way in which he makes your character, Altaïr, jump through hoops like a little dog throughout the game is most comparable to a paedophile grooming their next victim. Needless to say he’s a prick. And Altaïr (pronounced Al-Tye-Ear), the main character you play… God is he irritating! This is mainly because not only does he act like an angst ridden, brooding teen but he also dresses like a d*ck too; what are those white robes all about? He couldn’t be any more more emo if he tried, unless of course he dyed his robes black, sported eye-liner, facial piercings and a sweeping, black fringe so big it could take your eye out at thirty paces (although I suspect he has actually got one, it’s just hidden underneath that white hood of his).

Also, for an assassin he’s pretty rubbish. The gameplay has many, many problems and one of these is when you’re doing an assassination. There is only one way to kill your target, that being a hidden blade right to the neck. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the whole point of an assassin that they can kill from anywhere, with anything? If you ask me Altaïr isn’t even an assassin at all, just a second rate murderer.

Anyway, on to the free running controls. Gosh, are they broken or what? The controls themselves are simple, hold right trigger and A and you’ll climb, jump and go anywhere. However doing this also makes you sprint. So as you’re running away from killing the target you’ve just had to kill with your hidden blade in broad daylight in front of everyone, thanks to the limited ways in which you can dispose of your target, the game fails to recognise that no, you don’t want to jump up that wall because you can’t reach the ledge at the top. It just tries tries it anyway; halting your escape and causing the utmost frustration.

What makes it worse is the game itself feels like a chore. There are tedious travel sections where you ride from city to city on your horse. These are made even boring when the distances between cities are massive, they takes literally 10 minutes. That’s 10 minutes of just riding a horse! If I wanted to do that I’d play Horse Life Adventures on the Nintendo DS for God’s sake!

Everything is a monotonous drag. You’re constantly doing the same things over and over: save this citizen, eavesdrop on that conversation, interrogate this person, kill these people, over and over again… In every city… At least 3 times each!

To try and break up the monotony of doing the same thing over and over, they give you optional tasks such as the collection of a billion flags that are all hidden in ridiculous places where you can’t find them… FUN! It’s like the hidden orbs in Crackdown, but not at all enjoyable and with little incentive other than achievements. At least in Crackdown the orbs you collected made your character stronger. Thus, you felt more compelled to collect them. Here, all you’re doing is collecting stupid flags to get stupid achievements. Whoopteedoo!

I think the key words for this review are “boring” and “limited”. There’s so little to do except the same thing over and over, making this one of the most tedious and torturous games I’ve ever played. I find humour in the fact that as soon as I started playing Assassin’s Creed, my Xbox had decided to start overheating as if it were disgusting that I would put such a game in its disk tray. In fact, that pretty much sums up my entire experience with this game.

Review Round Up

Graphics: 5/5 –  Graphics are probably the only thing positive you can really take from the game and still are better than most games released this year despite it being 2 years old.

Sound: 4/5 –  Some nice voice acting, just a shame the characters they were portraying were cliché and one dimensional.

Gameplay: 2/5 –  Do you like doing the same thing over and over? With broken controls and little incentive to play at all? Then first of all your a masochist, but second of all this games for you. Gameplay = Rubbish.

Longevity: 2/5 –  Thank the heavens for Assassin’s Creed 2. It has put so many wrongs in its predecessor right that hopefully everyone will just forget about this game altogether.

Overall: 2/5 –  Overall I give the game 2 blades to the throat out of 5. Over hyped, boring and tedious. However it does look pretty.

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Tags: Assassin's Creed, crofterz, Review, Ubisoft, Videogames, XBox 360

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