You are Altair, a skilled, and extremely arrogant, assassin.
You're also Desmond Miles, a guy just trying to get by in life, until he had
the unfortunate occurrence of being kidnapped by a group of unsavory
individuals. Now this may all seem confusing, but stay with me.
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| Ah, a prison with a view. |
You see, there are two stories, and in a way, two games,
that make up the Assassin's Creed experience. One is set in a present day/near
future world, where you, as Desmond Miles, have been abducted. It turns out you are special, because one of
your ancestors played the key role in an important event during the Third
Crusade. The group that abducted you, Abstergo Industries, knows this, and they
have a machine which they can use to access your ancestors' memories, via the
human body's ability to store genetic memories. It's through this portion of
the game that we learn many of the more interesting aspects of the game's
story: who is really behind your abduction, what do they want, and just what it
could mean for humanity.
Your time as Desmond is purely story driven, and it rewards
the curious individual that goes about exploring his prison, finding information
on computers, or lifting clearance keys from unsuspecting personal. Honestly,
this portion of the game was very engaging, even if there was no action.
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| An email marked classified? Don't mind if I do. |
The vast majority of the time, you are that Altair guy. After
an initial attempt to access the specific Altair memory Abstergo is interested
in fails miserably, your are setup at the beginning of the chain of events that
leads to that point. So you come in just in time to see some of the cool
abilities and equipment assassins have, before you blow it all away by spitting
on the code of conduct that rules the assassins - the assassin's creed.
Of course, your punishment for being such a pompous jerk is
to be bumped back down to the bottom of totem pole, which includes giving up
most of your abilities and equipment. After being conveniently retrained in the
ways of the assassins, you are dispatched on a mission to kill your first
target. Unfortunately, nothings easy, and you first have to gather information
about this particular individual. It is here that the game takes a turn for the
worse.
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| Deadliest. Gargoyle. Ever. |
You see, each mission segment takes place in one of three
districts - poor, middle, rich - in one of three cities - Damascus,
Jerusalem, and Acre
- and each follows the same pattern. Upon entering a new district for the first
time (you are prevented from doing so until the specific mission is unlocked),
you will find that your map is blank, so its time to climb some towers, lots of
towers, actually, a lot of the same tower copied and pasted about 27 times
through each city. Now that you can actually see what's going on, you can find
the six errands you need to complete so you have enough information to
assassinate your mark. There are 9 different types of errands you can complete,
unless your on a console, in which case there are only 5. Oh, and 6 errands per
mission with 9 missions, is a total of 54, so its safe to say you are going to
have to pickpocket, or race, or interrogate, or eavesdrop, plenty of times.
Thankfully, you don't have to actually complete all 6 errands to unlock the
assassination event, but the information any errand above the required minimum
provides is "helpful."
If you can't tell, the above is a bit of a sore point for
me. I took the time to do every errand, climb every tower, save every citizen,
etc. While there are certain benefits to doing this, such as being able to
locate everything on your map, or utilize the NPCs that are spawned when you
save citizens to help escape detection, or knowing that your target leaves the
back door to his chamber open, the impact such actions make is minor, and not
really worth the time it takes to do it. If you do pick this up, save yourself
a whole hell of a lot of hassle, and just do the very minimum. Trust me on this
one.
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| Hmmm, which one doesn't belong? |
The funny thing though, is that while your missions, the
environments, and essentially the game itself, is a lesson in redundancy, the
core mechanics that underpin the whole thing, are pretty cool. As an assassin,
you are supposed to be an unseen, deadly force. The game supports this notion,
in that you can take high profile and low profile actions, which will draw the
respective amount of attention to you - think, pulling out a sword and cutting
a guy's head off, versus cautiously stabbing him in that back, and walking away
before he even hits the ground. If you are detected, every guy with a weapon
that sees you will attack, and there are a lot of them walking the streets of
the war torn middle east. So you need to escape, and hide until they stop
looking for you, which is done by using various objects, like hay stacks, to
disappear, once you have broken line of sight. Consider avoiding situations
like this if at all possible.
For those that would rather spit on the assassin's creed
themselves, your combat options are pretty cool too. The hidden blade is a
great tool for sneaking up on someone and quickly dispatching them, or any time
you can catch someone off kilter. Likewise, throwing knives are perfect for
taking care of that pesky archer. Most of the time though, you'll be faced with
groups of enemies, 4-5 is not uncommon, and that means a real blade. It can be
a little tough to get a strike in, while avoiding being attacked yourself, but
pretty early on you learn the counter ability, and once you do, it doesn't
matter if you were facing 100 enemies, combat becomes very, very easy.
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| You would think that with all these bodies on the ground, the last guy would get the hint. |
Its really the story that drives the game, and I have to say
Ubisoft did an excellent job there. The novelty of the combat will wear off as
the game progresses, and even the way you move around, hoping up posts and beams,
and scampering up walls, which invokes the feeling of a third person version of
Mirrors Edge, loses its luster after long enough. The key to enjoying this
game is really to only do the minimum required to advance, otherwise you feel
like you're banging your head against a wall, and that is quite disappointing,
because it feels like this game could have been so much more, if not for the
poor mission options, and a few other extremely repetitive parts of the game.
I picked this up for $10, but because of what the game is, I
wished it had been $5 or less. Note that I did get the sequel, before I even
played this one, for $7, so its sure to be around in that price range. Still,
for my investment, I got around 20 hours of gameplay, though I can't say I enjoyed
all of it, and that's reflected in my final score. Hopefully, the new
environment and characters of the second can rise above the trappings of
redundancy in this one, which is an average game, at 5 out of 10.
So, the final breakdown:
Score: 5/10
Suggested Price: $5
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