Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Release Date: 4/8/2008

Available Exclusively On

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. This is a saying heard throughout Assassin’s Creed, and it really sticks with you. So does the thick plot that has come to take the game industry by storm, as well as one of the greatest game characters of all time: Altair. The plot is actually weird at first because it’s a sci-fi story. You are actually Desmond Miles, captured by modern-world Templars. They stick you in an animus and use your DNA to access your ancestor’s memories to find the Piece of Eden, which can be used to control people’s minds. That one ancestor is Altair, set during the crusades. The second story is of Altair, who ends up losing his rank and status among the Assassin Brotherhood by failing a mission due to his eagerness and stupidity. Your master, Al Mualim, sends on special missions to assassinate key leaders throughout the holy land (Acre, Jerusalem, and Damascus) to keep them from taking the Piece of Eden and using it to win the war.

As you can see, the plot is very interesting, with a lot of twists. How is the game, though? You have a huge open world that is full of side missions and hundreds of buildings to climb. Assassin’s Creed has a parkour climbing system as well as a puppeteering system. You control each of Altair’s limbs in two different states. The “socially acceptable” state allows you to use eagle vision, which can show enemies and key targets. You can gently push people away from you, and this is key because if you’re running around the city knocking people over, the guards will come after you, and towards the end of the game, everyone is highly suspicious of you, and just a few people knocked over will have the entire guard on your tail. The third thing is obviously combated, but if you hold down the run button, you start climbing buildings, grabbing people to toss them, and jumping around.

Assassin’s Creed really tried to introduce crowd psychology into the game, and it works here but does feel limited. If you climb buildings, people will react by stopping, staring, and saying things accordingly. If you use ladders, people don’t mind so much. While using rooftops is faster and keeps you away from most guards, you must watch out for guards on rooftops who will shoot you with arrows if you don’t get down, kill them, or move away quickly. The climbing works well enough, but there are some control issues, clipping issues, and other issues with the camera. When Altair is facing a different way than the camera, he will jump in his direction instead of the way you’re telling him to. Also, if you run around a pole or near a crate, he’ll start climbing it instead of just jumping over or going around. This can get downright frustrating when you are running away from a dozen guards and trying to find a hiding spot.

The game also introduces anonymity via a symbol near your health bar, which stays white when no one suspects you but will turn yellow when you are watched and flash red when guards are on you. When it does this, get away quickly or kill whoever is watching you. Don’t just kill out in the open, or people will run around screaming and calling guards. Get away from dead bodies quickly because guards will come by and try to find out who killed them, or citizens will give you away. If you are caught, you need to kill all guards after you or hide. To do this, you must break their line of sight, and the symbol will flash yellow. When it does find a hiding spot quickly, it turns red again. You can hide on benches between people, on stacks of hay, in groups of monks praying, or on draped boxes on rooftops. Stay there for a few seconds, and you will be anonymous again. You can avoid all this chaos by just jogging, staying calm, not flailing around and jumping around like a monkey in crowded areas, etc.

This whole crowd system is really something else and works well, but it feels repetitive and predictable because of the recycled sayings and animations, and it always happens the same way. The combat is the same way because, while you can gain new abilities, it feels like a counter-festival. You can attack with a sword or short sword and throw daggers, but most guards always block, so you just stand there with the block button held down and wait for someone to attack and then counter, which is usually an instant kill. This gets repetitive, and the combat isn’t as deep as it could be since combos are limited and animations are repeated often. It does control well and feels smooth, so I guess that’s better than broken.

The most repetitive thing and the game’s biggest flaw are the constantly repeated missions that repeat dozens and dozens of times. You can save citizens, do some time-trial flag gathering missions, escort missions, assassination missions (probably the most fun), interrogation, eavesdropping, pickpocketing, and climbing tall buildings to find viewpoints to put more missions on your map in that area. Sure, they are fun at first, but after you have saved the 30th citizen or climbed the 50th building, it gets old, and you just want it to end. Some more mission diversity would have been nice.

While it’s cool to be an assassin, sneaking up behind a guard and shoving a punch dagger in his gut and then running away while he falls to the ground without anyone suspecting otherwise is satisfying, and you must look good doing it too. Assassin’s Creed looks amazing, even today, and the PC version sports DirectX 10 graphics with some slightly higher resolution textures. The game looks a lot better than console versions and is well worth another play-through just for that alone. While the graphics are amazing technically and artistically, the game feels very Middle Eastern, with a great soundtrack to support that and voice acting, and the whole game feels true to its time. The architecture is great, as are the clothing, lifestyles, and jobs people do in the game, but it all kind of looks the same with a lot of grays, browns, and whites.

Overall, Assassin’s Creed is an amazing experience with a story you will talk about long after you finish the game, great crowd simulation, and the true feeling of being an assassin. If there was some more mission diversity, visual diversity, and smoother controls, the game would be perfect. This is a game you cannot miss, and every gaming fan should play it.

Reviewed On

Xbox 360 Controller for Windows