Assassin’s Creed (360) – Review
Assassin’s Creed, developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft, definitely has some of its roots in the previous Prince of Persia series also created by Ubisoft Montreal. But rather than continue to focus more on the challenges of using acrobats to move around obstacles, Assassin’s Creed uses those moves as part of routine needs to be an assassin at the latter end of the 12th century during the Crusades. Combining several interesting aspects of gameplay related to that, without turning this completely into a stealth-based title like Thief, makes the game extremely well done, despite the fact that the story itself has a significant blemish on the game.
Note that I do go into some spoilers (ones you learn 5 or so minutes into the game) as its necessary to describe them to talk about some of the features of the game.
Review Helpfulness: 
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Story: B
The story of Assassin’s Creed is actually set in 2012, where Desmond Miles, a lowly bartended, has been whisked away by a highly secretive company. Desmond learns that the company has developed a device called the Animus that allows them to look at memories of an ancestor of the user, and they seem highly interested in viewing the memories of Altair, a member of the Assassin’s Guild during the time of the Third Crusades in the Middle East and also one of Desmond’s long-past relatives. Altair, during the Crusade, was tasked with assassinating a Templar Knight but failed, and thus had been demoted to a novice within the Guild, but was then tasked to seek out nine men and assassinate them, allowing him to rise up in the ranks. But, as Altair performs these (and though insight Desmond gains), the reasoning for these assassinations becomes clear and sets up for potential world-wide consequences.
The story concept (a sci-fi re-experiencing of past events) works decently – it certainly helps to frame some of the gameplay concepts that normally limit the player as “memories not yet experienced” through the Animus. The fundamental story and the historical recreations are also done pretty well. Only a few elements of the story use pre-rendered scenes, most of the dialog is spoken in-engine and, as part of the Animus, you may experience “glitches” in the rendering that if you are fast enough to button press, you’ll switch to a different, more dramatic viewpoint of the events, such as bowmen sneaking in to line castle walls and taking aim at targets below while one of your targets rambles on. However, the story ends on a very poor note – while it certainly heavily-hands into a sequel, the final scene ends with no set up nor any resolution. Despite being the end of the story, this itself really hurt the plot, as the game had something really strong going for it until that point.
Gameplay: A
While you spent a little time as Desmond in 2012, most of the game is you in control of Altair as he seeks out his assassination targets. The game is played primarily in the third-person view as Altair works through the crowded streets of the cities of Damascus, Acre, and Jerusalem and the landscape between them. Like Ubisoft Montreal’s previous Prince of Persia games, Altair is very nimble, and can scale buildings to reach rooftops, then alight across these and the gaps between them while out of sight from the crowds. (In fact, it took me a moment to understand why the gameplay to this point felt like those games – I didn’t realize that Ubisoft Montreal was behind both games).
Assassins are meant to work by stealth, and to that extent, the game breaks actions into two areas: low profile and high profile actions, with all high profile actions requiring the right trigger to be pressed to complete. Low profile actions include walking, gently pushing people out of the way, using ladders to climb to rooftops, and blending in with the crowd: actions that otherwise don’t bring attention to yourself. High profile actions include running, scaling building walls without ladders, forcefully pushing people out of the way, and, of course, attacking people. As you walk through these cities, you’ll have an indicator that tells you if you’re being watched and moreso if by guards. Perform certain high profile actions during these times and you may find yourself creating a high alert in the city, requiring you to face the guards, escape to a place where they can lose sight of you after which you need to hide in haystacks or blend in carefully with the crowd to reset the city’s alarm. Early in the game, this aspect is usually pretty simple to do, but once you get to the later missions, ditching the guards without incident can be rather tough, particularly when you get harassed by beggars or pushed aside by the mentally unstable that wander the streets.
To perform assassinations, you first need to visit the city’s local assassins bureau to learn a bit more about your assigned target and what area of the city he is working in. From there, you need to scout through the city, looking for places to eavesdrop on conversations, street preachers that may be able to provide more information under threat of force, the target’s associates with written information and loose pockets, or even other members of the Assassin’s Guide that have information in exchange for dealing with their own assignments, all in order to collect enough information to determine the best place to strike against the target. While you can walk around the city and find these information missions, you’re also able to climb up the tallest towers in the city and perform “synchronization” which maps out the nearby area and identifies where these information missions can be found through the Animus. Once you’ve performed three information missions, you can then return to the safehouse, confirm your strike target, and then begin the assassination mission, generally where you must sneak onto the premises, wait for the right moment, and then strike. Of course, you may happen to miss or only partially harming the target, which can then lead to a chase on foot through the city, or a large sword battle. However, once you have your target down, your mission is complete – as part of the story, you’ll have one-on-one with your target in the void space of the Animus – but then you must make it back to the safehouse once you’ve moved secretly away to bring down the city from high alert. The setup of each of these missions very subtly reminds me of Crackdown, though unlike that game, the information you learn doesn’t necessarily help your assassination attempt as where in Crackdown, dealing with the underlings would hinder the abilities the lead boss had. It also seems strange that you can do any 3 intelligence missions typically out of 6 available and still get the same information. It would have been more interesting if the intelligence missions include multipart ones – maybe you learned that a certain exchange would be occurring through an informant, but the location would be needed to be learned via pickpocketing one of the attendees. Still, the game is very freeform in how you approach these missions and definitely feels very open-ended.
To assist you in your assassination, you have your fists, as well as granted over time a short sword, knifes, and throwing knifes. Additionally, you get probably one of the better weapons in the game, a retractable blade that sits on Altair’s left arm which allows him to walk right up to a person and assassinate him quietly, even if surrounded by a crowd. As you complete assassinations, you’ll gain additional special moves such as being able to dodge attacks or to counter an attack, possibly landing the killing blow. The combat system is decent, though certainly not difficult – the enemy AI is pretty straight forward and rarely work together beyond circling you, but it is very easy to spot when they attack. The only difficulty tends to be is that either the guards’ attack strength increases in later assassinations, or that they can more often parry your attacks – plus larger numbers means that you have to dispatch more of them before the battle is down.
The game represents health through a “synchronization bar” which represents how in tune Desmond is with Altair’s memories. Should Altair fall, the memory is restarted at the most recent checkpoint, typically after you have completed the various tasks that are available. You can gain more synch bars by performing the various tasks laid out to you in the game – each intelligence mission, each tower synchronization, as well as by saving townspeople that are being harassed by the city guards, adds up such that every 15 of these that you do, you gain another bar. Additional, with each completed assassination, you gain a bar as well.
Other concepts of the Animus affecting gameplay are used pretty well. The main cities in the game are laid out in three sectors each, and your first visit to each city, you’re only given the freedom to explore one sector. While this is normally an artificial barrier for a video game (such as Grand Theft Auto 3’s used of a broken bridge), Assassin’s Creed presents this as a virtual wall that you cannot pass because the memory of that city at that time doesn’t exist. It’s still artificial, but flows with the overall game concept. The game lets you target onto others, and when targeting they are outlined with similar “glitches” as part of what Desmond sees. One can also, when fully synchronized, use “Eagle Vision” that colors all people in sight, highlighting them in colors to identify them as friend, foe, or even the target of their assassination.
The pacing of the game is a little odd. I found the first 3 assassinations to be rather mundane – not necessarily too easy, but following too much in the same pattern of what needed to be done, but once I got to the 4th and further targets, I felt that either between the increase of the challenge of the game, or the somewhat more varied locals helped to make the rest of the game feel much more exciting. The game does provide an excellent learning curve in learning how best to approach certain situations.
For those that are collection hounds, this game definitely is for you. Besides getting achievements for completely all the available intelligence missions, scaling all the towers, and saving all the citizens that need your help, you can also find various banners and flags scattered about the cities – some in rather hard to reach places. This poses another achievement point quest for full collection of all these. Fortunately, once you’ve completed the game, you’re free to revisit any of the memories to achieve these goals, so you don’t need to deal with them in a single shot.
Value/Replayability: B+
The full game took me about 15 hours to complete, and felt completely appropriate for its length once I got over the initial slow sections. Collect-aholics will likely get several more hours out of the game as well.
While the game’s plot does not change with repeated play, the fact that you can approach various missions and assassinations in a number of ways can help to increase the variety within the game. Do you try to take out a target from the rooftops or do you get up close and personal to deal with him? However, outside of these decision, there’s not much else that you can do to affect the game’s conclusion.
Graphics: A
Assassin’s Creed graphics are outstanding. Still borrowing from the Prince of Persia works, Altair’s movements are incredibly fluid and helps to make much of the game feel realistic. The cities are well modeled towards historical accuracy each with its own general flavor of architecture, though there are notable “copy and paste” sections within parts of the city. The game handles the populous crowds quite well, and the vistas once you get overhead are pretty amazing to look at. I did encounter a couple points where people did “pop up” after I completed a task, possibly moving on from the task quickly, but that was a rare occasion. The use of the “glitches” from the Animus in gameplay is also a pretty nice effect.
Audio: A
The voice actors all do their parts well, particularly with the assassinated targets when they are given a brief chance to speak before they rest forever. The noises of crowds and bazaars as you walk through the cities is well done; the only major problem here is that these people aren’t given as many lines to work with, so, say if you start scaling the walls, you’ll hear maybe one of a few canned responses that get old rather faster. It would have been nice to have subtitles – some of the accents are a little thick but regardless, I generally find my comprehension better when I have both available.
Overall: A
Assassin’s Creed is a pretty amazing game. Save for a major failing in the story area, most of the rest of the game is implemented very well, and provides a great way of combining the acrobatics and agility of the Prince of Persia games with an open world approach to make for very flexible gameplay, without the game going overboard on stealth elements. As Ubisoft has promised that at least two more games to follow, it will be interesting where they will take the gameplay from there.
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