Assassin’s Creed is one of the most highly awaited and anticipated games of 2007, will it be going for the GOTY? (Game of the Year) Let’s find out….
The game is set in the Middle East in the year 1129AD, you play as the Assassin Altair, who was stripped of his rank and had all his weapons taken away from him because of a mission he failed. Luckily for Altair he has been a given a second chance to redeem himself, and this is where the main story begins, for you have been given the task of assassinating 9 targets and for each target you successfully assassinate, you gain a rank and one of your weapons back.
Most of the games objectives take place within the various cities, so when you arrive the first thing you will need to do is find the information you need in order to locate and assassinate your target. There are various ways to get the information you need, but before you do this you must find a view point which will in turn allow you to find the objectives and key locations on your map. Fortunately finding the view point is fairly simple as it is already marked on your map, so once you reach it all you need to do is climb up to the top of the building (it’s usually the highest point in the city and has an amazing view) and press ‘Y’, by doing this the locations you are looking for, such as the assassins bureau will become available.
The Assassin’s Bureau is usually your starting point for finding a target, during your visit here they will tell you where to go in order to find the information you need. Once you reach your destination there are various ways to gain information depending on the objective, this can range from eaves dropping in on conversations and pick pocketing to assassinating, unfortunately though these objectives are the same in every city and therefore the repetitiveness may put some people off, which is a pity really.
Another problem with Assassins Creed is that the games AI (Artificial Intelligence) isn’t very good at all, you will find yourself in many situations where you will kill a guard right next to another and they won’t do anything apart from saying “Who did this deed”, even though you’re the only one there, in fact no one in the city seems to do anything if suddenly you assassinate someone and they fall on the floor, all they do is walk by as if nothing happened. Seeing as this game has been in development for a long time you would have thought that the game would have been strong in the AI department but unfortunately it isn’t. To add to the frustrations with the game, enemies seem to fight one at a time, instead of overpowering you, they will wait for you to take care of one enemy before another approaches, and unfortunately as you can counter your way through most battles the game does little to challenge you.
As touched on above, the combat in Assassins Creed is quite poor and not very satisfying, you can defeat most enemies by locking on to them using the Left Trigger and Right Trigger and then pressing the X button to counter them when they try to attack you. You can defeat every enemy this way, and there’s not much point using any other method, you can also grab and throw enemies by pressing B, and pull off combo’s by timing two hits correctly. On the positive side, as you progress through the game throwing knives become available and these are good for taking enemies out from a distance and can be used in a fight to, which at least makes for a change.
Controlling Altair is fairly easy, you can scale buildings by holding the ‘Right Trigger’ ‘A Button’ and ‘up on the left Analogue stick’, however this feels very automated and unsatisfying. Of course Altair does have some other tricks up his sleeve to help him along the way, for example, holding down A will allow you to blend, which allows you to sneak past guards without getting caught, while holding the right trigger and ’A Button’ will allow you to run and holding B enable you push to civilians to one side should they be hassling you. Weapons are chosen by pressing the directional button on the D-pad for a choice of dagger, sword, hidden knives and throwing knives. Altair can also use stealth kills, these are fairly simple to pull off, you simply select the secret knife by pressing up on the D-pad and then sneak up to the enemy before pressing X to perform this move.
Unfortunately Assassin’s Creed is not the masterpiece title everyone was hoping for, it is highly repetitive with a huge lack of variety and poor AI, flaws which makes it feel very disappointing after all the hype, however the games graphics and story are very good, there is an immense amount of detail in the cities and they all look extremely realistic and while there is some slight tearing it isn’t too bad. The story is very immersive and will probably be the main reason most people will continue to play to the very end, it’s just a pity about the flaws.
