Published by Ubisoft
Platform: PC
There were a great many things that I loved about this game, well-developed in almost every aspect. The free-play style of story progression is much more enjoyable than the more linear progression of similar games (Legacy of Cain, anyone?) the combat is both intuitive and exciting, the movement was fluid, the story was engaging, and having a tangible reward for scaling all the highest buildings was the icing on the cake.
There are many games that provide bizarre, in-game explanations for their mechanics for things like life bars or save points. Assassin's Creed is unique for the verisimilitude provided by The Animus. You play as Desmond, a bartender snatched up by a mysterious organization, and forced to operate a machine (The Animus) to access genetic memories of his ancestor. The majority of the game is played as the assassin Altaïr, perceived through this machine. In order to progress through your memories, you have to maintain synchronization up to the desired end-game memory, and doing things like beating up civilians, getting stabbed in the face, or falling from a high building causes you to lose this synchronization. In the event that synchronization is lost completely, the machine then returns you to the most recent stable memory. Even better, this amazing technology allows you to skip past the more boring parts of the story, such as traveling between cities, and sleeping at the Assassin's Bureau. However, this system is by no means perfect. I had a little trouble accepting that anyone would be okay after a 200 ft. fall into a cart of hay, even if I looked awesome doing it. I was indeed dismayed to discover that Altaïr never learned to swim, as falling in water deeper than a foot resulted in DEATH.
The brilliant musical score from Jesper Kyd is indeed a nice touch, and helped me to ignore those times when Altaïr's cape glitched through pretty much everything. I felt a real sense of urgency as I fled aggressors across rooftops, and a real sense of serenity when I
was perched high above the city. The interaction with the environment feels very natural, and there were very few times where I didn't start climbing on something just because it was fun, especially with bystanders shooting snide comments like, "He's going to hurt himself. And when he does, I won't help him!" The map is helpful, but I frequently found myself treating streets as obstacles to leap over rather than pathways on which to walk. Rooftops are home to guards ready to stick Altaïr full of arrows, but with a little practice, I learned that a skilled assassin can dispose of an archer before he can finish telling you that you're not supposed to be there. It's pretty simple: run up, and stab them in the neck before they get a chance to draw a sword. If you're lucky, their body falls from the roof, and you get to hear the guards down below shouting pointlessly, "Who did this!?" If you're feeling particularly sadistic, you can even pick them off from above with your throwing knives.
Oh, the combat. How I loved the combat. With a full arsenal, you can choose from your wristblade, longsword, short blade/throwing knives, or your fists. When you piss off a few guards, your choices are effectively limited to the short blade and the longsword, but both of these are loads of fun. Combat is much more a system of timing than complicated and frantic sequences of buttons, and after a bit of practice, I found myself intentionally taking on enemies by the dozens. The counterattack is indisputably the most powerful ability at your disposal, responsible for somewhere around 90% of my kills. What makes the combat so engaging, at least to me, is the sheer brutality. A very dark part of me is obscenely delighted when I hear the distinctive crack when the
short blade is plunged into an adversary's skull. The ground doesn't get stained red, but you do get to see sprays of blood when a throat gets slashed or a knight gets impaled. And if you're really bloodthirsty, you can hang around your collection of corpses until more meat shows up to get added to the pile. If you're lucky, one of them might even make a run for his life, and you can chase him down and take him out with the wristblade. As enjoyable as the exploration happens to be, it's the excellent fighting system that kept me engaged hour after hour. It's refreshing to see such a simple system so expertly deployed.
The extra plot events often seemed silly ("Collect all the flags I lost and I will tell you some interesting information!"), but they remained fun no less. If those citizens only knew that the only reason I saved them was because it meant I got to kill a bunch of people....
All-in-all, it is an excellent game, even through the repetition. It helps a lot that my Logitech gamepad was supported, though I had to learn that when it said "Button x" it really meant "Button x+1". This is a minor glitch I am willing to overlook. I would have to say I recommend this title to anyone who enjoys action/adventure games.
Platform: PC
There were a great many things that I loved about this game, well-developed in almost every aspect. The free-play style of story progression is much more enjoyable than the more linear progression of similar games (Legacy of Cain, anyone?) the combat is both intuitive and exciting, the movement was fluid, the story was engaging, and having a tangible reward for scaling all the highest buildings was the icing on the cake.
There are many games that provide bizarre, in-game explanations for their mechanics for things like life bars or save points. Assassin's Creed is unique for the verisimilitude provided by The Animus. You play as Desmond, a bartender snatched up by a mysterious organization, and forced to operate a machine (The Animus) to access genetic memories of his ancestor. The majority of the game is played as the assassin Altaïr, perceived through this machine. In order to progress through your memories, you have to maintain synchronization up to the desired end-game memory, and doing things like beating up civilians, getting stabbed in the face, or falling from a high building causes you to lose this synchronization. In the event that synchronization is lost completely, the machine then returns you to the most recent stable memory. Even better, this amazing technology allows you to skip past the more boring parts of the story, such as traveling between cities, and sleeping at the Assassin's Bureau. However, this system is by no means perfect. I had a little trouble accepting that anyone would be okay after a 200 ft. fall into a cart of hay, even if I looked awesome doing it. I was indeed dismayed to discover that Altaïr never learned to swim, as falling in water deeper than a foot resulted in DEATH.The brilliant musical score from Jesper Kyd is indeed a nice touch, and helped me to ignore those times when Altaïr's cape glitched through pretty much everything. I felt a real sense of urgency as I fled aggressors across rooftops, and a real sense of serenity when I
was perched high above the city. The interaction with the environment feels very natural, and there were very few times where I didn't start climbing on something just because it was fun, especially with bystanders shooting snide comments like, "He's going to hurt himself. And when he does, I won't help him!" The map is helpful, but I frequently found myself treating streets as obstacles to leap over rather than pathways on which to walk. Rooftops are home to guards ready to stick Altaïr full of arrows, but with a little practice, I learned that a skilled assassin can dispose of an archer before he can finish telling you that you're not supposed to be there. It's pretty simple: run up, and stab them in the neck before they get a chance to draw a sword. If you're lucky, their body falls from the roof, and you get to hear the guards down below shouting pointlessly, "Who did this!?" If you're feeling particularly sadistic, you can even pick them off from above with your throwing knives.
Oh, the combat. How I loved the combat. With a full arsenal, you can choose from your wristblade, longsword, short blade/throwing knives, or your fists. When you piss off a few guards, your choices are effectively limited to the short blade and the longsword, but both of these are loads of fun. Combat is much more a system of timing than complicated and frantic sequences of buttons, and after a bit of practice, I found myself intentionally taking on enemies by the dozens. The counterattack is indisputably the most powerful ability at your disposal, responsible for somewhere around 90% of my kills. What makes the combat so engaging, at least to me, is the sheer brutality. A very dark part of me is obscenely delighted when I hear the distinctive crack when the
short blade is plunged into an adversary's skull. The ground doesn't get stained red, but you do get to see sprays of blood when a throat gets slashed or a knight gets impaled. And if you're really bloodthirsty, you can hang around your collection of corpses until more meat shows up to get added to the pile. If you're lucky, one of them might even make a run for his life, and you can chase him down and take him out with the wristblade. As enjoyable as the exploration happens to be, it's the excellent fighting system that kept me engaged hour after hour. It's refreshing to see such a simple system so expertly deployed.The extra plot events often seemed silly ("Collect all the flags I lost and I will tell you some interesting information!"), but they remained fun no less. If those citizens only knew that the only reason I saved them was because it meant I got to kill a bunch of people....
All-in-all, it is an excellent game, even through the repetition. It helps a lot that my Logitech gamepad was supported, though I had to learn that when it said "Button x" it really meant "Button x+1". This is a minor glitch I am willing to overlook. I would have to say I recommend this title to anyone who enjoys action/adventure games.
For the most part, I agree with a majority of your review. I did, however, have a few issues with the game over all. The climbing system, while exceed my expectations in almost every regard, felt unnecessarily slow in some of the longer climbs. Realistically slow, sure, but in a game so obviously based on fantasy, extending the time it takes to get to the running and hacking fun parts that the game is centered around just felt like an oversight by the developers. Secondly, I felt the game got rather repetitive the longer you played. Do a few missions, all of them either short or monotonous, and some of them so passive they involved you sitting on a bench and listening to a conversation, so that you can do the main mission. The main missions become more and more restrictive as time goes by, which is not something that I am looking for an a sandbox game. In the end, I didn't even bother with the flag collecting because I rather be a bad-ass assassin than run around for hours with the aid of a faq, looking for hundreds of flags, hoping I don't miss one and have to trudge through the whole mess again, all for something that gives me no in-game benefit whatsoever. Don't get me wrong; loved that game the first time through when it first came out, despite the glitches in the Xbox version. I was also particularly fund of slashing up the leg of a foe with my short blade before digging it into the roof of his skull. The combat was seamless and just enough variety in the counters and attacks to keep from feeling repetitive. While I was initially upset by the fact that the game turned out to be a Sci-Fi, I soon was able to get over myself and enjoy the game overall. So saying, I feel I must point out one important fact. Everything, including things I didn't know bothered me about the first Assassin's Creed as well as stuff that you have stated bothered you in this review, is improved upon in Assassin's Creed II. If you enjoyed the first, I highly, highly recommend the second. And if they don't go to Japan and whip out Ninja for part three, heads will roll. I want rolling heads, dammit, either in-game or out!
ReplyDelete