Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed is a real love-it-or-hate-it in the gaming community; although it is constantly criticised with the claim of being hugely repetitive to the point of considering suicide, it also is one of the biggest games to represent this gaming generation, in the same way Halo 3, Metal Gear Solid 4 and GTA IV have. It's a game everyone's bought or at least played and despite this it's still hated on.

I'll start with what I think really excelled in Creed. Let's be honest, even if as a whole it didn't offer an incredible gaming experience, the idea it is based on is fantastic, and the potential it had is huge. It's not your average Splinter Cell-type stealth assassination game (no discredit to Splinter Cell, it's a good franchise) and it really takes this genre of game to a new level. You don't have to silently walk through shadows, needing to wait for minutes on end for your target to get close enough for you to grab him and drag him into shadows. If you're seen, you're not instantly overwhelmed by a million enemies much stronger than you. No, you play the role of an actual medieval assassin; you take down your enemy wherever he is, even if he is in the middle of the street. This makes the whole game much more intense, whether you're trying to get him in the middle of a crowd so smoothly no one notices, or when you're being chased at full speed through streets or on top of buildings, using the incredible freerunning mechanic to hop from building to building, and climbing houses, mosques and churches. In this way, the game has been made superbly. The framerate is just about perfect, and every action is smooth as silk. The sword fighting is also a high point, and when you get good enough there's nothing like having a huge brawl with twenty guards on top of a building, elegantly dodging their attacks to return with graceful thrusts, and throwing others off the edge with gleeful satisfaction.

The game progresses with a variety of targets to be taken down to slowly reveal the secret of a Templar gem. The storyline really didn't capture me at all, as the cutscenes are really one of the parts that could have been worked on. They're hardly even cutscenes, you just stand in a room (you're able to move about and change the camera angle but that's it, you can't even skip them) listening to your contractor talk about who's next. The dull voice acting doesn't help...

This is where the reptitivity cuts in. To take down one target you need to scout out the area to find out more about him, this includes interrogating certain people, helping out an informer by killing someone for him, pickpocketing and eavesdropping. Sounds ok? It won't when you have to repeat this whole process for every single target in the storyline. Being an assassin during the Great Crusade is a great concept, but I'm sure assassins didn't go through an exact routine of conveniantly available recon missions before every victim was taken out. Needless to say this brings down the whole game to mediocrity I find; Ubisoft shouldn't have been so damn lazy when this could have excelled.

A final point to make is that this, as well as being an action/stealth game it's also set in huge sandboxes, as there are a few cities that you visit throughout the game: Damascus, Jerusalem, Acre and Masyaf (this is not really a city but a castle that the assassins operate from). Once all of these have been explored there is, in total, a huge area to work in. However, there is nothing to do! I'm not saying it should be an RPG but apart from the main missions that you HAVE to do, you have only to tediously find flags dotted around the place, and that's only if you're really desperate for the achievements (even I didn't lower myself). Finished the game? Well good luck having any fun apart from killing some guards, or civilians if you want to be a bastard.

I give Assassin's Creed an overall 6/10. It could have been absolutely amazing, as the combat and stealth was perfectly balanced, but horribly let down with easily avoidable traits.