Datastreams

Assassin’s Creed, and I guess I should specify here that I am talking about the PC version, is my game that was almost great for 2008. I feel like every single good point is directly countered by an irritation. Here we go.

This is, by far, the most stunning game to look at visually that I’ve seen to date. The architecture is solid, each town is fairly distinct, the characters are beautiful and the first time you climb a tower to get your lay of the land is one of the warm fuzzy feeling highlights of the year. The counter stroke is that I ran into 3 ugly seams in the world, the general locations in the various cities get quite repetitive, and the gore effects feel incomplete. I’d forgive the seams if it wasn’t for the fact that you have that ever annoying scavenger hunt mechanic in place (see below) so this should have been picked up by QA. The repetitive environment thing is how every little grotto and garden thing is the same. The game feels like they went well out of their way to design some really great and unique landmarks but got trigger happy with the copy paste buttons for the rest of the map. Lastly, the gore factor feels unfinished. The finishing moves are great fun to watch, and your sword stays clean until you impale a fellow, then it’s covered in red. What’s missing is the spatters on the ground (they don’t need to stay, just be there fro the fight, like the bodies really. Also, after a main assassination when you mark a feather with the blood of your victim it just shows up instantly, just another unfinished effect I figure.

No major complaints on the sound effects. People scream when they should and metal clangs when it should. The soundtrack itself is a mixed bag. The music is great, when you can actually hear it, which is not that often unfortunately.

Combat itself is easy to slip into and gets slightly more difficult as the game progresses. The two off points on this is that 1) You get the “Counter-Kill” ability fairly early on and it pretty much becomes your staple move and 2) The second to last combat scene in the game is several magnitudes more challenging then anything else in the game, enough so that I imagine a less hardy soul would abandon the game at that point.

Without spoiling anything the plot is a little flat early on, but does get much more interesting as the game progresses. The problem here is this is yet another of those games that leaves you hanging at the end with way too much open. Sure, it leaves things open for a sequel but this IS Ubisoft and since I’m still waiting for some follow up to Beyond Good and Evil I won’t hold my breath.

Game length was a disappointment. Even doing all the investigation stuff, the main assassinations take maybe 30 minutes a piece. Add in another half hour for saving peasants being picked on and hitting all the high spots for your map. This was about a third of the game for me. The other two thirds was running around all over the place to find all the flags for the scavenger hunt aspect of the game and looking for the stray templars to kill. If I was playing the 360 version of the game I understand this would be worth some achievement points. You get a great big nothing in the PC game.

I’ll finish off with the environmental reactions. Namely how the people around you behave. You take somebody out high profile the crowd goes nuts screaming. You hear comments like “You just killed a man, you can’t go around that! Guards!”. Two of my favorites were the time I ran down a guy with my horse and the fellow next to him says “That looked painful” or the time I shoved a beggar and someone said “I want to see you do that again!”. I kinda wish I had figured out how to toss the beggars or punch them earlier in the game as they get really annoying at times.

My final word, if you want pretty and have $30 to burn then go ahead and pick it up. Just do yourself a favor and leave the flags alone, and only kill the templars if they get in the way. Just don’t cry when you clean house in a solid day of play. Personally I’d wait for it to hit the $20 bargain bin, which is sad because the game feels like it could have had a lot more going for it. Scavenger hunts with no reward does not equal content.