Hyuga
November 24th, 2007, 19:44
Assassin's Creed, a long awaited game has finally landed in stores. Does it live up the hype? Let's try to answer that question now ;)
AC's storyline starts in the year of 1191 in the Middle East and you get to controll Altair, a young assassin who at the beginning of the game is stripped of his rank and weapons due to failing a mission. In order to restore his rank and redeem himself, Altair is given the task to assassinate nine people. And thus, the game stars.
System tested on: Sony Playstation 3 PAL FW 2.01, HDMI output 720p, 2.0 sound system
Graphic: 9.5/10
The game looks stunning. All enviroments, characters, buildings, everything is highly detailed and very well animated. The drawing distance is simply amazing, it has to be seen to be believed. Unfortunately AC suffers from occasional slowdowns and has vsync problems (a.k.a. screen tearing); while the framedrops from time to time can be forgiven, screen tearing can not. It's really not that hard to get it right, yet many games have problems with it :/
Sound: 9/10
Throughtout the game we have really nice tunes to accompany Altair on his quest for redemption, although none of them is memorable and you forget them as soon as you'll end playing. The enviromental sounds as well as character voices are very good (though Altair's voice is too emotionless for me). Solid 9.
Gameplay: 5/10
While the game looks and sounds beautifully, the gameplay on the other hand isn't that good. As I mentioned before you get a task to do nine assasinations and that's the main course of the game. Unfortunately this course is virtually the same during every assassination with some minor changes. Before you can take on an assassination you must complete at least two investigation mission, which can be eavesdropping, pick-pocketing, interrogating, helping fellow assassin or gathering flags within time limit. The worst part about them is repetitiveness as they are cut and pasted again and again across all three cities. I seriously recommend NOT doing all investigation missions everytime or you'll get bored with the game very quickly.
There also are some side quests to do, ranging from gathering flags (sort of like GTA's hidden packages), killing Templars, rescuing harassed citizens and scouting view points. Nothing fancy here to be honest and again, repetitive. For example saving a woman in Jerusalem is no different than saving a woman in Damascus or Acre INCLUDING the response from her after having been saved. And with 50+ citizens to save and maybe 4-5 types of responses from then it gets boring really quickly.
If you want just to mess around like in good old GTA well... You'd better like killing soldiers and climbing, because aside from those there's nothing much left to do. Climbing is very nice and cool looking, but somewhat too easy to perform. All you have to do is to hold a thumbstick up and Altair will get almost everywhere. Combat system is fun, but once you get the ability to counter attacks Altair turns into a unbeatable beast.
The game likes to freeze as well for no apparent reason and it happens at random. Nothing more pissing off that having to repeat the same section three times because the game hangs up (in three different moments) if you ask me.
Overall: 7.5/10
Assassin's Creed could have been a very good game, unfortunately the potential has been wasted. It offers one of the best graphics on current generation systems as well as top-notch sound and music but unfortunately the repetitiveness and lack of variety makes the gameplay boring after first few hours of playing. Definately a rental if you ask me. I'm sorry, Jade.
AC's storyline starts in the year of 1191 in the Middle East and you get to controll Altair, a young assassin who at the beginning of the game is stripped of his rank and weapons due to failing a mission. In order to restore his rank and redeem himself, Altair is given the task to assassinate nine people. And thus, the game stars.
System tested on: Sony Playstation 3 PAL FW 2.01, HDMI output 720p, 2.0 sound system
Graphic: 9.5/10
The game looks stunning. All enviroments, characters, buildings, everything is highly detailed and very well animated. The drawing distance is simply amazing, it has to be seen to be believed. Unfortunately AC suffers from occasional slowdowns and has vsync problems (a.k.a. screen tearing); while the framedrops from time to time can be forgiven, screen tearing can not. It's really not that hard to get it right, yet many games have problems with it :/
Sound: 9/10
Throughtout the game we have really nice tunes to accompany Altair on his quest for redemption, although none of them is memorable and you forget them as soon as you'll end playing. The enviromental sounds as well as character voices are very good (though Altair's voice is too emotionless for me). Solid 9.
Gameplay: 5/10
While the game looks and sounds beautifully, the gameplay on the other hand isn't that good. As I mentioned before you get a task to do nine assasinations and that's the main course of the game. Unfortunately this course is virtually the same during every assassination with some minor changes. Before you can take on an assassination you must complete at least two investigation mission, which can be eavesdropping, pick-pocketing, interrogating, helping fellow assassin or gathering flags within time limit. The worst part about them is repetitiveness as they are cut and pasted again and again across all three cities. I seriously recommend NOT doing all investigation missions everytime or you'll get bored with the game very quickly.
There also are some side quests to do, ranging from gathering flags (sort of like GTA's hidden packages), killing Templars, rescuing harassed citizens and scouting view points. Nothing fancy here to be honest and again, repetitive. For example saving a woman in Jerusalem is no different than saving a woman in Damascus or Acre INCLUDING the response from her after having been saved. And with 50+ citizens to save and maybe 4-5 types of responses from then it gets boring really quickly.
If you want just to mess around like in good old GTA well... You'd better like killing soldiers and climbing, because aside from those there's nothing much left to do. Climbing is very nice and cool looking, but somewhat too easy to perform. All you have to do is to hold a thumbstick up and Altair will get almost everywhere. Combat system is fun, but once you get the ability to counter attacks Altair turns into a unbeatable beast.
The game likes to freeze as well for no apparent reason and it happens at random. Nothing more pissing off that having to repeat the same section three times because the game hangs up (in three different moments) if you ask me.
Overall: 7.5/10
Assassin's Creed could have been a very good game, unfortunately the potential has been wasted. It offers one of the best graphics on current generation systems as well as top-notch sound and music but unfortunately the repetitiveness and lack of variety makes the gameplay boring after first few hours of playing. Definately a rental if you ask me. I'm sorry, Jade.