[PS3/Xbox360/PC] Assassin's Creed

[galson]

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.

[PCXL-Fan]

Well its not out quite yet for pc, we'll have to wait another 2-4 months. I'd have to give them a 9/10 on marjketing strategy for using Jade Raymond as the games poster child. It would be awesome if they could add online multiplayer to the pc version... but thats not going to happen.

[Noja87]

When is the Pc version coming out? =(

[FLaRe85]

Originally Posted by Noja87

When is the Pc version coming out? =(

Didn't care to read the post above you?

[Thanakil]

Originally Posted by PCXL-Fan

I'd have to give them a 9/10 on marjketing strategy for using Jade Raymond as the games poster child.

Well, she had the title of producer for the game, so it wasnt really "let's use her to sell the game with beauty" but more "It's normal for a producer to make some publicity" with the added bonus of the girl being charismatic (since she host a program too) and good-looking. It does look sexier than Myamoto (even if I like him better <3)

It kinda came together by itself, good looking girl producer of the game? Lucky as far as publicity goes.

[Metalmurphy]

Originally Posted by Thanakil

Well, she had the title of producer for the game, so it wasnt really "let's use her to sell the game with beauty" but more "It's normal for a producer to make some publicity" with the added bonus of the girl being charismatic (since she host a program too) and good-looking. It does look sexier than Myamoto (even if I like him better <3)

It kinda came together by itself, good looking girl producer of the game? Lucky as far as publicity goes.

It's not normal for the producer to be a couple of feet of front of the entire team on group photos though They're definitely using Jade a marketing tool.

[PCXL-Fan]

Originally Posted by Thanakil

Well, she had the title of producer for the game, so it wasnt really "let's use her to sell the game with beauty" but more "It's normal for a producer to make some publicity" with the added bonus of the girl being charismatic (since she host a program too) and good-looking. It does look sexier than Myamoto (even if I like him better <3)

It kinda came together by itself, good looking girl producer of the game? Lucky as far as publicity goes.

No, it was more on the lines of, okay we can either use the creative director who actually thought up the game, the theme, the entire story and how the game would play or we could use the beautiful Jade Raymond who is an integral part of the design team, but who's main purpose is to keep the development them on track and on schedule, make sure they have the proper reasources to develope the game, and decide which aspects of the game would get cut. If you listen to Jade Raymond's interviews on Gametrailers.com you'll always hear her constantly going back to Patrice Desilents the Creative Director and praising him, and calling him the mastermind behind the game. If you see all the gametrailer interviews 90% of them are with Jade Raymond.
So they obviously used Jade's beauty. But this is business and the end desire is to create as much publicity and sales as possible.

[galson]

Somehow I knew that the discussion will come down to her

[Linktothepast]

So it proved to be a "looks can be deceiving" kind of game, huh? *hugs his wii*

[galson]

It just proves that graphics don't make the game I mean why was I bored to hell in the middle of the game, doing the same things for the 6th, 7th, etc. time? And I wasn't bored even for a second playing SMG, even though I'm not too much of a platform gamer.

[Cheesus]

I just got Assassins Creed (PC), and I've gone through about 6-7 assassinations... and I am loving it! From all the reviews I've read saying how repetetive and boring it is, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, even after killing at least 500 guards, I am still loving every second of it. The open end approach of the game is just great, meaning that each situation can be tackled in a dozen different ways. Its like PoP meets GTA meets Crysis. Personally, the climbing and the killing, are just incredible... I've been longing for something like this for years!

Also, I really like the controls. Took a while to get used to, but now I just can't picture playing it any other way. Innovative to say the least.

[cowfez]

I loved this game. I thought it strange that this game received such low scores compared to GTA despite GTA having the exact same issues. It's repetitive, some of the missions feel tacked on, and the graphics have plenty of technical issues. The difference is this game felt new, whereas GTA IV feels much like the same game we've played thrice already with a lot of the fun beaten out of it. I think one of the reasons GTA IV is so disappointing is because i've been playing Assassin's Creed and Burnout for the last few months.

Anyway, I agree with galson, and pretty much every other reviewer out there, this game has very specific faults, but what's there is still a lot of fun.

[Cheesus]

Just beat the game... WTF! I mean, seriously, cliff hanger much??!

Anyways, overall as a game, it was absolutely fantastic. I mean, the only real complaint I had was Altair's voice. He sounded very scripted, and pretty mediocre overall. Aside from that two thumbs up all the way.

[Thanakil]

Originally Posted by Cheesus

Just beat the game... WTF! I mean, seriously, cliff hanger much??!

They've said they were planning on a trilogy after all, so cliffhanger was a given .