It's impossible not being impressed at least a little when
you see Altair running through the city. It's impossible not to
appreciate the amazing freedom you have, the mind blowing animations,
and the fact that there's virtually no surface you can't climb. And
if you really can't, it just means you would have fallen out of the
map if you did. The sheer number of different animations is mind
blowing; after over 20 hours of play, right at the end of the game,
in the final battle, before the credits, I saw a new combat move.
There are THAT many.
Assassin's Creed encourages you to
explore with the amazing freedom you have, to do anything, be it on
the city streets, or up on the roofs. Besides, the only way to
"discover" the map, and it's points of interest is by
climbing the tallest building in the area, where a "discover"
option appears, and you scout around the city before you with an
impressive fly-by camera. You do this thing a lot in Assassin's
Creed, but in never gets boring, because the game is so well put
together from this point of view you just sit there watching, in awe,
how Altair climbs what seemed to be an impossible ascent. The main
character grabs on the smallest pieces of rock, the smallest ledges
or any other element of that wall which offers grip it in such a
natural way you just want to do it again.
And I never ever saw him
climb something "the wrong way". If there is no surface
which might offer a bit of grip, it means that surface can't be
climbed. The synchronisation between Altair's animations and the
actual landscape is almost flawless. Impressive. The combat system
is equally fluid, and impressive. The entire system is based on
counter attacks and precise timing of your hits. Classical attacks
can be performed, as well as dodging, and grabbing/throwing your
opponents. The heart of the system however is the defensive stance
Altair has in each battle, waiting for his opponent to strike,
dodging the blow and then executing him with an extremely brutal a
precise attack. The actions which can be performed during a fight
(and during the entire game, for that matter) are contextual, meaning
the buttons' mapping is changed depending on what you do on screen.
It sounds complicated, but in fact it really isn't. A fight is won
(or lost) not because of the poor interface, but the skill the player
has to precisely time his attacks, and dodge his opponents. And,
speaking of which, I really hope this interface will be properly
ported to the PC, when it will hit stores, next year. Altair's
arsenal isn't especially complex. He only has a sword, two types of
knives (regular one, and the throwing variety), and the assassination
spike, hidden under his sleave. If you feel particularly skillful
during a fight, the spike can be used for counter attacks, which is
quite difficult, as a missed blow leaves you open to the opponent's
sword, not having a proper weapon to block his attack with. Speaking
of the assassination spike, the game is called Assassin's Creed for a
reason. You have 9 distinct targets who must be assassinated
throughout the land, for reasons I'm not going to go into, because
I'll have to ruin the story. Each target has it's story, shown by
usually kick-ass cutscenes before the actual assassination, and
different ways to be reached, and killed. All the secondary
missions I was talking about earlier server to gather information
about your target. Not all of them must be completed in order to
"unlock" the assassination, however. You only need the
basics: where the target is, when it will show up, and preferably how
many people are defending it. For the perfectionist, if all the
secondary missions are accomplished, there are achievements crafted
exactly for this purpose. The assassinations start with unguarded
merchants roaming through the city, and then move on to important
military figures, heavily guarded in fortresses and such, towards the
later part of the game. After the cutscene, which can be partially
controlled by the player, you're free to assassinate the target as
you see fit, and then the chase starts. The whole city is alerted to
your presence, and you have to dodge (or fight) your pursuers until
you find a safe spot to hide, and lose them. The chase scenes are
great, but entirely skip-able if you don't feel like running through
half the city to escape; kill a few guards, jump on a roof, and hide.
It's all up to you. The main story of the game is very
interesting, built around these 9 targets, and it's gradually shown,
without telling you to much, but also trying to suggest that all is
not as it seems. And that works really well.
As mentioned
earlier, the game universe is great, and to that end the graphics
play a significant part. Not necessarily from a technical point of
view, which isn't exactly impressive compared to other 360 (or PC)
games, but form an artistic point of view. The art design is
excellent, and it really helps. It wouldn't have hurt to have more
NPCs constructed with a bit more detail, and also the area between
the cities (because you have that, too) could have been better if
textured with a little more detail, but overall the graphics are
excellent. Sure, the far off textures (like the ones over the city
walls, where you can't get) look like a turd, and the game has quite
a number of small (but noticeable) graphical glitches, but it's not
enough to put you off. Of course, having graphical errors (small as
they are) in a console game isn't exactly nice, with the unified
configuration and all, but hey, not everything's perfect. The
sound is also good, fortunately enough. The music consists mainly out
of atmospheric tunes, and a few heart pumping chase sequences here
and there. It serves it's purpose. The same can be said for the
general sound FX category, which really help in making you feel be in
a leaving, breathing place. The mediocre part is the voice
acting. Overall, it's not bad, but the thing that ruins it is the
repetitivity. The problem is bigger than you might think: on one
hand, the game immerses you in this believable world, and then it
bangs your head against the speakers with the NPCs saying the same
thing over and over, with Altair's American accent, and the way
english is used in certain places where, surely, the original
language of the area might have been better.
