Screenshots :.
Assassin's Creed
PS3
Jay
23-11-2007
"Cllllimb every moooountain"
"Looks like fisticuffs are a-brewin'!"
"One will stand, one will fall. My money's on the horse."
"Was going to quote U2's Vertigo. Decided it was a rubbish plan."
"Ah - told you fisticuffs were in the offing!"
"Hopping across things like this is actually rather cool indeed."
One of the largest parts of game playing is putting all your effort into being cool. This can apply to any genre of game, from heading a wicked cross in Pro Evo, to throwing a barrel of explosive liquid at a zombie with a gravity gun – it’s the cool factor; being a dude, virtually rocking out with oneself.
With all the hype surrounding Assassin’s Creed, not to mention the pretty face that pushed it into our line of vision, is it with any wonder that we stood up and paid attention to this pretty looking game, with a cool looking Assassin that struts around sticking it to the rich and greedy like an up-close-and-personal Robin Hood and then scampering off over stall and rooftop ala Parkour.
I can’t help but wonder these days whether we’re still falling for all of this hype. I mean looking at it all objectively we fall prey to our hopes for a game only to have someone tell us that ‘yes it really is that good’ and then have to furthermore live up to those expectations. Poor ol’ Jade Raymond, with her Unofficial Official Website, being stalked by all these fanboys fawning over her and Altair alike, hoping against all hope that both live up to the dream when they finally get their hands on them.
Well, I admit that in some respects I’m not normally one for the marketing ploys of the big boys pushing their big toys, but with Assassin’s Creed – for lack of a decent and new ninja-esque game of recent – I really didn’t want to be disappointed.
In Creed you play a high-ranking assassin called Altáir (Al-tie-ear: Arabic for ‘The Flying One’) who early on in the story acts like a complete nonce, getting one of his fellow assassins killed and the other maimed through his main starter weapon – arrogance. It is therefore not unusual that the leader of the Assassins’ Guild decides to publicly execute you, although you later find out that this is a way of appeasing the public without ridding his clan of an assassin by faking the whole thing. You’re stripped of your ranks, skills and weapons and have to start over from scratch, performing assassinations to regain your honour and having to work with the rest of the clan seeking their permission before performing your tasks.
All of this takes place as genetic memories experienced by a descendant of Altáir in the present day. This descendant, Desmond, is being held hostage and forced to use a machine called the Animus that accesses Desmond’s ancestral genetic memories of Altáir, thus in turn helping his hosts to learn something of this particularly assassins history. They’re really quite keen to learn what you’re hiding, and like a strangely well-behaved assassin you’re going to help.
Assassin’s Creed is a third-person stealth combat game that evolves around guiding Altáir through a series of assassinations based in few different locations joined together by a map you can roam or ride around. The locations, although somewhat similar, have their differences in structures and sightseeing locations. Once up on one of these sightseeing points you can view a 360 cutscene of your surroundings and add new locations to the map. Each of these locations may contain things such as pickpocket locations or informers, which you can do missions for in exchange for information. All of these scenarios count as investigations towards your main assassination for that area which you work in conjunction with the Assassins’ Bureau in town in order to complete it.
Each of your targets is assigned back in your starting town, and so to begin with you have to travel to your destination, seek out the Bureau and begin your investigation. After you’ve been there you can teleport in later to save time. The main downside being with this is most of the map then becomes optional, as you’ll generally want to go straight to your objective. However, I’m sure the more obsessive of you will go back to find all the collectables etc.
In order to help you complete your main tasks you can perform a couple of side missions that are always available in each town. You can save the scholar from being mobbed by guards, which will open up a moving hiding spot, ergo 4 scholars, or you can save the woman and get her brothers to stop guards pursuing you. It is somewhat a shame that this is it on the side quest missions, unless you really want to roam around and find a bunch of flags, but that’s beyond dull and there really is very little point.
The main way to kill is to utilise stealth, using throwing daggers for distant enemies or using your trusty Wolverine-esque extendable blade. However, you can go head on with your main or short sword and have a variety of moves and parries you can perform to take down your foes. This becomes particularly useful if you’ve pissed off the guards and they’re hunting you down. You could go for the easy option of finding a hiding spot and waiting to the alert on your HUD calms down, or you could fight. While generally the fighting system is a bit on the button mashing side and fairly un-innovative, it does the job. You’ll probably find it easier to parry or run and throw a knife than actually go toe-to-toe with your sword.
One of the big things we all got hyped on was the Free Running (Parkour) side to Altáir’s skill set. Anything that sticks out 10cm (no jokes please) can be used as a point to mantle on and progress over the environment. This, as you can probably imagine, is a game in its own right, having the ability to pick any spot you can see and make your way up on to that point. I have to say at first I was a little disappointed at the system. After playing the game ‘Free Running’ I was kind of picturing not so much tricks, but a more involved way of ambling over my environment. As it stands you’re literally holding down a couple of buttons and occasionally timing your jumps. However, as I said, this was at first and you soon realise that being chased by 6 guards and having to think about what you were doing would be a no go, you’ve already got far too much on your plate – so this works for me.
Due to the nature of Animus and recalling your memories, you’ll occasionally see glitches on the screen. At this point if in conversation you’ll get another viewpoint, and if being chased the camera will pull out to a sort of chase-cam in order to see your aggressors. This will also be why you can see massive blue walls on entering a city. This is the Animus telling you that you can’t access those memories just yet, a good excuse for limiting the environment – but can you really blame them?
Assassin’s Creed is beautiful; there are some really nice locations and animations and the artists have done a lovely job. Not to mention the filters they’ve put on for that film-like quality, which is in stark contrast to the almost Half-Life 2 look of the present that simply leads you to want to be back in ‘virtual reality’ as soon as possible. However, eye-candy isn’t everything, and the getting past the button mashing repetitiveness of combat, you’ll also have to face a frustratingly straight-forward mission based game style, that leads you from one assassination to another with a lack of side missions to give you something else to do. You wont be able to avoid seeing Altáir bob up and down when close to walls, or most of the eyes on characters being graphically flawed, which is a shame when everything else artistically is spot on.
Assassin’s Creed wasn’t everything I’d hoped for, but was still a strong platform for a sequel and hopefully with everything they’ve learnt on their journey to get there, Assassin’s Creed 2 will push the boat out.
With all the hype surrounding Assassin’s Creed, not to mention the pretty face that pushed it into our line of vision, is it with any wonder that we stood up and paid attention to this pretty looking game, with a cool looking Assassin that struts around sticking it to the rich and greedy like an up-close-and-personal Robin Hood and then scampering off over stall and rooftop ala Parkour.
I can’t help but wonder these days whether we’re still falling for all of this hype. I mean looking at it all objectively we fall prey to our hopes for a game only to have someone tell us that ‘yes it really is that good’ and then have to furthermore live up to those expectations. Poor ol’ Jade Raymond, with her Unofficial Official Website, being stalked by all these fanboys fawning over her and Altair alike, hoping against all hope that both live up to the dream when they finally get their hands on them.
Well, I admit that in some respects I’m not normally one for the marketing ploys of the big boys pushing their big toys, but with Assassin’s Creed – for lack of a decent and new ninja-esque game of recent – I really didn’t want to be disappointed.
In Creed you play a high-ranking assassin called Altáir (Al-tie-ear: Arabic for ‘The Flying One’) who early on in the story acts like a complete nonce, getting one of his fellow assassins killed and the other maimed through his main starter weapon – arrogance. It is therefore not unusual that the leader of the Assassins’ Guild decides to publicly execute you, although you later find out that this is a way of appeasing the public without ridding his clan of an assassin by faking the whole thing. You’re stripped of your ranks, skills and weapons and have to start over from scratch, performing assassinations to regain your honour and having to work with the rest of the clan seeking their permission before performing your tasks.
All of this takes place as genetic memories experienced by a descendant of Altáir in the present day. This descendant, Desmond, is being held hostage and forced to use a machine called the Animus that accesses Desmond’s ancestral genetic memories of Altáir, thus in turn helping his hosts to learn something of this particularly assassins history. They’re really quite keen to learn what you’re hiding, and like a strangely well-behaved assassin you’re going to help.
Assassin’s Creed is a third-person stealth combat game that evolves around guiding Altáir through a series of assassinations based in few different locations joined together by a map you can roam or ride around. The locations, although somewhat similar, have their differences in structures and sightseeing locations. Once up on one of these sightseeing points you can view a 360 cutscene of your surroundings and add new locations to the map. Each of these locations may contain things such as pickpocket locations or informers, which you can do missions for in exchange for information. All of these scenarios count as investigations towards your main assassination for that area which you work in conjunction with the Assassins’ Bureau in town in order to complete it.
Each of your targets is assigned back in your starting town, and so to begin with you have to travel to your destination, seek out the Bureau and begin your investigation. After you’ve been there you can teleport in later to save time. The main downside being with this is most of the map then becomes optional, as you’ll generally want to go straight to your objective. However, I’m sure the more obsessive of you will go back to find all the collectables etc.
In order to help you complete your main tasks you can perform a couple of side missions that are always available in each town. You can save the scholar from being mobbed by guards, which will open up a moving hiding spot, ergo 4 scholars, or you can save the woman and get her brothers to stop guards pursuing you. It is somewhat a shame that this is it on the side quest missions, unless you really want to roam around and find a bunch of flags, but that’s beyond dull and there really is very little point.
The main way to kill is to utilise stealth, using throwing daggers for distant enemies or using your trusty Wolverine-esque extendable blade. However, you can go head on with your main or short sword and have a variety of moves and parries you can perform to take down your foes. This becomes particularly useful if you’ve pissed off the guards and they’re hunting you down. You could go for the easy option of finding a hiding spot and waiting to the alert on your HUD calms down, or you could fight. While generally the fighting system is a bit on the button mashing side and fairly un-innovative, it does the job. You’ll probably find it easier to parry or run and throw a knife than actually go toe-to-toe with your sword.
One of the big things we all got hyped on was the Free Running (Parkour) side to Altáir’s skill set. Anything that sticks out 10cm (no jokes please) can be used as a point to mantle on and progress over the environment. This, as you can probably imagine, is a game in its own right, having the ability to pick any spot you can see and make your way up on to that point. I have to say at first I was a little disappointed at the system. After playing the game ‘Free Running’ I was kind of picturing not so much tricks, but a more involved way of ambling over my environment. As it stands you’re literally holding down a couple of buttons and occasionally timing your jumps. However, as I said, this was at first and you soon realise that being chased by 6 guards and having to think about what you were doing would be a no go, you’ve already got far too much on your plate – so this works for me.
Due to the nature of Animus and recalling your memories, you’ll occasionally see glitches on the screen. At this point if in conversation you’ll get another viewpoint, and if being chased the camera will pull out to a sort of chase-cam in order to see your aggressors. This will also be why you can see massive blue walls on entering a city. This is the Animus telling you that you can’t access those memories just yet, a good excuse for limiting the environment – but can you really blame them?
Assassin’s Creed is beautiful; there are some really nice locations and animations and the artists have done a lovely job. Not to mention the filters they’ve put on for that film-like quality, which is in stark contrast to the almost Half-Life 2 look of the present that simply leads you to want to be back in ‘virtual reality’ as soon as possible. However, eye-candy isn’t everything, and the getting past the button mashing repetitiveness of combat, you’ll also have to face a frustratingly straight-forward mission based game style, that leads you from one assassination to another with a lack of side missions to give you something else to do. You wont be able to avoid seeing Altáir bob up and down when close to walls, or most of the eyes on characters being graphically flawed, which is a shame when everything else artistically is spot on.
Assassin’s Creed wasn’t everything I’d hoped for, but was still a strong platform for a sequel and hopefully with everything they’ve learnt on their journey to get there, Assassin’s Creed 2 will push the boat out.
7/10
