Assassin's Creed

Of all the business strategies employed by various developers around the world, Ubisoft’s policy is by far the best in my opinion: hire a hot chick to sell games to adolescents. It’s simple yet effective. Think about it… would you have paid as much attention to Assassin’s Creed if its producer was a short, fat, balding man called Archibald? Yeah, I thought as much.

Anyway, business strategies aside, Assassin’s Creed is a pretty good game unlike what a lot of people may lead you to believe; unfortunately it just doesn’t live up to the monumental expectations we had from Jade and company. The game has a unique premise, no doubt, and we could have witnessed one of the finest action games on the block had Ubisoft gone in for the GTA approach. Sadly they didn’t and what we have here is something that feels incomplete and empty at the end of the day.

As you know by now, the game puts players in the boots of as Assassin called Altair who at the start of game disgraces his clan by botching an important mission thanks to his arrogant and hasty nature. This irks his master no end, as a result of which Altair gets stripped of all his weapons and l33t skills. To prove himself to the organization once again he’s going to have to kill nine bad men, redeeming himself to his leader.

And yes, the game has a futuristic twist that’s revealed as soon as you boot it up; but I’m going to let you find that out for yourself as and when you get your hands on a copy (which would be sometime in December).

To successfully carry out a hit Altair has to perform a minimum of three investigations that range from eavesdropping while sitting on a nearby bench to pick-pocketing to beating the crap out of the informant until he spills the beans. Once you’ve got the lowdown on your target, you’re supposed to report your finding to the local Assassins’ Bureau who, after boring you for a minute or so with words of wisdom or harsh criticism, grants you permission to eliminate your target.

From then on it’s just a matter of time before you catch up to your victim and thrust your blade in his throat. But this isn’t going to be a walk in the park since the nine targets are guarded fiercely and you’ll have to make your way through an entourage to get to each of them.

After you successfully kill him (and hear a boring monologue while he dies in your arms), you’ll have to make your way back to the Bureau while each and every guard in the city chases you like a rabid dog. To successfully escape their clutches you’ll have to break their line of sight first after which you could hide in a haystack or just blend into a group of scholars. Once you make it back to the Bureau it’s smooth sailing as you can quickly travel back to your leader and give him the good news.

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Now, the entire process is fun for a while but after performing three assassinations I realized I was doing the exact same thing every single time and that is where the game falters big time. I really appreciate the sandbox approach taken by Ubisoft but how about allowing players to play the game as they feel instead of tying them to a leash and forcing them to stick to the same formula over and over again?

Another thing that bothered me was that none of the missions took place at night. A real pity since that could have made for truly stealthy gameplay (a la Thief); add to that some killer acrobatic moves and you could have had a recipe for pure awesomeness.

Speaking of acrobatic moves, Altair is by far one of the most nimble and agile characters I’ve come across in a game; in fact this dude makes Prince of Persia look like a drunken toddler. Ubisoft wasn’t kidding when it said that Altair could climb virtually any surface in the game – and watching him gracefully scale tall buildings in an extremely fluid and realistic manner is a treat to the eyes. What’s even cooler is the way he swan-dives from a height into a haystack. Unrealistic but cool.

Unlike most action games on the block, Assassin’s Creed has a unique control scheme that can seem a bit disorienting at first, but after a while you’ll get pretty comfortable with this layout. By pressing the Y button, you enter Eagle Vision, during which you can scope out your surroundings from a first person perspective.

Squeezing the right trigger will make Altair run and pressing down on the A button will make him sprint and overcome any objectives that come in his way (buildings included). Combat is handled with the X button – and unlike games where you hammer away on the Attack key, you’ll have to not only time your attacks really well, but learn the art of counter-attacking to survive multiple enemies.

Visually the game is pure brilliance and Ubisoft’s recreated the ancient cities of Jerusalem, Damascus, Acre, and Masyaf with great authenticity. Each and every facet of these cities is extremely well detailed, if a bit repetitive. While environments look pretty awesome, pedestrian models have been repeated way too often, making you feel as if you’re in the land of the clones.

As I said earlier, character animation is top-notch and there are times when you’ll just stare in awe at Altair’s graceful nature. The game’s frame rates hold up pretty well throughout, although there were times when my frame rate wouldn’t dip while I engaged in combat, but would when I randomly ran across rooftops… weird!

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Here’s where most of the good stuff ends; from now on, it’s time to introduce you to some of the game’s glaring issues. For starters, each and every guard in the world of Assassin’s Creed possesses the same skill as you, which means they can climb any surface you can and will reach your position in a matter of seconds unless and until you break their line of sight. Now if this was the case with a couple of elite guards, I wouldn’t feel that bad but watching every Tom, Dick and Harry scale buildings as quickly as I did just didn’t make me feel all that special anymore.

Next up are the beggars and madmen inhabiting all three cities. Now this was an interesting addition to the game. If Ubisoft put them there to piss gamers off they succeeded with flying colors, since I found myself taking out beggars and madmen many a time out of sheer frustration. The thing that annoyed me the most was that out of all the people walking on the street (rich merchants included) each and every beggar in the game was hell-bent on pestering just me. Not once did I catch them annoying anyone else; same with the madmen.

The much-hyped crowd mechanic does add a certain amount of tension to chases, but at the end of the day it really doesn’t feel like an integral part of the gameplay; it comes across as an aimless gimmick that the game could have done without. I mean, come on; I’m dressed like a freaking assassin here; how is it possible that guards stop noticing me as soon as I stand among a group of scholars who by the way dress totally differently?

Lastly I felt that a lot of the so-called free roaming seemed pointless since there’s really not much to do on the side quests front other than rescue a random civilian from the local guards (yawn). Even scaling towers doesn’t grant you special orbs like in Crackdown, so there’s no real sense of accomplishment after scaling even a hundred of them.

All said and done, Assassins Creed isn’t a bad game; it’s just an unfortunate victim of the hype machine. Sure it has its share of screwups and definitely doesn’t deserve the pedestal it was put on ever since it was shown off at E3 2006, but it’s still fun to play in short bursts (one assassination a day keeps boredom away).

Sadly, I can’t help but think about the sheer potential this game had which, if worked on well, could have been the answer to our free roaming cravings. Oh well, it’s back to waiting for GTA IV once again.