Assassins Creed… If you are a hardcore gamer, you must have heard of this game.
Assassins Creed is a third person stealth game where you are playing as an assassin during the Middle Ages era (where the Crusades were happening).
Months ago, this game was rumored to appear only on consoles and it inflicted cries and agonies to PC gamers.
Sometime later, Ubisoft announced that the game would be ported to PC. The wait felt long but rejoice, as Assassins Creed has now been released to PC!
The game looks great, especially if you have a PC that can handle it (I’ve heard that a dual core CPU is a minimum requirement of Assassins Creed). But how about the gameplay?
Graphics & Design
Assassins Creed is beautiful, indeed. It is well polished and well designed. I’m playing it at its maximum settings on my 8800GT @1680×1050 resolution. It’s satisfying to walk around in the game and admire the view. The city comes alive, thanks to the gorgeous graphics and animations.
Each city has a different feel and color tones to it (The city of Jerusalem vs Acre for example, have different sets of colors, textures, and theme).
Storyline
You are playing as Desmond Miles, a bartender. “What?” Yes, you’ve heard me. Well that’s the present time, however. You were captured and forced to use this machine called “Animus” in which you can regain the memories of your ancestor, who was an assassin, called Altair. Altair is whom you want to play with. He’s the dude. So let’s skip about the Desmond part and focus on Altair, as he’ll be the one whom you play the most in this game.
Altair is a high rank member of an assassin guild that has sworn to attain peace by any means. A justice system of their own, you may call it. You are meant to assassinate 9 targets (high officials / very influential targets).
It may look like some random targets, but after your first few missions, you’ll learn that these people have connections somehow, and it’ll get clearer as the story progresses.
Gameplay
On every assassination quest, you’ll have some sub-quests that you need to do before you have the chance to strike at the target. From gathering information through investigations, eaves-dropping, pickpocketing, saving citizens to gain their support, to scouting the area from a bird-view area high above the ground.
On every mission, you will find more information about the target. What’s he doing, why is he bad enough to be assassinated, where his guards are located, etc.
It may sound fun at first to complete these sub-quests, however, on your 3rd assassination mission, you’ll start to get bored as they are the same repetitive things that you have to do all over again. Luckily, they are not compulsory. You only need to accomplish a couple of them to begin your assassination mission. However, if you do them, you’ll gain a maximum health bonus. So, completing the sub-quests are not mandatory, but are highly recommended.
Thankfully, the graphics, the animations, and the combat system are great so that this boringness can be overlooked.
 Stealth? What do you mean? |
 Oh. |
Sound and Music
The sound department is probably one of Assassins Creed downfall. Don’t get me wrong, the sound effect and music sound great, but the voice over on the sub-quests are so repetitive that you can probably memorize it after a few hours of game play.
Other thoughts on the game
Positive sides
(+) The fighting animations are very well done. It depends on your weapon that you are using when executing the action, the position of the enemy, and also the timing of your action. Looking at how Altair moves and slashes (or stabs) the enemies are satisfying. Using a short blade (knife) feels and moves differently than using your sword.
(+) It’s fun to play and watch at the same time.
(+) Game designs are very well thought, very well done.
Negative sides
(-) Monotonous sub-quests, but luckily you have the choice not to do them all.
(-) Repetitive dialogue on sub-quests.
(-) No subtitle during a cut-scene (which makes it harder for people like me)
(-) The investigation doesn’t really have an important role on the assassination mission. Most of the time, you stab the dude, his guards get angry, people start sreaming and running around, and then you get away out of there a.s.a.p and find a hiding spot (unless if I have missed something…)
(-) It’s designed for Console (which limits the interfaces and features). Controls take some time to learn to (I also have to remember that “Button 0” is my left mouse button and “Button 1” is my right mouse button.
(-) Lots of talking on cut scenes. It can bore you if you don’t really bother with the story.
(-) Can’t save/load from a certain point in the game. Games are auto-saved on every progress. There’s no way to go back to a point in the game, unless if you repeat the whole mission again.
Conclusion
Assassins Creed is a great title with great graphics and gameplay. The fact that the sub-quests can be a bit tedious and repetitive is overlooked by a great style of gameplay with interactive world environment. If you have no other games to play with this month, I’d suggest to grab the game.
However, it’s not perfect (again, because of the repetitiveness). They probably focused too much on the game engine and AI, and didn’t really have a chance to create a more variety of sub-quests and dialogues.
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