A very good start for a new franchise. Smooth gameplay and an intriguing plot. Detailed review inside:
First said, anyone that is into X-files-esque conspiracy theories and ancient legends of secret societies will love this game. Most if the game is played in the setting of eastern Mediterrainian Europe at around 1191. For anyone who was tracking the development of this game loosely only seeing screenshots of medieval cities, it comes an intriguing surprise on starting the game realizing it actually takes place sometime in the near future. You start out as a character named Desmond Miles who is forced by two scientists to interface with a machine called the Animus. This machine causes one to relive ancient genetic memories of our ancestors. These scientists right off tell you that they are trying to get information out of your genetic memory and will cooperate or be killed. The lab you start out in is free to explore but limited, and the Animus is free to enter and exit anytime.
The Animus machine acts as the games main menu. From here you can check game options, and review or enter your memories, which are the stages of actual gameplay. When Desmond enters the Animus, he takes the roll of Altair, one of the top members of the Assasins Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is a secret order that strives for a peacefull society by policing strategic assasinations on individuals causing social unreast or humanitarian crimes.
The are a lot of elements to this game that when put all together make a fun experience. Most noteably are Atair's acrobatic skills and detailed cityscape maps to facilitate those skills. Altair is one of the most graceful and acrobatic characters introduced in gaming to date. Altair can scale up walls and leap from rooftop to rooftop with a natural ease. Controlwise one only has to point and run the direction they want and Altair complies without hesitation to climb or jump over any obsticle. His Polident fingers have no problem clinging to any ledge or beam. Almost any building can be scaled. ledges and handholds are conveniently and plentifully placed on the face of these buildings. Running across rooftops is the quickest way to get around. Cities are compact and its a simple to leap from one roof to the next. If you choose to take the streets there are dozens of people wondering that tend to more get in your way.
Combat is well done also, but may not be the most frantic or complex as games such as Ninja Gaiden or God of War. This does help give the game a more realistic feel. The frequency of combat does detract from the authenticity of an assasin though. For a character thats only supposed to kill his mark, he sure has to battle through dozens of guards to reach it. Minimizing combat can be achieved by acting socially appropriate. Guards have an alertness much like the MGS series, and slipping past casually and quietly keeps you from getting noticed.
The story pans out in stages where you have to travel to one of the ancient cities, find information on your mark, and then execute the assasination. Each stage has six different objectives that give you the necessary information, but you only have to complete some of them. Some are rediculously easy like eavesdropping on a conversation. The more satisfying require taking out marks for an informant under a set time limit without alerting the guards. Once you have your info you are tasked with the assasination. These objectives are very satisfying to carry out and require some thought and freeplay on how you want to execute. You can charge in with swinging sword and kill all the guards first, or you can set yourself up and find a way to get the kill in quietly. On eliminating your mark, a dialogue opens up between you and your mark that pans out the story and conspiracies. These moments can really suck one into the story of the game. After the kill outrun the alerted guards and get back to the brotherhood, then you exit the Animus and are back in the lab.
Although the objectives in each stage are satisfying, it can get repetative as each mark requires the same objectives to aquire info. Luckily scaling and jumping all over the detailed structures of the cities really never gets old. Plus the plot that unfolds will always leave you wanting more. Hidden flags are scattered in the cities for those with an exploratory itch, but on finding them its unclear if there is any reward. Rplayability seems moderate as there is no need to return to a stage other than finding more flags or reliving or completing overplayed objectives.
Some technical glitches pop up on occasion. The worst are lockups that require a complete system restart. Sometimes the sound drops. Occasionally citizens will pop up out of nowhere, and Altair has a few brainfarts when scaling walls. At one time I got stuck inside a building and couldn't get out. There is no "restart at last checkpoint" option so that at a few times I'd just as well let the guards kill me just to restart a botched objective or stuck glitch. Framerate can hiccup or slow frequently. Still, with all that said, considering the complexity of the maps and how well done everything else is the flaws are easily forgotten. This for me does however push my rating down to an 8.5 instead of a 9.