They should of stick to platforming (similar to Altair's Chronicles) then trying to incorporate 'freeroaming' style.
Graphics: 7 (pretty slick for a DS however sometimes the frame rates crashes)
Sounds: 8 (voice acting was a welcoming surprise / musical scores are a rehash from AC1 oddly enough)
Value: 4 (replay value is a false representation as you cannot cash any animus hacks until the end of the game and besides, they are pretty worthless)
Tilt: 5 (slightly disappointed)
Score: 5
Assassin's Creed Discovery – well what I can I say about this game? Naturally it's an Assassin's Creed game where it follows directly after Assassin's Creed 2 and acts as a prequel to Brotherhood. Of course Ezio is still there however the when I finished this game, I felt confused of what it trying to represent. Is it a platformer? Encourages exploration? Completing missions within a specified timeframe? Well it's all of those however totally mixes everything up as well.
As mentioned before, it's acts as a wedge between Assassin's Creed 2 and Brotherhood. This time, Ezio starts off in Florence then makes a detour into Spain. His reason for this was to save his fellow brothers (assassins) as they were captured yet an oddly enough, Ezio decided to postpone the search for the Apple for rescuing his brothers. Yet having in possession of the Apple of Eden was the sole purpose for both Altair / Ezio existence, it strikes a bit odd of why postponing. I guess if Ezio didn't push back his search, there will be no game.
The gameplay is where the game confuses itself. Assassin Creed is known for its free roaming, tower climbing with side quests galore. Of course the DS wouldn't be able to produce this due to its lack of power however the developers tried to incorporate platform jumping instead. Naturally this could of worked however when the game has a built in timer and the only way to increase your health is to locate hidden wanted posters, well you have a win / lose situation.
The 'win' situation is by finding those wanted posters which increases your health – you lose because every mission provides you a rank and one of them is how fast you complete the mission. So if you spent a lot of time exploring, you will score low and vice versa, so there's no two ways about it. At the end of each mission it ranks you the amount of kills and stealth kills and if you think you can score highly by killing, think again as 1) it takes time to do this and 2) stealth missions will penalise you for unnecessary killing. The chase missions can also penalise you as it's time based and some even have a build in timer during the mission itself, so you have to worry about two timers (?). I just don't get it – a timer within a timer.
The stealth missions in theory are a good idea however it doesn't work well in this game. The main reason for this is that if you get caught three times, you resync to the last checkpoint. So restarting equals loss of time and pretty much 'fails' your rank for that mission (as the maximum allowance is just one spotting and for the larger missions two). And being a platformer, you don't get to see much of the world. Granted that there are enemy icons on the bottom portion of the DS indicating where the enemy is facing however there are times where you need to perform a long jump only to land right next to the enemy even though he was off-screen to begin with.
As briefly mentioned before, at the end of each mission will score you a rank – basically it shows how well you performed during that mission. The score is out of 100 however it only scores at an increment of 20. So why have a score out of 100 when you can score out of 5. Nevertheless, you cannot ultimately fail any missions as the lowest score is 20 – why I know this is because I scored this many times during my first run. I blame it on locating those wanted posters so I can bolster up my health. However the good thing about those wanted posters is that once you find them, they never reappear in any other play throughs unless you are using a different profile.
What to do with those points collectively provides you 'animus hacks'. And what do I mean collectively is you cannot cash in any points until right at the end of the game. Besides, the 'hacks' are pretty much worthless as some examples are: your next play through you can look like a Spanish guard or the most difficult one (2700 points) allows you to access hard mode. Why is the hardest one to obtain unlocking the hard mode is beyond reasoning. And to make matters 'interesting', earning points do not carry over from one game to another. So the way I look at this is thank goodness I opt for finding wanted posters then worrying about earning 'hack' points.
The combat is pretty slick for the DS and surprisingly enough, it does not require using a stylus at all. Again this strikes an odd cord as that's the reason why the DS existed in the first place. I won't go into details of how to control Ezio however, and thank goodness, Ezio can perform counter strikes (my favourite), blocking (including deflecting arrows) and combos. Unfortunately my other favourite, grab and throw, is not there.
Graphically the game is quite decent for the DS. The backgrounds, even though they are all rendered in 2D, are detailed enough and Ezio looking fluent. Yet there are times when it's combat heavy (i.e. three guys gunning for you), the frame rates can slow down a little. However and surprisingly though, all the main characters are voice acted. A nice touch considering yet the musical scores are mainly rehash from Assassin's Creed. It would be better if they were at least from Assassin's Creed 2.
I guess because of all this mishmash (i.e animus hacks cannot be cashed until the end of the game), it encourages playing the game more than once. Why this is 'important' was because the game is remarkably short – I think it's about four hours to complete. I actually played this twice and my second run was amazingly quick considering (but still scored a lot of 20s – thank you very much stealth missions) however I'm not really sure why I played it again. Maybe I felt guilty that I purchased $20 for this however I can only recommend this game to those, who's like me, wanted to complete the entire Assassin's Creed saga however not doing so, you're not missing out too much. I guess they should of stick to platforming (similar to Altair's Chronicles) then trying to incorporate its 'big brother' semi free roaming style.