Were the developer's assassinated before they could develop any content?
To begin, you (the reader) must understand that like every other video game collector and fan, I looked forward to Assasin's Creed with all the earnest of a child staring at a Christmas tree littered with presents on the Eve before Christmas day. I wanted to love this game. I should have loved this game. Let's run through the check list. I am history major – check. One of my main areas of study is the Knights Templar – check. I love a good mystery – check. I love most of Ubisoft's games – check. And who doesn't want to be a rouge assassin? Check. I was made to love this game and it was supposed to have been made to love me. Unfortunately, 20 hours later I find myself hoping reviewers aren't yanking my chain with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune or Mass Effect. (Especially since I have all ready purchased both.)
Moving on - almost everyone that has something positive to say about Assassin's Creed, including Mr. Van Ord, are smitten with the environmental design and control. Basically, graphics. In fact, if you hop, skip, and jump on over to the Official Review by clicking HERE, (I'll have you note that controlling Altaiir in Assassin's Creed is about as simple) you can see that the games major achievements are in graphic design. Now as far as I know, and feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but many people feel that graphics are the "icing" on the video game cake and not the cake itself. This is the problem with Assassin's Creed. Sure, it's beautiful – gorgeous in fact. But, there is little to no game-play involved. Within 30 minutes of playing the game you will have experienced most of what the game has to offer. It's like playing the same side mission in Oblivion over, and over, and over, and over, and over…. well, you get the point.
As for controlling Altair, it's simple. Too simple in fact. You can't mess up. Literally. It's almost impossible to walk off of a building. I found myself getting highly annoyed with the fact that I couldn't seem to persuade Altair to fall off the roof top while being chased by a group of city guards. To explain, stealth is ideal in this game. The point is to lose your pursuer's line of sight so that you can dump yourself into a nearby hay stack or mini shack until the pursuing party's interest wanes. Unfortunately, getting off the roof can entail a significant number of drop commands which, of course, slow down your character and make escape nearly impossible. Using the jump command usually sends you flying across to another roof top instead of allowing you to simply fall to the ground. So, most of the time, when I face a pursuit I'll stand my ground and attack because it's far too exhausting to try and escape. I found myself hating the requirement to visit the Assassin's Bureau in each city because of the drop down command.
As I said before, this game is annoyingly repetitive. Every city and every mission is the same. You scale the towers in the part of the city you have been assigned to investigate, you save the citizens there, you perform an interrogation or pickpocket a couple of unsuspecting citizens, and you assassinate your target. I believe this explanation actually makes the game sound a great bit more fun than the game actually is. To put it in other words, when I began my third assassination quest and I got into the city and saw that I would be performing the same menial tasks as before I thought, "You've got to be kidding. There's got to be more to this game!" I wish there was.
The story can be interesting at moments, but it's nowhere near its potential. When you perform an assassination you are granted a moment with that individual as they lie dying in your arms. They show no regret for their actions and so your character becomes suspicious of the reasons he has been contracted to kill them. The story would probably be more interesting if the sound was better during these scenes. Unfortunately, the whizzing and humming of the animus (the machine that has allowed your character to relive his ancestral memory of Altair) causes a great deal of dropped dialogue and hard to hear moments – even when my television is cranked up. Truth be told, this story is so poor I find myself wondering what Ubisoft was thinking when they decided to make this game. "I know!" said a developer, "We'll make a game about nothing!" And nothing is what this game is.
I suppose what is truly frustrating is that this game could have been a Prince of Persia or a Hitman copy cat. At least the missions and puzzles within those games are varied enough to drive the game forward. Sure, most games require the performing of repetitive action. Shoot. Kill. Pick up. Shoot. Shoot. Kill. It's all relatively "the same." But, I have never actually been so aware of the repetitiveness of action as I was while playing Assassin's Creed. There is no deviation within the game other than within the story itself. And while "fetching" missions in Oblivion and other titles are often of the same premise, you always feel as though your character actually achieved an important task and that the virtual non-existent item that you retrieved actually does exist. For example, in Oblivion I might be set with the task of retrieving a statue. I fast travel to the city the statue is at, pull off a couple of maneuvers and take the statue to my contractor. One task later I have been commanded to go retrieve a relic in a dungeon. The difference between the repetitiveness of Oblivion was that all tasks took you somewhere new and required a different type of behavior and performance. Essentially, you were required to solve a miniature puzzle whether it be in performing stealth or weaponry or any other number or mixture of behaviors. The tasks in Assassin's Creed are the same throughout. It's like performing alchemy for an entire game and nothing changes but the herbs you use while making the potion.
Yet, for all its repetitiveness, Assassin's Creed can be a bit of fun to play. Oddly, this game seems more like the "racing" game of third person platformers. You'll enjoy playing it for 30 minutes to an hour, and then you're probably going to want to move on to something else. It can be addictive because the maneuver's Altair can perform are so much fun to watch on screen you'll want to see them over and over again. It's a shame that this game had so much beauty and control and failed to cut the content cake.
My major criticism is that games like Two Worlds (which has a great deal more story than Assassin's Creed) are criticized and hounded for subpar graphics and control, while games that offer no depth of story like Assassin's Creed are found to be exceptional for existing on nothing other than graphics. So, basically, all anyone needs to develop a solid game is a good graphics team. Everything else is just icing.
My other argument is that a game like this doesn't deserve the rare 9.0 and above status. Is this game comparable in any way to Oblivion, COD4, or (and this will kill you if you have read any of my criticisms of Halo) Halo 3? I don't think so. Not even close! I'd give this game a 6.7 and nothing higher.