Assassin's Creed starts off really really well, but about half way through it starts to reveal a lot of painful flaws.
First the good, then I'll mix in a lot of the bad.
The animation is superb. Simply the best animation in any game I've seen to date. Sure, some of them may have been recycled from Prince of Persia (most definitely the case), but this is not a bad thing consider the high quality. The Montreal Studio really should just outsource there animation and skip making games all together. It would elevate the industry to a new level without us having to put up with the mess of a game that is AC.
The graphics in this game are also great. I can deal with lower quality graphics as long as the animation is good, but thankfully they got these two things right. There is some occasional glitchiness with the graphics. Tearing here and there. Plenty of clipping. There will also be random polygon flickering on the screne at just about every point in the game. It's pretty minor, but it's there none the less.
The sound is great too. Some of the voice clips are recycled WAY to often, but all of the voice work is top notch. You don't ever imagine someone in a sound studio sipping on tea and reading lines while typing a text message on their iPhone. The music is also really well done. I am still humming the main theme song as I type this review.
The game is indeed "open ended" but also is focused into levels. There are 3 major cities, and each one is split up into 3 segments. You can only access 1 segment on your first trip, and later on the other segments open up. When you are working on anything in the unlocked segments there is really no reason to ever be in the previous segments at all, unless you missed something previously.
The only thing you would be able to do is go back and collect flags that are sprinkled around the game. This can be addicting for awhile, but once you get all the obvious ones there is really no reason to go find the ones you missed. Sure you get an achievement for finding flags, but I couldn't care less about that. Maybe having added in a system that makes finding them a bit funner, and more interactive, then just spotting them would have been nice.
The objectives in the game are actually quite fun too, at the start. Some of absurdly easy, while others are borderline punishing. There really are no side quests in the game other then collecting the flags mentioned before. All of the objectives are required in some capacity. You are given 6 objectives for each "level". Depending on the level, you need to complete a certain number of them to unlock the major "assassination quest" that is the sole purpose for each level. There are only really 3-4 different types of objectives since many are duplicated each level. Pickpocketing for example. PAINFULLY easy to do, but still kind of fun. By the end of the game these are really just a freebie because they are impossible to be bad at. Anyone looking to blitz through the game should just cut straight to these.
The funnest objective is easily the Viewpoint objectives. These really are one of the best points of the entire game. You climb a tall building and click the "view" button that will cause a cool cinematic shot panning around the character standing on top of a huge tower. What this ends up doing is filling in your map around this area with details such as quest objectives and street layout. Since the climbing mechanic can be so fun, completing these really is like solving a little puzzle each time. Often you have to kill a guard or two to complete, so strategy is involved, although killing a handful of guards can be done fairly quickly.
Once you start the assassination quest, all of the unfinished objectives no longer remain available. This kind of sucks if you are a completist wanting to finish them all (more achievements) because you end up having to restart the level which results in repeating a LOT of gameplay.
There are a few gameplay mechanics that encompass the entire game. The best part is the climbing/running mechanics, that when they work, work really well. Sadly, when they fail, they fail BIG time. The control scheme for this mechanic works perfectly. You hold down a few buttons and just move the stick the direction you want to go. The game, for the most part, auto navigates from object to object. When this is working correctly your character will be blitzing across city rooftops, up walls, and through crowds of people with ease. Unfortunately the mechanic will often fail to "guess" what object you want to move to next and will instead make you do something disastrously the opposite. This creates way too many extremely frustrating situations. A game's difficulty should be part of the game, not wrestling with broken controls. Much of this becomes painfully obvious during areas where you jump your character from post to post over water. I can even remember how many times I would watch my character miss a post to the left or right by just a smidge, and fall into the water. Water = death in AC. You land in water, you die instantly. Kind of stupid. This kind of thing would happen when trying to jump along 5 posts that are set in a straight line. You can line it up perfectly before starting, yet still manage to take a swim on the 3rd or 5th post, despite still having everything lined up perfectly. This aspect of the game really would be useful for making anyone into a raging expletive despensor. It did for me.
The other major element of the game is the combat system. If you have any familiarity with the PoP combat system, and you hated it, then avoid AC all together. At first it seems ok and manageable, but as the game goes on the enemies start to develop something of a resistance to any of the easy to execute moves. Early on the "counter attack" move is a one shot kill on any enemies that you use it on. Later in the game it becomes 100% useless. I can understand the reasoning for making it less effective, but completely nullifying it is a bit stupid considering it's the only really combat maneuver that you can successfully pull off. Whenever you are in combat, most of the time it will be against many enemies at once. It's common to have at least 5-8 enemies on you each fight. This makes the general "attack" move pretty much worthless because any time you attack one guard, the other guards all start swinging away. Yes the block button works against these attacks, but not if you are still in the middle of a long animation sequence. Thankfully the actually act of finishing off an enemy is almost always satisfying. They spit out a nice grunt, plenty of blood, and if you did it just right you get to see a very cinematic action shot of your character chopping them in soft places.
As the game progresses you do unlock other combat abilities, but unfortunately the level of accuracy for using them is roughly 10%. There is a "grab" move this is almost impossible to do. There is also a move that lets you deflect away an enemies sword, thus leaving them open to attack. Unfortunately it is absolutely impossible to do. I landed it a few times in the practice area, but was completely unable to use it even once in the actually gameplay portions.
The story in the game is extremely good....at first. (didnt see that coming did you) The story really does have a major twist to it from the get-go, and is the major reason I kept playing after hitting the half way point. Once you get 8 hours in there really is nothing new to see except for new story elements. Sadly the game comes to a very abrupt, non-conclusive, disapointing end. Imagine the TV show Lost. Now imagine the TV show Lost being cancelled after the 1st season. Yeah.. it sucks that bad. Virtually zero explanation of what was going on with the major story arc. Some little bits are explained, but are just not as fulfilling as what may have been possible with wrapping up the main arc. Apparently this is motivation to purchase any sequels that may get made, which at this point seem to be a pretty obvious conclusion.
The final "boss" fight is a total joke. What a piece of trash. Take all of the broken bits of the combat system, remove the fun parts, remove the effective parts, and let the boss have a one shot kill most of the time. Yes that sounds like garbage. Yes it is garbage. I can't help but think this portion of the game was skipped entirely by the game testers, because if it HAD been played I am sure they would have stabbed a few people. This boss encounter is easily one of the lamest, poorly implemented boss encounters in the history of "mediocre" games. Sure there have been worse out there, but only in games that are %100 suckage. None in games that have this much good going on.
Topping off the boss encounter comes the abrupt ending, followed by 15 minutes of uninteruptable credits. You can't skip them at all. But once you DO get through them (thanks for hijacking my 360 for 15 minutes) you get an achievement. Woopty friggin doo. Being forced to wait for credits to end JUST to get an achievement is the kind of stupidity that fosters gameplay elements such as "one shot kills from bosses". Completely absurd.
I would have given this game at LEAST an 8.5 had I stopped playing it after 8 hours. Doing so would have saved me from the embaressment that is the rest of the game.
If anything, rent this game or borrow it for a day. Even if you rent it, don't play it longer then 1 or 2 sittings. Trust me, you have seen it ALL if you get this far in.
P.S. - Sorry for all the spelling errors. I know there are plenty. The "spell check" button below told me so.