The prequel's journey has a lacklustre storyline, messed up puzzles and events that makes Altair looking clumsy.
Graphics: 7 (visually serves its purpose)
Sounds: 7 (nice musical scores / love that cracking sounds when the enemy dies)
Value: 4 (too expensive for a short campaign / little replay value)
Tilt: 5 (I expected more being an Assassin's Creed product)
Actual score: 5.2
Assassin's Creed – Altair's Chronicles does sounds like an exciting title indeed. Also being the prequel of the runaway success Assassin's Creed, you really want to know what's in stall for Altair before the events of the 2007 game. Granted that I never played Assassin's Creed before, therefore I cannot say whether the story effectively carries over to Assassin's Creed. However what I can say is that the prequel's journey has a lacklustre storyline, messed up puzzles and events that makes Altair looking like some kind of clumsy bamboozle.
The premise of Altair's Chronicles is that Altair, fresh from some previous adventure (for which I add, mentions nothing of what he has done), discovers that the Templars and the Saracens are up to no good as they are in hunt for the chalice. Legend goes that he who holds the chalice rules the lands. And to confirm is not a good thing is that upon sight, the Templars ransack the town of Aleppo and naturally attacks the assassin in the process. Quickly, Altair's decision is to locate the chalice aiming to destroy it.
Being a DS game, you come to expect this is not going to be an open-world bonanza where Altair will leisurely jump from one building to the next in search of his next victim. Instead, it can be regarded as a platform game where there's plenty of jumping, dodging and to add into the mix, some sword play. Also there will be mini games where Altair needs to pick pocket items or perform an interrogation to get info. Sadly though, the mini-games are hopeless as it felt like an afterthought: i.e. stealing a key involves moving the item to the 'exit' or tapping on numbers to perform an interrogation. Also there are times that after this 'thievery' exploit, you can kill the victim therefore posing the question of 'Why did I have to go through all of that in the first place'?
The platform jumping is a mixed bag. Granted that the DS cannot produce a wonderfully free-roaming environment, however jumping whilst dodging blades sticking out of walls, or sliding between boulders attached to swinging ropes somehow feels a little out-of-place from an Assassin's Creed franchise. Also, events like floors collapsing beneath Altair's feet, or standing on massive clay pots only to cave in makes me think that Altair is nothing more than a clumsy goose.
Yet, a good change of pace is that Altair gets to display his sword skills as in the beginning, he can only perform basic swings. Yet, as the adventure goes on, Altair will unlock combos. Combos can be triggered by pressing the 'X' and 'Y' buttons in certain sequences, however even that, is quite busted at times as there are some combos that, for the life of me, cannot execute. I wish there was a training ground where you can practice these manoeuvres instead of watching a small video clip. Yet, once you unleash a combo will results a devastating effect. Granted that you can perform the basic swings throughout the game (yes it's that easy) however there will be times that you want to combo the enemy just to speed things up.
Altair can also increase the damage output for his sword and / or increase his health bar. There are a couple of ways to do this however the basic premise is to collect a set amount of floating blue balls. Blue balls can derive from from dead foes or placed haphazardly throughout the map. In addition, to regenerate health is simply by collecting red balls, which only derive from dead foes. Arcane concept at its best.
Visually the game is quite pleasing as the entire game renders well for a 2.5D game. There are only a few times that the frame rate can slow down yet thankfully though it only happens when there's little action. However, because of the static camera angle, there will be times that Esher will be pleased as objects will mesh together as there's no real sense of height. What this means that there will be jumps that you thought the platform is at equal height only to realise you died, totally missing it. Your saving grace is the minimap on the bottom half of the DS, and even that has its limitations as it's displayed in 2D.
I'm not sure the expected completion time however it took me around seven hours; and that's including leaving Altair standing around as I was hunting for something to drink. Other words, the campaign is quite short and paying the full price of $50 is not my ideal investment. Yet, once finishing the campaign, unlocks the 'hard' mode however I'm not sure why you want to go through it again – unless you are a perfectionist and want to 'fully' complete the game.
Sadly, and being a prequel, this wasn't my ideal welcoming to the Assassin's Creed universe. Yet, and I'm pretty sure, that I'm the minority in this situation therefore I cannot foresee why anyone want to play this game as it really doesn't explain the Creed's universe well enough. Unless the characters you meet (and there are only a few) somehow appears in other Assassin's Creed's games, then get it when it's in the bargain bin.