Assassin's Creed is a unique and inventive action adventure game bogged down mostly by some slight repetition issues.
Assassin's Creed follows the assassin Altair and his present day counter-part Desmond. Desmond is a relative of Altair and as it turns out, the memories of Altair exist in Desmond. With the help of a scientific 'Animus Machine', Desmond can read and experience the memories of his relatives. In this case, he explores the memories of Altair. Unfortunately for him, he's been kidnapped by a group of scientists intent on discovering a certain point in Altair's life. I actually wasn't a big fan of this story arc but I did enjoy Altair's story. Altair's story starts off in a cave in the Kingdom of Heaven smack in the middle of the Crusades. Altair breaks the 'Assassin's Creed' during a key event in the plot and as such he has his rank taken away. He must assassinate nine targets in order to regain his rank and though this plot may not sound as interesting as Desmond's, it's far superior in how it's told and how it's presented. Each target you have is unique and interesting and they are all fun to learn about. It's also just overall a lot more fun to play this story as Desmond's story unfolds in lame dialogue sequences which are quite boring to say the least. I found no merit in Desmond's story but Altair's was great. Sadly though, the ending for both these stories just goes...awry. Neither or them are good and in standard Ubisoft fashion, you get left with a cliff hanger (argh).
Ultimately, Assassin's Creed depends on it's gameplay to bring the player to the end of the game. In fact, it succeeds for the most part in both innovating and nailing the basics of the action adventure genre. For one Assassin's Creed innovates with a brand new control scheme which is difficult at first to comprehend but with play it comes natural. It basically starts out with the basic left stick movement. The face buttons control your actions, the right stick controls the camera, and the d-pad selects your weapons. Your face buttons mark basic actions like blending, gentle pushes, eagle vision, and punch. When you hold the RT button, these actions change to 'action' interactions like tackles, jumping, etcetera. Your character also runs in this mode. If you hold A you will sprint as well. In combat, you hold LT to target or enter combat and then you block with RT. While blocking, you can perform a myriad of actions with the right timing. Counter-attacks are the most deadly but you can also do grab breaks, combo kills, and other attacks. All in all this system is great and it needs only subtle streamlining to become a excellent new control scheme.
Unfortunately though, while the control scheme may work well, combat has some slight issues which need ironing out. Though combat is indeed fun most of the time, it comes off as too easy especially once you gain the ability to use counter-attacks. The AI is also braindead much of the time. Blending seems to get you out of any situation and when you initiate combat, often guards attack you only one at a time seemingly waiting for you to kill the guard attacking you before even making a move. It's also easy to button mash and get kills as eventually guards seem to just give up blocking. I have to say though I wasn't bothered by this. The amount of combat in this game would have made it extremely tedious to enter difficult battles. Thus, this issue didn't break the game for me. There is also nice difficulty progression in this game. Early on you're unrecognizable but later on the guards speak of 'The Man In The White Hood' and thus you'll be attacked far more. This sort of organic progression adds a bit of challenge towards the end of the game but the combat still comes off as easy.
Perhaps my favorite part of the game was free running. This game is like 'parkour' on speed. Altair can climb literally any building in the cities of the Kingdom and he can do all types of acrobatic jumps, grabs, and moves. Climbing the high points is satisfying though repetitive but it never stopped taking my breath away. The climbing also feels totally organic as there really are no 'artificial enhancers or boosters' to the climbing experience. Everything feels right and it feels like you're climbing a city, not a city with a bunch of ledges helping you along the way. The controls also make it easy to explore the city in this fashion which helps make the experience that much better.
Of course though, this game isn't much of an 'Assassin's Creed' game without assassinations; right? Luckily there is no shortage of targets and you're free to pursue them in any order you choose to some extent. You're also never on a time limit so there is no pressure to rush into the act. In fact the game really tries to give you a lot to distract you from completing assassinations. For instance you could try to find all ninety-one high points which is actually more fun than it sounds. If you want a higher challenge, you can find the 400+ flags scattered around the kingdom. If you're into fighting though you could also do 'save citizen' quests which always pits you against a group of guards assaulting a citizen. You rarely net benefits from this but if you free a scholar you may free up one more scholar group for blending around the city.
The assassinations themselves are a long-ish process. Before you can go actually assassinate your target, you must first complete 3/6 investigation quests. There is truly no incentive to do all 6, not even in the form of achievements. There are four different investigations you can do; eavesdrop, informer, interrogation, and pickpocket. I can understand what the developers intended with these ideas but not all of them work. To start with what worked though, informer is actually a lot of fun. It involves you doing a simple quest for an informer. It's usually either an assassination string or a return the flag quest. Once you complete the task without alerting the guards you gain information. Sadly, these don't become more prevalent till later in the game. Interrogation is also not bad. You follow a target, beat them in a dark alleyway, and then they answer your questions. The rest of them boarder on mediocre and plain bad. Pickpocketing is just you pickpocketing a target. All this means is you hold a button and stealth follow him till you pick their pocket. Eavesdrop is by far the worse though. You sit on a bench, aim, and listen. It's godawful but luckily with the 3/6 system you can wholly avoid this dreadful mini-mission.
Once you're actually able to assassinate the target the game gets interesting. Sadly though the whole previous part is kind of weak and any information you gain ends up being unavailing to you on the mission. For instance sometimes it tells you that you figured out the guards positions. Sadly this doesn't show up on your map...what's the point then eh? The assassinations make up for it though. These sequences are breath taking, cinematic, and a lot of fun. They start off simply but gradually become more complex and interesting. Each target once assassinated has a nice back story to tell you and it's interesting to learn about them. After you complete the assassination, there will always be a chase after you by the guards. You can fight, run, or hide; the choice is yours. You have to shake them though before returning to the base and once you do this the assassination is complete. These moments are the best parts of the game and they are both the most intense and most interesting moments you'll have in Assassin's Creed. They make the game worthwhile and it's a shame the developers didn't shift more focus to them.
If there is one place Assassin's Creed shines in, it's the technicalities. It's graphics are gorgeous and the attention to detail is truly amazing. The cities are massive, vivid, and fully realized not to mention faithful to their real world counter-parts. Each city has a unique style which sets it apart from one another and this game clearly worked to develop it's own style with memory glitches and other interesting animus influenced glitches. I loved the presentation here. The game also sounds great and though lacking a decent soundtrack, it has excellent voice acting. Altair is a bit weak but his counter-parts are well voiced and so are the citizens of the cities. If there was ever a game that was the definition of next generation presentation, it's Assassin's Creed.
Despite it's issues, I can't say Assassin's Creed is a mediocre game. In fact it's a great game with a lot of new ideas and interesting concepts. With a bit more polish and ironing out, it could easily become a full realized new IP with AAA potential. I am confident Ubisoft Montreal will attempt to solve the issues with this game in the sequel coming this Fall and I can't wait to see the outcome of Assassin's Creed 2.
The Good: Stellar presentation, great sound, cities are distinct and alive, great controls, excellent parkour, good progression, fun but simple combat, assassinations are a lot of fun but...
The Bad: Getting to them is not so fun, at times the AI is bad, many ideas need ironing out, can be repetitive, collection is the definition of a chore, Altair's voice actor needs work, Why can't I swim?
The Ugly: A great start to what can be a AAA franchise.