The rare gem that not only lives up to the hype, but surpasses it.

User Rating: 9 | Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Edition PC
I'd failed twice before, executing multiple targets in the market area without being spotted. There were guards everywhere and one of the marks just kept walking back and forth between two guard posts. I had tried jumping from the rafters and even killing the guards first, but I kept getting spotted. I decided then just to play it smooth. My hands folded in prayer, I waited at the furthest point between both guard stations. My target walked right past me, and I turned and, quietly, jammed my wrist-blade into this back. Not a word, not a sound, he was still standing as I slowly walked away. I was past the guards before the first person screamed, and around the corner before they realized what had happened.

Welcome to the brutal yet artistically precise life of Altair, protagonist in Ubisoft's third-person action game, Assassin's Creed. If you've been living under a rock the last year, you may not know the full story involving this game, but to summarize quickly, it's a wonderful mix of Prince of Persia and Hitman involving an assassination plot to control the chaos during the Crusades. I've been dying for a full medieval action game for years, and Assassin's Creed delivers.

The game play is very much Hitman-esque in that you are given targets to take out in whatever fashion you see fit. Bear in mind you aren't given as many options as 47 in Blood Money (no dropping chandeliers on people, no poisons, no dressing up as a clown or giant chicken) but you can choose the angle of attack, a hard or soft approach, and what weapon to finish them. Slip past guards in a crowd of scholars to skewer your target quietly, or body-tackle them and finish your assignment off as the others are lost in the confusion. You run, jump, do everything but fly from rooftop to rooftop and as you grow more comfortable with the controls, you feel Altair grow with you. Every new assignment brings a chance to investigate and explore faster, and make the action that much more explosive. Nine major targets make up the bulk of the story, with several smaller targets and objectives to achieve to help you with the main quests. Every single assassination has its own reward, whether it's a blade in the neck, or a sword through the spine. When open combat does break out, whether by being spotted or botching your hit, things get much more difficult. It looks like a bad kung fu movie at first, where eight assailants wait to attack one at a time, but each one hits like a hammer, and if they didn't go slow on you the game would be no fun at all. Fluid movements and plenty of combat options like grips and blocks as well as slices and stabs turn each confrontation into a work of art.

Acre, Jerusalem, and Damascus are the three bustling cities teeming with life that host your assignments, followed by an open game world that connects the three as well as the town of Masyaf. After you scout all twelve tower vantage points, you can "fast forward" from your starting point for each mission in Masyaf to the town of your choice. This cuts down on a LOT of time, but the space between is no less wasted. Every inch of the Assassin's Creed world is painstakingly crafted, with plenty of buildings to climb and secondary targets and fights to pick along with way. The cities themselves are nothing short of breathtaking. Architecture and debris as well as the general garb of thousands of residents varies as you move from the poor side of town to the rich. Every door, archway, exposed plank, and protruding brick can be clung to and leapt from, causing you to scan your surroundings constantly for attack points and escape routes. Half the fun of the game is just "free running" all over town, picking off archers, looking for crusaders, and investigating your next hit. Jump from rooftop to window ledge, sprint across rafters and beams, and dive into haystacks from dizzying heights. Other critics complain of the repetitive nature of missions that require you to explore, investigate, report back, then repeat ad nauseum, but to me the world is so realistic and the feeling of being there was so strong that it never turned stale.

This game is rock solid. Playing on an AMD Athlon 64 x2 5800+ with GeForce 9800 GTX and the graphics cranked up, I never saw a single frame rate stutter until the final Jerusalem mission when the entire city was unlocked and visible. Even then, it was minor. Ragdoll physics will sometimes cause a body to bounce off a flat surface, there are minor clipping issues, and twice I witnessed a confused AI soldier just stop and stare at me in the middle of combat, but given the hours of gaming I've logged into this, none of those issues can be considered "issues" at all. The dialogue is a bit heavy but the voice acting is spot-on, and the sci-fi subplot to tie the main plot together is well-written and does little to detract from the medieval setting. The biggest gripe I have is the controls for keyboard and mouse. Fighting is very difficult and timing the combos with mouse clicks seems to have some sort of lag in it. It could be that I don't have the right coordination, but it's all to frequent that I can't block even the slowest of attacks sometimes.

I had to run for my life in Damascus in a foot-chase that resulted in some twenty-plus guards chasing me. The whole scene was out of some chaotic mix of Keystone Cops and Cirque du Soliel as I jumped off walls, flew up ladders, tackled archers, and frantically searched for a place to hide. When I finally hid in a haystack, I noticed that, sitting in the safety of my study, my pulse was pounding as I watched the guards search for me, swearing as they walked past. THAT is entertainment in video gaming. I was in the city, running for my life, and I couldn't wait to move on to the next target. Assassin's Creed immerses you in the game as well as any RPG or adventure game. Repetitive? Perhaps, but it's the kind of fun I don't mind doing again and again and again…