Assassins Creed's intuitive controls and organic surroundings and fun gameplay make Ubisoft's game an instant classic.
The game opens up in modern day times with desmond the bar tender, strapped into a machine that can access his ancestors memories and help two scientists find a precious artifact that they want. Desmond claims to have no idea whats going on and throughout the game you are never really sure whether he does or not, however his small sections are irrelevant anyway, the main focus of the game is Altair, the shamed assassin who wants to earn his way back into the top of the ranks.
You visit Altair through this machine, through Desmond you see and play as Altair, completing objectives to unlock intel on the whereabouts of your target. Although the intel missions are cool at first, they get repetitive towards the end, and you often end up following the pattern, climb a building, (gain awareness of locations in the map) , stalk a guy, eavesdrop between two people, steal something, kill a man.
However the rest of the gameplay is very intuitive and well made, you run up walls and do amazing acrobatic accomplishments by holding the r1 button and pressing X on the ps3, although it seems simple, it makes for some exciting chases as you can time your jumps and rolls through this feature. The roofs are your best friends, and nothing feels more satisfying then running across them and making an extrodinarly large leap of faith into a hay bale below to evade the guards when you've been caught.
The graphics in Assassins creed are absolutely breathtaking, there are so many different character models and everything looks organic and doesn't look like it was placed there just so you could climb it, it looks like it is naturally part of the building. Another cool feature is eagle vision, which makes altair go into first person and it highlights everyone in different colours to determind their threat level, whether they are friend or foe, or someone that you need to assassinate, very useful for the later levels.
The Swordfighting is very cool and something however that you may want to avoid as to make the rest of the game easier, to many events where you attract attention to yourself make the guards more aware of your activities and suspicious of you constantly. You use square to attack and hold l1 to block, eventually you link together cool attacks and counter attacks to create really fluid swordplay, the kills themselves are usually cinematic and extremely gory, satisfying even the most bloodthirsty of people (like me)
The sound in Assassins creed is also amazing, a cinematic score is a constant undertone within the game, accompanied by the talk of the citizens of Acre and the other cities you visit while your there. Its always amusing to see when two civilians notice you climbing a wall and shout What is that man doing? I tell you he's going to get himself hurt. The developers clearly worked hard to make this as an immersive game as possible and it worked!
There are a few different weapons within Assassins creed, Sword, Short Sword, Throwing Knives and a rather cool 4 inch knife where Altair's finger should be on his left hand. His Finger is cut off and the knife retracts and extracts when Altair wants to use it, its so useful when you are chasing a fleeing target from the rooftops to just jump down land on the target and ram the knife into the back of his head. Each weapon handles slightly differently, however i tended to use the Short Sword and the 4 inch knife in conjunction with each other as it enabled fast brutal killings.
Another cool feature are the monks and the blocker citizens within the city, the monks help you into the city by letting you pretend you are one of them, ( you are dressed similarly to the monks and the scholars within AC). The Blocker Citizens are relatives of citizens that you rescue from the Tormenting Guards, some of the women screaming for help, once rescued, say thank you my brothers will hear of your kindness. etc. They essentially distract guards and can stop them from catching you if you are on the run from them.
Once you complete the game, assassins creed doesn't have much to offer, you probably don't want to go back and complete all the objectives that you missed, as it means restarting the entire chapter, and there are no real incentives, no new costumes, no new hidden weapons, just stats.
Overall, Ubisoft's Assassins Creed is a Masterpiece of a Game, it looks outstanding, and its Gameplay although repetitive towards the end is still great fun and extremely immersive, giving you many ways to kill an enemy, simply depending on your wits and your creative ability.