Assassin’s Creed

Secrets are hard to keep…especially when they concern Assassin’s Creed. The developers of the stealthy assassination simulator have tried very hard over the course of its development to guard important information from getting out — most of it involving plot. The premise of the game has always been that you play as a medieval assassin who must find and kill nine Templars during the Third Crusade. That made sense — all the early screenshots and trailers depicted a world that looked very much like the Middle East during the Third Crusade. And yes, you do assassinate men who look like Templars. But if that wasn’t enough, later demos of the game included a futuristic filter that appeared while targeting enemies. So the game must take place in the future, too, right? The correct answer is “yes,” but Ubisoft continued to say nothing, thus revealing a very poorly kept secret.

That’s right — the game takes place in both the near-present day and the during Third Crusade. (Before you start worrying about spoilers, all of this is revealed as soon as you boot up the game.) Big surprise, eh? But I will say that I really dig the Matrix-like take they went with the story. Without giving away too much, you basically play as a descendant of an assassin named Altaïr. The twist is that you’re actually reliving your ancestor’s memories through a device known as the Animus (Creed’s version of the Matrix jack-in chair) against your will. I think it’s a shame Ubisoft was so secretive about revealing this — I actually think it makes the game far more interesting than it originally appeared.

While the story may seem a little complex, the actual game structure is surprisingly simple: Kill nine dudes. Yep, that’s it. But before you can start the slaying, you must perform various investigations in order to gather the adequate information for each hit. You gather information in several different ways: picking pockets, eavesdropping on conversations, performing tasks for fellow assassins, and interrogating informants. In order to find out where you need to go in order to accomplish these tasks, you must climb up to various viewpoints throughout each city. (Though how you learn where to eavesdrop by simply climbing up a building is beyond me.) Regardless, turning Altaïr into a medieval Spider-Man in order to reach high points is one of the best parts about the game.

Or at least until you get sick of it — which will likely happen very quickly. The fault of Creed’s game structure isn’t what you do — gathering intel and conducting hits is actually pretty sweet. The repetition of these actions, however, is severely bitter. I kept waiting for a changeup of the objectives, and, well, that never happened. From the first hit to the last, you go through the same motions over and over and over…find the viewpoints, do the investigation missions, and take out the final target. It got to the point where I only did the minimum amount of investigation tasks needed to perform each kill. To make things worse, despite Ubisoft’s faithfulness to history, the three cities of Acre, Damascus, and Jerusalem are practically the same. Do they have different people populating them? Yes. Do they have different buildings? Yep. Do they have different color tints to remind you that you’re actually in a different environment? Uh-huh. But do they actually play any differently? Not at all. Variety is all I want, really, but three open-world cities with little to no indoor areas did not give me that. At least I can’t complain about how beautiful these cities look. Not just the cities, either — everything in Assassin’s Creed is covered with a superb coat of polygon polish. Hopefully the beautiful engine that powers this game will be used in future Ubisoft titles.

Well, judging by the (disappointing) ending of the game, we don’t have to worry about that — they are definitely setting up a sequel. And that’s Assassin’s Creed’s biggest problem: It’s a game what was clearly created with a sequel mindset. Instead of making a complete experience, we’re getting a game that’s obviously holding stuff back for the inevitable follow-up. For instance, I felt as if the historical assassination portion of the game could have been half of the overall experience, with the other half focusing on the present-day stuff. But no — we have to wait for that. It sucks, yes, but I’m definitely willing to wait (albeit impatiently) until the next game eventually comes out. And it better — I hate killing time in between games.

But I do like killing fictional men based on real men. And you’ll be doing a lot of that in Assassin’s Creed…just a wee bit differently than you’re used to. See, most games of this genre go for over-the-top action, because, well, realism isn’t all that much fun in a videogame. Knowing this, Assassin’s Creed still bravely bases its combat system on the actual fight styles of the time. That means you won’t be able to wield a sword and simply slash the crap out of any soldier you see. Instead, you have to take a more defensive stance and learn to parry, counterattack, and throw enemies. All of this works really well at first, but after a while, it gets so plodding that you’ll likely opt to skip fighting altogether. Especially since counterattacking becomes the most useful tactic for getting rid of guards in a pinch, and that means you’ll be waiting for them to attack a lot. But if you do learn to master the combat, it is rewarding to use the advanced techniques you acquire after successfully completing each assassination. And learn them you must — the final portion of the game really focuses on a lot of fighting. Of course, the best option is to adopt a stealthy strategy (you are an assassin, remember?). So if you’re able to get to your enemies before they notice you, you can pull off the impressive stealth kills using your handy hidden assassin blade. Though this move is mostly used on rooftop archers (and your ultimate assassination targets), it’s much more satisfying to incorporate some sneaky action into your killing repertoire.

The highly-touted “free climbing” control system is also very satisfying…when it works to your liking. The thing about Assassin’s Creed’s controls is that they are complex in their simplicity. In order to perform almost any maneuver in the game, all you have to do is hold down both the right trigger and the A button and run. That’s it! Simple, right? Well, yes and no. Since we’ve been trained as gamers to use a jump button for everything we do, it’s bizarre to play an action game where such an option does not exist (The Legend of Zelda notwithstanding). Contextual button pressing will take some time to get used to, but when it works, it works really well. And because the animation is so amazing, it really is a treat to watch Altaïr scale buildings with ease. But once the game applies the pressure and sics a slew of guards on your ass, things aren’t so simple. Instead of going at your own pace, you are instead forced to hop around frantically searching for a hiding spot, and this means making many, many mistakes. Or at least I did, and it was mighty frustrating — you really have to learn to love the controls.

Though I’m focusing on a lot of Assassin’s Creed’s faults, this doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy playing the game — it attempts a lot of ambitious things and it almost succeeds at every one. But it’s apparent that these grandiose ideas may have been a little too much to master the first go-round. But hey, at least the groundwork is laid for a killer sequel — right, Ubisoft?