Assassin's Creed

THE GOOD:
Realistic action and motion, entertaining battles and assassinations, historically accurate storyline.

THE BAD:
Repetitive methods and missions, repetitive minor-character speech, irritating minor-character behavior.

SUMMARY:
Assassin's Creed is an engaging, though somewhat short-lived story once you get the hang of how things work.

The battle system is quite fun, ranging from the stealth tactics (both low-profile and high-profile) that the majority of gameplay is based around, long-range attacks (which truthfully aren't very effective apart from the final boss fight), and all-out one-on-one (or more often than not, one-on-multiple) sword combat with a variety of counter-maneuvers and attacks.

And when your character isn't offing somebody, there's all sorts of amusing Prince-of-Persiaesque monkey business to be had; rebounding off of walls, climbing to ridiculous heights to find map-illuminating viewpoints, hopping from rooftop to rooftop, and taking "leaps of faith" off previously mentioned insane heights into carts of hay, all without the hassle of those pesky broken bones.

The character motion is extremely realistic, and they even got the horses down really well.

Though there are a decent number of mission types, such as rescuing citizens, obtaining information via eavesdropping or pummeling, collecting flags, and of course, assassinating targets, it does tend to get a tad on the repetitive side when you start getting into the sixth or seventh time of doing these same missions in three somewhat similar cities.

Then there's the beggar women, who tend to impede your progress when you're trying to pickpocket or assassinate someone, but they're not nearly as rage-inducing as the drunks and the crazies, who lunge at you and push you into the wall whenever you get near them.
Though like other citizens, you can't kill them without penalty, there is a bright side!
You can slaughter them to your heart's content after you've finished the game, HUZZAH!

Finally, as I mentioned earlier, the story is very interesting (and educational to boot if you don't happen to know much about the Templar Knights and whatnot), but was rather sporadically delivered during the modern sections, and leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions.
Of course, if they plan on making a sequel, then that's completely understandable why they would leave a lot of things open.

All in all, this is a pretty good game, with good replay value if you're into blowing time killing whoever sparks your fancy.