Assassin's Creed

Assassin's creed is possibly one of the best thought up games in years. It replaces your mediocre first person shooters and dull race car games with something that is a real gem on the ring of next gen wonders. Some would best describe Assassin's Creed as a mixture between the acrobatics of Prince Of Persia, the cunning concept of Hitman and the freedom to roam. This description fits Assassin's Creed well but this game includes a lot of unique features that will set a precedent to games of this genre in future.

The year is 2012 and you assume the role of Desmond Miles, an ordinary bartender who may apear normal but events reveal that Desmond is in fact a descendant from a long line of Assassin's. He is kidnapped and bought to a lab owned by Abstergo industries. He is told about his connections to the assassins and is forced into an experiment involving a piece of machinery known as the Animus. It can delve into the mind and seek DNA which it can extract memories. The Animus extracts the DNA linking to the memories of Altair, an assassin during the third crusade. The scientists simply tell Desmond that they were interested into how the assassin's did business and so, reluctantly he allows himself to be used to reveal the story of his ancestor, Altair.



Altair is a very high ranking member of the assassin's brotherhood of Masyaf in the holy land. You start on a simple mission of killing the Templar, Robert de Sable. You are with two fellow members of the brotherhood as you make your way into a mine to find Robert. The brotherhood is strict upon their three tenants: Never harm the innocent, Remain stealthy and subtle at all times and never compromise the brotherhood. You find that Altair breaks all three of these tenants within the first few minutes in killing an old man, directly approaching Robert and then being found out. The consequences are that Altair is knocked down and thrown into an enclosed area where a mini cave in seals him off from his two comrades, who from Altair's side of the cave in sound to be getting massacred. Altair has no other option but to return to his master, Al Mualim who strips him of his rank and weaponry for his carelessness and blames him for the loss of one of the lives of his comrades. To redeem yourself you must seek out and kill nine men who are exploiting and taking advantage of the current situations in the Holy land for personal gain. Altair accepts and sets off down the path of redemption'¦

The plot is very tricky to grasp the first time you play Assassin's Creed but when you look back you realise what all the twists in the plot amounted to.



The gameplay in Assassin's Creed is what makes it such a good game. There are many NPCs including your average civilians and guards so you will need to master two stances when playing the game, the passive stance (allows you to remain low profile and mingle with the civilains) and aggressive stance (guards will be suspicious and may attack you.) The switch between stances is made merely by holding down the R1 button on your controller. You will notice whiles in the two different stances that Altair moves at a different pace and civilians have different reactions to him. If you are seen acting suspiciously (you may be attacking a thug or free running across buildings) the guards will attack. Every guard you encounter will now chase you so you have to think fast. The quickest way is hiding in a wagon of hay, sitting on a bench between civilians, hiding in a crowd of monks or simply breaking the line of sight for a prolonged amount of time. The other alternative is just to attack but you will find you are heavily outnumbered and if you are new to the game you could be risking your life.

The free running is another great thing about this game. Simply switch into a high profile stance and pressing the X button is sure to have Altair clinging onto a building. There isn't much effort put into all the free running however. It simply requires you to remain in high profile and run off edges or press the X button occasionally. Even targeting which bit of terrain you want to climb up is done for you. Some would argue that it is a lazy way of not adding another gameplay feature to the game but in my opinion, when I am running from a horde of guards I am not really bothered about how easy it is to escape.

Altair's targets are found in the three vast cities of the Holy land: Jerusalem, Damascus and Acre. Each one of these cities is split into three equal sections, some of which you are unable to reach unless you have reached a certain point in the game. But it isn't as simple as just finding your target and slaying them on the spot, no, first you must gain as much information about the target as possible. There are several ways of gaining information and the first recommended one is finding lookout posts around the city. They are normally just tall towers which Altair can climb up and when at the top he can see his surroundings. In doing so will add points of interest to your map, these can be eavesdropping on people, pick pocketing and can take other forms like interrogation. Apart from gathering information there are also some secondary missions which either involve you assassinating some templars for a fellow brother or protecting the innocent from thugs and guards. Once all the information is gathered you will be able to seek out your target and kill them in any way you wish. However the most satisfying way of killing "bosses" is to stealth kill them, but if all else fails and you are seen you can just go for the heavy assault.



Combat can get repetitive as so can the other parts of the game such as gathering information but if you learn to experiment with different weapons you wont have problems. Combat is basically formed by you either attacking, countering or blocking. Countering is by far the best as you can do it with each weapon (even the throwing knives) it requires skilful reactions from Altair to counter an enemy's attack and deliver a fatal strike sure to kill the enemy. Even boss battles are the same. The three main weapons are the assassin's dagger. It is a hidden blade that can be use to walk up behind enemies and put them down instantly. The throwing knives are quite cool but when trying to chase someone and throwing a dagger at them can be risky because civilians tend to stray into the path of the knife sometimes. In hurting the innocent you will receive damage which is displayed on the HUD. Your HUD consists of your health bar and a small insignia which colours indicate how low or high your profile is. The more tasks you complete in the game the longer your bar of health grows.

Altair and Desmond are voice acted by two different people but they appear to have some similar physical traits and Desmond also wears a white hooded jumper which makes him look even more like Altair. Desmond comes across as pretty average and has a playful tone of voice. He occasionally cracks jokes when in the lab before entering the Animus. Altair on the other hand sounds quite gruff and cunning and for the first ten minutes of play you are sure to think of him as arrogant and selfish but as you progress through the game it seems that he becomes a better person.

The geographic splendour of the Holy land makes the game seem even more realistic with Templars roaming around battle camps, street urchins begging you for money and upon reaching the highest point of a lookout post you can just see for yourself what a good job Ubisoft Montreal did to make it look as stunning as it could get.

Overall Assassin's Creed is immensely fun, the plot has it's ups and downs but you can work some gaps out for yourselves. The ending of the game definitely leaves room for a sequel and a prequel so we are just going to have to see what happens.

Graphics: 4.8/ 5.0
Sound: 4.7/ 5.0
Gameplay: 4.9/ 5.0
Layout: 4.6/ 5.0
Online: N/A