From Bottleneck.org
Assassin's Creed
I've just finished playing Assassin's Creed, which I had been looking forward to quite a lot. I must say that the game took me on a bit of journey - at first I liked it, then I got a bit annoyed by it, then I got over that and enjoyed it.
The game starts with a bit of modern-day back story, the protagonist having been captured by some organisation that had the technology to explore his ancestor's memories via a machine called the "Animus", which inserts the user into the memories as an actor in his ancestor's body. This surprised me a little, I hadn't appreciated there would be some sort of plot device in place to justify dumping us in to the Holy Land a few hundred years ago for the purposes of running around, killing people, and generally having a good time. None the less, you're quickly dropped into the action.
This is where (after what seems like a series of interminable cut-scenes) you start to go "wow!" The game looks amazing, the character's animations and abilities are incredible impressive, once you get used to the rather complicated control mechanisms. Want to run at a building and start climbing it? No problem, just hold down the right mouse button and the space bar, then move in the correct direction. Simple, huh? Want to perform a sneak kill on someone? Select your hidden knife by pressing "2", hold down the space bar to "blend" (move in a hidden way with the crowd), press "F" to select your target, and then tap the left mouse button to make the kill when you get close enough.
That being said, after a little bit of play time you do get the hang of the various key combinations you need to use to do whatever you're trying to do, and they start to fall naturally to your fingers. This is where it starts to get rewarding. The visuals of the land are excellent, the player-controlled character moves in a believable and exciting way through the environment, and there's great satisfaction in performing a good sneak kill. Truth be told, there's a fair bit of satisfaction in completing an unsubtle, slogging swordfight with a group of guards as well! Things are starting to get fun here.
So, that's the perfect time to dump you out of the game and back in to the back-story. Great. Ripped away from all that eye-candy action, and dumped back into a dull set of cut-scenes and wandering about trying to understand what's going on with the back-story, and why you're supposed to care.
Finally, having listened to the various characters drone on for a while, you get back into the action. Whereupon you start to realise that the game is pretty lacking in variety. The missions fall in to a series of fixed categories:
- Eavesdrop (sit on a bench and listen to someone talk)
- Pick pocket (listen to someone talk, follow them, and press the shift key)
- Interrogate (listen to someone talk, follow them, and punch them five times)
- Rooftop challenge (run across the rooftops to a certain place before a timer runs out - an assassin challenge)
- Flag collection challenge (run around a prescribed circuit of streets and rooftops collecting flags on the way, before the timer runs out - an assassin challenge)
- Assassination challenge (kill some people without being detected, sometimes with the variety that it's done to archers on the rooftops - an assassin challenge)
- Save a citizen (have a sword fight with the four or five guards who are beating up a citizen, in return for the minor advantage of some missionaries to blend with, or some mercenaries to keep the guards at bay when you're in their vicinity)
Additionally, to find these missions, you need to climb to the top of each of the view points in the area. In order to then proceed on to the main mission (which is just a case of fighting the guards, killing the target, and then listening to him drone on for a while) you need to complete two or three of the informant challenges, which are the ones given to you by other assassins as detailed above. That being said, there's little point in playing the game unless you complete all of the challenges available in each area, as they make the bulk of the gameplay. It would be a short game indeed if you did the bare minimum.
For a while, this frustration continues. Frustration that all of the missions are the same. Frustration that, just as you're enjoying yourself, you'll get dumped out to the dull back-story. Frustration that the game is littered with cut-scences and monologues that you have to sit through when all you really want is to go off and play.
Then it gets better. The back-story becomes less intrusive, dumping you out of the main game less often. Whilst no extra mission types are added, you learn to balance them a little better - do an assassination, then a save a citizen, then maybe a bit of eavesdropping or pickpocketing to give yourself a break. Plus, you learn additional fighting skills as the game goes on, making those missions more manageable. You start to enjoy the climbing up towers and across rooftops in its own right, and it's still amazingly satisfying to free-run across a couple of rooftops and pounce down on an unsuspecting archer with a sneak kill.
Yes, you still have to put up with the annoyingly long-winded monologues, and the turn-the-handle bits of information collection you need to do in both the main game and the back-story, but at least the back-story develops as the game goes on, and does start to hold some interest.
Finally, you reach the end. Or rather, you don't really. I won't give away the ending, but suffice it to say that this game was always planned to be a trilogy, and the end of this game merely positions you for the start of the next. At first, I felt quite let down by the lack of closure, and I'd come to the conclusion that the pain and tedium of some parts of the game, along with the repetitive, if fun, gameplay, wouldn't warrant buying the next game in the series. Then, on reflection, I find myself thinking "well, the game play was a lot of fun" and reading reviews that suggest that there's more variety and depth to the missions in Assassin's Creed II, and thinking... well, maybe I will give it a go. Perhaps in a couple of months, when the price makes it worth taking a punt.
Just one point as I sign off - I have read comments to the effect that the game crashes often. I only suffered one crash through the entire game, which I think is pretty much par for the course. The game auto-saves after every sub-mission is completed, so it really wasn't a big issue for me.