Assassin's Creed

(untitled review)

Assassin's Creed is the sort of game that can only really played once. You finish the game, and then put it on a shelf, to slowly gather dust before a friend borrows it from you and never gives it back, no matter how much you ask him/her for it.

When I first saw Assassin's Creed (when it was announced), I thought that it was going to be the most awesome thing to ever happen to video games. Free-running assassinations in which you have to 'blend into the croud' to avoid detection? It seemed a winning formula, and without wanting anything spoiled for me, I kept well away from anything that my tell me more than I wanted to know about a game that I knew was going to kick all kinds of medieval ass.

The game was released and, being pennyless at the time, I had to wait for a friend to finish it and let me borrow the game just to be able to play it. As impatient as I was, I only had to wait as few as three days before the box of Assassin's Creed was handed over to me at school, my friend telling me that, "It's not that great".

I got home and immediately fired up my Xbox and threw the disk into the drive, not waisting any time I hopped onto my sofa to play the game I had waited almost a year to play.

Firstly I was shocked at what I saw, a man in a lab coat? What the hell? This isn't the past! They didn't have lab coats in the Middle Ages, did they? After a introduction to "The Animus" I was sent into the training zone, where I was taught how to run around, get through crowds without making jars fall on peoples heads and also how to assassinate and hide in places that any sane person would look in if they where looking for a killer on the roof-tops.

After this I was introduced to my charater, Altaïr, he was a badass assassin, but what I gathered from the introductory level is that he is an asshole, killing people for no reason and doing things that would never had happened, if I where aloud to control those cutscenes.

It took me a good while to get to my first actuall assassination, the open sequence of events being so confusing and stupid that I was annoyed at the game pulling me out of it so that I could go to bed in the future, I just wanted to assassinate some evil people.

Now, I didn't know at first that the main targets could see straight through a crowd at you if you aren't praying, I had just done a bunch or arduous tasks that involved me pick-pocketing someone, listening to some boring convorsation, and beating up a man in an alleyway with my fists untill he 'gave me information', and having my cover blown for no real reason abart from the fact that I wasn't holding down the 'A' button kinda pissed me off, just standing in a crowd won't get you recognised as an assassin and attacked by just about every guard in the world.

In the end, I had to beat him to the ground with my sword (why should a merchant lord know how to sword fight? And sat through a lengthly, unskippable cutscene where my character, Altaïr, had a nice long convorsation with the dead.

At that point I just put my controller down, I wasn't willing to play the game anymore, this was tedious to the point of insanity.

And my experience with Assassin's Creed ended for a good few months, untill I finially sat down and finished the game, several hours and instant noodle packets later.

Assassin's Creed would have been better as just a sandbox, "do what you want" game where the Assassinations where a optional thing to do, like the Elder Scrolls games.

All in all, Assassin's Creed isn't a bad game, the feel of running around and just being able to jump or clamber over anything gives a terrific sence of freedom that most games just don't have. Assassin's Creed just has too many flaws in game design (like taking you out of the game just before something really fun is about to happen) that make it allmost unplayable for me. It's more about sword-fighting then stealth anyway, which pissed me off and ruined my expectations of what should have been game of the year from what we originally saw.
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