Games
Assassins Creed - Cross Platform
So right, like, all year I was giddy like an 8 year old on Christmas eve in anticipation of the release of Assasin’s Creed for the Xbox 360. The game of the year I exclaimed, in a rather pig-in-a-poke fashion seeing as I hadn’t actually played it yet. To those who got caught up in my tsunami of excitement, I apologise.
Let’s start at the beginning. The story is a bit overly complicated. You play a man who wakes up in the future to find out he is being held at a scientific lab because of his unique abilities. The guys in the white coats want the knowledge of your ancestors which you apparently still remember through your genetic make-up. So they force you into a snazzy looking cat scan machine called the animus and lo and behold, you’re back in the 16th century living your previous life as Altair, a deadly hitman for the secretive Assassins Creed. You’ve guessed it, it’s killing time. To explain further will either confuse or spoil, so let’s talk gameplay.
Okay lets go for pluses first. The game is presented beautifully in almost every aspect. The villages, towns and hamlets are delivered in HD perfection. Your character is a skilled acrobat and can scurry up the walls of practically any tower or castle given half a chance, and all of the animations are fluid and natural thanks to what seems to have been extensive motion capture work. Even the horses you ride look realistic, rearing up at the sign of danger or galloping down a dusty path. The Non-player characters are well-voiced too, although a lot of the dialogue is repeated quite enough by the time you’re only a 3rd the way through the game. In fact, up until that time, Assassin’s Creed is absolutely perfect.
It’s essentially stealth game along the lines of Splinter Cell. As you ruthlessly progress through each meticulously painted level, you’ll be asked to pop the clogs of a local ne’er do-well. Sadistic doctors or slave traders beware, as you’re pretty handy with a number of death tools such as throwing knives, swords and the hidden blade. The idea is to fulfil your mission by being invisible. If you’ve just picked someone’s pocket or murdered a guard, you’ll need to lose the heat quickly by blending into the background by say jumping into a bale of straw to mimicking people around you.
So far so good, but the Achilles Heel of Assassins Creed is repetition. All the artistic direction in the world won’t save a game if you have to keep doing the same thing over and over. Fighting guards, climbing towers, saving citizens from the mob and pickpocketing don’t change a jot from one level to the next yet they’re the only missions in the entire game. By the 3rd level out of a total of nine, I got a bit bored. Yes, the game gets a more difficult each level, but the constant lack of variety in the gameplay is sadly too much to bear. I want to do so much more than I can in Jerusalem. I feel like I’ve just managed to bedd Scarlett Johannson only to find out my winkle won’t play ball. Boo.
Jonathan McCrea
