[XBOX360] Assassin's Creed

this game is alright...sketchy controls....but overall a good game...the game i bought locked up after the first level...my friends did too..we both had to take ours back to walmart and exchange it..now it works fine...

It's alright so far. I'm three kills in, and I'm entertained, but generally a little let down by the whole thing.

1. The Kingdom is awesome on an atmospheric level, but actually traversing it gets tedious. When I'm on a horse, I like to gallop through environments, not trot slowly past constant smatterings of guards.

2. The "Save the Citizen" missions get old. When I first read about the game, my assumption was that by helping the people of the city, you'd be engaging in a large variey of different mini-missions and tasks. Like delivering medicine from one end of the city to the other, or catching a purse-snatcher, or maybe just sitting down and playing a townsperson in a simplified chess-like strategy game. Not just finding a group of soldiers harassing a random civilian and killing them...ten times in each district.

3. I wish there was a bit more to the Interrogation missions. Just following somebody for a while and beating them up in an alley gets stale. Altair should corner them in a dark alcove and jam his hidden blade into some non-vital but supremely painful spot in their torso. Then, the actual mechanics of "interrogating" the person should involve balancing pressure and twisting mechanics to inflict just enough pain to squeeze info out of them, but not make them start screaming incoherently in agony. Something more interesting like that.

4. The assassinations themselves need to be more focused than they are. I like the whole open-ended idea, but maybe the kills in this game leave too much to your imagination. Take the second hit, for example. Upon completing the investigations, you learn that the recommended way of approaching the kill is to get on the roof, sneak between the patrolling guards and drop into the courtyard inside the hospital walls. Yeah...you could do that...or just blend in with the Scholars standing right outside the gate and saunter past the guards.

It's cool that you've got so much freedom in the game, but that kind of shit completely defeats the challenge of the major kills. Why go through the longer, more arduous process of the roof approach when you can just slink right past the fortress defenses without so much as a raised sword?

In addition to that, the marks themselves need to be more hardcore. You should essentially be forced to take them out with stealth. The first kill, I tried sneaking up on his ass, and he saw me coming. He unsheathed his sword, fought me, and I killed him. Lame. When a target spots you during the big kill, you should be knee-deep in shit. You should be forced to hone your stealth and speed, and be punished gravely for failure. Why go for stealth when you can just hack away at the big kills and endure a lot less headache?

5. The escape scenarios needed to be a lot more focused. Basically, all they amount to is city-wide "informed" status that doesn't end. The guards should set up thick defenses at specific points, intended to block your easiest route back to the Bureau. On top of that, in my opinion, climbing on the roof during an escape should have been made to spell near-certain death. The volume of rooftop guards should have been increased sevenfold, and they should all be programmed to pepper your ass with arrows on sight. As it is, escaping after a kill amounts to climbing on the nearest roof and running like hell for the bureau. All of the Mercenary groups you spawn from doing the Citizen missions go to waste.

In general, the game is decent. Ubi had a lot of great ideas. Ideas that stretched far and offered a lot. However, basically none of the ideas implemented in this game were explored to a depth they deserved. So, what you wind up with is a diverse but shallow game.

You can gallop right past guards. They'll eventually stop following. Also, either after the first three hits or after you visit all three cities, you can fast travel between them and Masyf.

Myself, I was disappointed by the inability to do stealth kills most of the time due to getting caught in a cut-scene at the opportune moment.

As for roof-guards, they increase as you progress in the game, though they'll still be more annoying than fatal when you're running away.

I found the allies useful later on in the game when I wanted to pull guards away from where I needed to work and kill them. While a guard is tangling with them, they are very easy to kill, and when you're moving the fight you're more likely to encounter them.

I know that I can just hammer through the Kingdom areas, but I really do like the environment. I'd like the time and freedom to actually explore it, but the game doesn't really offer that option. You've gotta be rushing or crawling through it.

Myself, I was disappointed by the inability to do stealth kills most of the time due to getting caught in a cut-scene at the opportune moment.

You mean during the actual assassinations?

As for the roof guards, I've started encountering more of them. The escape after killing the Merchant King in Damascus was a bit trickier than the previous three.

I still have yet to find a genuine use for the vigilantes. I can see your strategy coming in handy, but as of currently, I haven't found a situation that really warrants the need for it.

You mean during the actual assassinations?

Yes. Like for the guy with the wine fountain, I found information that I should go in through the courtyard, then climb from inside and arround, but as soon as I entered, a cutscene started and I wasn't allowed to climb untill I had archers shooting at me.

I actually didn't have any problem with that scene. The archers, I found, were more focused on the party-goers than me. I just scaled the wall as close to the corner as possible.

The only things wrong with this game:

The whole "Set in the future" thing was dumb and pointless. They should have just left all of that crap out.

The ending was pretty horrible. It came way too suddenly, it wasn't even much of a cliff-hanger. The game just dropped off.

Why can't the main character, or anyone for that matter, swim? The docks was the most annoying place in the whole entire game, by far, because falling in the water meant death.

All of your assassin tools hold you down, duh.

Now I quite enjoyed the whole set in the future thing. To me it added an extra dimension to the game.

Sure, if Assassin's Creed were a one-off game, then the futuristic element would be pointless, but as a trilogy, it gives it more depth.

I agree with the abruptness of the ending though (and the fact that no swimming is a bithc). It threw me too. And as a result, I can't wait five years for the next one! Actually, it would be more like two - Ubisoft now have a functioning engine (the Scimitar Engine), and the whole idea mapped out, so it won't take them years to get everything sorted. Instead, they can go straight on to the storyline, and the development stages.

However, the studio that made it, Ubisoft Montreal, also make the Splinter Cell, Rainbow 6, and Prince of Persia games, not to mention Far Cry, so it may be a while before more resources can be diverted at the team within the studio for them to make the second game.

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Bit of trivia - the success of Assassin's Creed effectively saved Ubisoft from being bought out by EA. Just think, had Jade Raymond and her team really f'ed it up, then we'd be seeing a lot of potentially good games with 12fps framerates, shite online functionality, and built to the Microsoft philosophy (if it works, it works. No point tinkering with it to get rid of bugs. Patches can do that once the product is out).

The whole "Set in the future" thing was dumb and pointless. They should have just left all of that crap out.

I completely disagree. It added an atmospheric purpose to the HUD and tutorials. On top of that, if the game hadn't had that element to the story, it would have felt too much like Prince of Persia 4.

I loved the game. It was very different from all the games that i play and love. I had no problem adapting to the controls or actually assassinating people. It did get old after some time, but the stealth that was needed towards the end kept me in it, especially the story line. I loved how it was set in the future, because it now allows for a sequel.

To answer Lenny's question from the previous page, the eagle vision at the end ahd some meaning to it. I dont know how to say this without wrecking the ending so if you want to know, then wikipedia it. It gives a pretty good description.

Can't say I remember asking a question.

I don't know how much depth Wikipedia goes into, so I'll repost the link I posted when I finished, which goes into a lot of detail:

http://www.computerandvideogames.com....php?id=175552

Obviously, don't click if you don't want to know.