onionhead2001's Full Review: Assassin's Creed for Xbox 360
Assassin's Creed was a reluctant purchase, which is the reason this review is so late to the party. I'm wary of any game with reviews ranging from 100 down to 50 (per Metacritic), and Assassin's Creed was the subject of great debate. But the price finally dropped low enough for me to give it a shot. Was it worth it? Man, I still don't know.
The Idea:
Creed is a stealth action game crossed with Grand Theft Auto. You (sort of) play the role of an assassin named Altair during the Third Crusade. Having disappointed your order, you are sent out to reaffirm your dedication to your master by picking off nine targets. Doing so involves traveling to the appropriate open-ended city, doing a good amount of research about your target before the strike, and then executing the plan.
The game is spiced up by a spectauclar "free running" control mechanic, which allows your character to weave through his environment, leaping between buildings and over his pursuers with remarkable ease.
The Reality:
Assassin's Creed winds up being a weak send-up of Grand Theft Auto, propped up by its unique control scheme (which bests its inspiration by a long shot) and bizarre-but-intriguing plot.
The overall effect is engrossing and will keep most players glued to the game until the credits roll. But the hours in-between are ultimately more tedious than they should be, and the game becomes a terrible chore by the final stages.
Animus-ity:
It's not a spoiler to let you know that Assassin's Creed is a sci-fi thriller in disguise. The very first scene makes it clear that you are not, in fact, a twelfth-century assassin. You are actually his descendant... a twenty-first century guy who has seemingly been captured and forced to relive the "genetic memories" of Altair by buckling into some sort of holographic device called The Animus. The goal is unclear, except that you are helping them to find something
This device permeates the entire game, and is used to justify any questionable design decisions that would otherwise feel out of place. The control scheme is an artifact of the way The Animus works (the instruction booklet even notes that test subjects have found their ancestors easier to manipulate with a video game controller). Think it's strange that your assassin has GPS and a color-coded meter that determines the alert status of nearby guards? It's just The Animus doing its job. Find it weird that lookout towers are all circled by a convenient hawk? Yeah, that was a cute trick programmed into The Animus. What could have been an interesting period-piece is, instead, a grand illusion.
This means that death is without consequence, since you merely reboot to the last time you were "synchronized" with your ancestor's memory. This means that there is no moral imperative to be nice to civilians, since they are all binary figments of a circuitboard's imagination. You are a video game player pretending to be a video game player. How delightfully... meta.
The Controls:
All this can be forgiven if the game is good. And in many respects, it really is. Altair controls like a dream in most circumstances, and the "free running" system is a phenomenal feat of programming. Once in a while it will cause you to jump in a weird direction (which is particularly irksome if you're near water, since Altair is apparently allergic to the stuff), but for the most part, Assassin's Creed will accurately read your mind as you nimbly navigate terrain like a pro. When pursued by enemy guards, the free running mechanic is tense and exciting, and does a fantastic job of offering an action movie feel while still affording control over the proceedings. Kudos, Ubisoft.
Open combat is often satisfying, and you are augmented with new abilities as the game progresses. Sadly, only a small number of abilities are demonstrably useful in combat, and once you learn how to counter enemy attacks, most battles boil down to doing nothing except to press the counter button when each enemy advances. That said, there is a rhythm and cadence to Creed's battles that makes them feel surprisingly good.
But you're an assassin first, and stealth kills should be the game's bread-and-butter. Sneaking up on targets to slip your hidden wrist-blade between their ribs is a perpetual treat (did I mention this isn't for kids?). Watching them stagger in confusion as they draw their last breath while you melt away into the crowd is a rush every single time. Unfortunately, this is the only way to really kill someone quietly. Other methods of assassination typically create too much of a ruckus to really be considered "assassination."
The Gameplay:
Open Worlds:
Creed attempts to lift from GTA's playbook, dumping Altair into sprawling cities that leave him "free" to do what he pleases. The problem is that there are only six things he can do. You can climb towers for surveillance. You can eavesdrop, which is entirely passive. You can pickpocket strategic targets. You can beat up snitches for information. You can find other assassin informants that will trade information for favors. Or you can save innocent civillians from over-aggressive law enforcement. That's really it.
Several years ago, I wrote a review for Spider Man 2 which complained that a small list of menial tasks, repeated endlessly, does not create an open world. Assassin's Creed takes this gripe one step farther... the tasks aren't repeated endlessly. Every city has the exact same number of each mission type. Once they're finished, there is nothing left to do but assassinate the target and move on. It feels robotic and stilted... not like a living world, but like some sort of unnecessarily elaborate menu.
Best Laid Plans:
The assassinations are meant to be dramatic set-pieces, justifying the tedium of gathering details and plot points. You can use the information gleaned from earlier missions to plot your strategy, eliminate guards, and keep yourself hidden. But the system is so clumsy and obscure that many players will not even realize that it exists, much less learn to leverage it effectively. Perhaps you snatched a useful map from an informant, detailing the positions of guards defending your target. Ok, very cool. But you need to travel two layers deep into an awkwardly-controlled menu to access the "memory" that includes the map. The map comes up, and shows a bunch of red x's. But there is no way to add this information to the actual in-game map. So as you progress through the mission, you need to keep going into this frustrating menu system to take another look at the map, and then try to maintain some mental note of where things are while you back out and flip to the in-game map. Why? Why is it like this? They already justified every other contrivance with The Animus. This advanced piece of technology doesn't include simple mapping software?
And just... Really?
We are used to certain contrivances peppering the virtual worlds of video games. We take it for granted that the player can usually sustain an abnormal amount of damage (personally, I'm at far less than 90% health after a gunshot to the head, and need more than an apple to get back on my feet). We are ok with the fact that cities are populated by people who all have one of ten different faces, and all wear pretty much the same clothes. And in Creed, we can even forgive some of these contrivances within the bounds of The Animus.
But some things stretch too far. Every time I find a fellow assassin, he sends me on some inane mission to kill the four or five people hunting him. Ok, fine... but why is there a four-minute time limit? This guy has just been standing there doing nothing until I showed up, and now things are urgent?
Why is each city dotted by 100 random flags, just waiting to be collected by some intrepid video gamer with more time than friends? The flags don't even contribute to the plot... they just give you a few more points on your Gamerscore. I hate fetch-quests like this... particularly in a game that is so burdened with padding to begin with.
Why does my horse suddenly become undetectable to guards just because I'm holding the "stealth" button?
Why do the local drunks, vagrants, and mental patients single me out as a target for random violence, allowing everybody else to pass without trouble?
And why does every person I save give the exact same unskippable speech afterward? Do I really need to hear this again?
For a video game with so much polish, Creed is downright prehistoric at times.
Graphics:
I hate to be "that guy," but sometimes a game is just so beautiful that it makes you forget how utterly dull the gameplay has become. This is that game.
I'll say this as clearly as I can... Assassin's Creed is the most stunningly beautiful video game I have ever played. The cities teem with dozens of individually animated people at a time, all rendered as well as current technology could possibly allow. The cities themselves are jaw-dropping, and the breathtaking vistas come into particular focus each time you climb a lookout point to survey the land. Altair is a wonder of modeling and animation, with his flowing cloak and eerily human movement. Even the lip-synching is top-shelf.
There are occasional hiccups and glitches (and the Matrix-y plot almost seems custom designed to explain them away), but the visual artistry of this game is undeniable. It's worth a rent, if not just to see what is possible on the XBox 360.
Plot:
Although I'm still not happy with the way Creed's plot removes you from Altair's world, it is surprisingly intriguing by the end. It's sort of science-fiction crossed with The DaVinci Code (and the game goes out of its way to remind you, before the title screen, that no religious disrespect is intended).
The present-day scenes which interrupt the main game are boring to play (not to mention a bear to control), but provide the most interesting bits of storyline.
Unfortunately, Creed ends on a terribly awkward note. Just as the plot heats up, it just ends. To be sure, the ending is so weirdly unceremonious that some gamers might not be sure the game is actually finished.
Clearly, some sequels are intended. I'm curious to see in what direction they go... the Animus plotline allows great latitude in moving the plot to completely different settings beyond the Third Crusade. Perhaps the games will gradually shift through history, culminating in a present-day finale where you finally get to control your actual character? I'm already having flashbacks of Eternal Darkness....
Summary:
Assassin's Creed would have been brilliant ten years ago. But as it stands, it is an anemic riff on Grand Theft Auto, held together by some cool control mechanics and superb presentation. Although fun to play at times, the game is bogged down by its mechanical pacing and monotonous goals.
That said, the hook is set. Even after this mediocre first outing, I find myself undeniably curious about the eventual outcome of Creed's strange story. I don't relish the thought of wading through hours of tedium to reveal a few plot points, but I'm hoping that Ubisoft finds the time to build on this framerwork and bring the series into full bloom in the inevitable sequel.
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