Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360)

Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Release Date: 11/14/2007
Genre: Action
Number of Players: 1
ESRB Rating: Mature


When Assassin’s Creed came out, I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. I hadn’t seen any previous footage of the game, and had only heard information from friends about what the game is about. Since the game has been out for several weeks, it’s probably not even necessary to explain it all, but here goes.

Assassin’s Creed is a little difficult to explain. You are playing the role of Desmond, a bartender who was kidnapped by Abstergo Industries and forced to relive his ancestor’s memories via a device called the Animus. You spend a majority of the game in this machine playing as Altair, an assassin during the Crusade.

Altair is given the task of killing nine high profile men from within the kingdom in an attempt to spread peace. The opening mission helps to set up the entire plot starts with you botching an assassination, and costing you your ranks and weapons. Both are re-acquired through the completion of various missions.

The actual assassination tasks actually consist of other smaller tasks that make up a sort of reconnaissance portion of the game. There are several reviews who have marked down the game because these tasks become quite repeatetive, but it is not necessary to complete all of these tasks before you assassinate your target.

Along with this task there are several other tasks that will allow you to earn gamer points. Things such as killing combos, counter attacks, and flag collecting. The later is my least favorite activity, as unless you’re using a strategy guide (and have downloaded some of the corrections from Prima’s site) it is next to impossible to find all 100 Kingdom flags. Thankfully, these tasks only award you gamer points, and do not affect the story.

All in all I was pleased with this game. It was a lot of fun, and while the flag seeking is nothing short of tedious, it is optional, and could be done in between other objectives. While I wouldn’t buy this game, I do recommend at least renting, or maybe buying used, but since there is no multiplayer, once you’ve completed the game, there’s really nothing bringing you back.

Graphics – Fantasic. The buildings look great, as do the characters. Everything seemed to flow together nicely in the animations, and once the city loaded, you could travel anywhere within those city limits without slow down.

Sound – Not sure. I feel like this is going to be a hard one for me to judge considering I don’t have a surround sound system. I feel like there were times when I was hiding and probably could have used positional sound to know which way a guard was coming from. All in all with what I had, I wasn’t that impressed.

Gameplay – Great. The movement was pretty easy to get down. I did run into some problems with the jumps, particularly around water when the character jumped in a slightly different direction than I had anticipated. The fighting was fun, although it gets a little ridiculous towards the end of the game with you fighting wave after wave of guards. I’m sure with better planning on my part, I could have cut down the numbers before getting into such a situation.

Lasting Appeal – There really isn’t any. I am not one of those people who believe that every game has to have multiplayer, but even in games that are solely single player like Bioshock, they are releasing new content to make the game play different. I can’t see them doing anything like that here, nor are there different difficulty levels to further challenge you once you’ve completed the game.

Overall – It’s a great game. I wouldn’t buy it new just because once it’s beaten there’s not reason to keep it, and trade in value for games is ridiculous, but if you can rent it from your local video store or from a service like Game Fly I would. In fact… I did.