Sunday, December 9, 2007

Assassin's Repition

When I first saw Assassin's Creed I thought "awesome metal gear solid crusaders style". I was excited for the game but now that I have played it I feel let down.

1st off as some may know there was a much talked about Sci Fi twist to Assassin's Creed now I won't spoil what it is I can tell you that its pointless and out of place in the game.

The game looks great its nothing spectacular but it does its job, it is by no means ugly but its not beautiful either. Not counting NPC's related to the story there seems to be only a few NPC models which is annoying but not to bad. The animation is great it looks very fluid and the way the animations work as you free climb a building just looks awesome.

Now the game breaks down like this. You have 9 targets to assassinate throughout the game 3 per city. Now herein lies the problem in each city you have to investigate before you can have a chance to kill your target. You will be doing tasks like saving citizens, eavs dropping, pick pocketing, beating people for info, scaling tall buildings to reveal more of the map and so on. The problem is you will repeat these tasks endlessly so much it gets to the point where I wanted to just put the game down. Even the NPC's repeat the same few phrases countless times. Its as if they had a few voice actors read the same line off a card and just hit loop. There are NPC's that will follow you around begging for money and they seldom leave you alone. I can't even begin to tell you how annoying it was to hear them say "I need money I'm hungry and sick" 10000 times in 30 minutes. And like I said the tasks you will be doing are mind numbingly repetitive.

The combat system offers up a decent amount of depth but the problem is you will never need any of it. You will simply need to learn to attack and counter and there will never arise a need to use any other combat abilities in the game at all. You will get the ability to use a dagger, Sword, throwing knives, a hidden knife and your fists. However you will only be using the sword and hidden knife as there is no real reason to use anything else. It's disappointing that the game never forces you to take advantage of the many abilities you obtain throughout the game.

The story while I can't say much while somewhat different was rather forgettable. It's sad Assassin's Creed could have been so much more but what it ended up being was a decent game with a few unique twists. At best I would recommend it for a rental. Here's hoping the sequel will get all the problems fixed and be the game that Assassin's Creed could have and should have been.

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