Assassin’s Creed Review
Over the weekend I finally finished Assassin’s Creed on the XBox 360. I had gotten it while we were back in the States for the holidays when Best Buy had it on sale for $39.99 USD. Considering the game was still new and selling for $60 normally, I thought that was a pretty good deal.
It took me a couple weeks of playing off and on but I finally beat it and I have to say that I enjoyed the game quite a bit. I knew that the game was reviewing fairly well with the major games sites and magazines so my expectations were relatively high. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the premise of the game, you are an assassin during the 3rd Crusades that Europe made against “the Holy Lands”. Your Brotherhood of Assassins is tasked with stopping the Knights Templar from obtaining certain artifacts that would change the war in their favor.
What I didn’t know about the game was that its based in the future and all the medieval action takes place in a genetic memory replay computer thingy. You are actually a descendant of the assassin in question and they use this machine to have you relive his memories through genetic memory. It all sounds kind of weird but it works. So there’s actually two storylines going on and they’re relatively interesting.
Gameplay is fun. I’ll just say that now. It’s like a medieval version of Crackdown but with much better graphics. However, it is also rather repetitive for such a big name game. Don’t get me wrong though… the stabbings and the tasks may be the same over and over, but it remains fun throughout. The enemies become more plentiful as well as better trained as you become more skilled yourself. There are hidden items littering the landscape if you could just find them and the only inventory you ever have to worry about are your throwing knives (which are easily replaced). This simplicty keeps the action going strong.
Once you get the hang of it, you can take on a group of soldiers on your own or run like hell through the city trying to lose them. You can hide in hay stacks or blend in with white robed scholars. You can go anywhere in four cities in the game world and let me just say that the scope of these cities is huge. It’s amazing when you climb the tallest tower in a city and look around and see exactly where you are and the hundreds of buildings there are around you in just one city.
This game could potentially be rather short if you wanted it to be. Some tasks are necessary but others like saving citizens from abusive soldiers are not. You only need to do a certain amount of tasks before you can go on each of your assassination missions but you would miss out on some odds and ends and some Achievements if you are playing on XBox 360. I tried to complete as much as I could and there are still plenty of objectives that I didn’t finish.
If you liked Crackdown then you’ll probably really like Assassin’s Creed. If you liked Assassin’s Creed then you should definitely try Crackdown if you haven’t already. I say that because Crackdown didn’t sell very well compared to Assassin’s Creed which is a shame. It’s definitely one of my favorite 360 games so far and Assassin’s Creed gets the formula right as well. I’ll be looking out for the sequels.
February 19, 2008 4:31 pm 
