Assassin's Creed - Ubisoft - X360

[schild]

Sent in by SnakeCharmer:

Beautiful game. Absolutely gorgeous landscapes. Innovative, yet natural feeling, control scheme. Awesome finishing / counter moves.

At first glance, it's an interesting story; part of me thinks UbiSoft was looking for some free press out of it. But the game quickly becomes monotonous routine of doing the same thing over and over, with only the increase in difficulty being the real change. Play the first couple of missions, and you've essentially played the game. Once you get past the graphics, there just isn't that much to it. A cliched, saw it coming from a mile a way finish.

Without the cutscenes that you can't fast forward through, this would be an exceptionally short game. Lots of Xbox live points to be had with this game.

-

Rent it.

[Big Gulp]

Rent it.

Ayup.  Played through it for a few hours tonight, and had a great time.  I can see pretty quickly how every "mission" is the same thing with interspersed "save the civilian", "eavesdrop", and "pickpocket" sidequests (which are also all the same).  Oh, and as soon as you get your counter move after the first mission in Damascus you become an unstoppable killing machine.

It's too bad, really, because with a vigorous whack of the variety stick this really could have been a game of the year contender.

[WayAbvPar]

Trotski got it for Christmas, so maybe I will just borrow his copy when he bores of it. Good to know- I was all set to drop $60 on it.

[murdoc]

I expected to love Assassin's Creed, and ended up merely liking it, and I think I like it because 'I felt I aught to'. I wish I had rented it instead of pre-ordering it.

Gorgeous game though and until you realize it's the same thing over and over, kinda fun.

[Rasix]

I just cracked this open a couple days ago, would have played it last night but I had company over.  It gets repetitive extremely early like Big Gulp said.  Still, it's fun and you can't help but feel that they were onto something here but just couldn't execute (har har) it properly.

And damnit, I hate hidden object hunts.  Those flags are going to drive me nuts, even though I know I'll never get them all.  Also, guard sensitivity to your very presence is annoying.

[Strazos]

Yep, the review is spot-on. The animations and such are GREAT. And I haven't found a huge problem with the plot itself...yet.

But the actual gameplay...ugh. So repetitive. A lot of devices are severely overused, such as the Leap of Faith into hay.

[Azazel]

Since the other thread quickly became a meta-thread about the "rules" of BiiF, I'll post gameplay stuff here.

The controls continue to frustrate me badly. I've been putting a fair bit of time into it over the last 2 or 3 days, and I continue to enjoy it despite the shitty controls. Not 10 minutes goes past without me swearing at my television as I struggle to control Altair.

Just now I climbed into a huge crusader fortress in the south of Acre, scaling turrets and ramparts and killing guards as I made my way across. Finally got to the lookout tower, the big one, a little puzzling about and I got up about 90% of the way. Then Al got stuck on the last bit. As I was trying to work him around the edge, he took a huge dive off the fucking tower, into the ocean about a kilometer below, pausing to smash on some rocks next to the water before landing in the water. So I..needs to take a break for awhile.

Also, I can't really see myself going back to gather all the shitty flags. I assume they just get you some wanky achievements and gamerscore. Annoying.

[Rasix]

Well, I beat this today.  Overall, it was enough fun to beat, but I honestly might have trouble recommending a friend to buy it.  I'd lend it to them, no problem.  There's no great injustice in playing this game, it just fails to deliver the experience it could.

Likes:
The environment is great. Even with the sci-fi trappings, the cities are just well done. 
The game looks very good.  The visuals are really well done and work well for what they're trying to do.
The controls can be very fluid and give a cinematic feel to the game.
The short blade killing animations never get old.

Dislikes:
Is there anything about this game that isn't repetitive?  I mean hell, they even skimped heavily on the voice work.  There's like 6 total voices used for the citizens and they all say the goddamn same thing.
The combat isn't fun. Or challenging except when the AI decides to do nothing but gangbang you with block-breaks. There really need to be different approach here I think, because outside of the counters, nothing else works like it feels it should.
Drunks and retards pushing you is just annoying.  Not fun, not challenging, just stupid.  Beggars that get in your face are annoying, both virtually and in real life.  It's like putting a popup add in your game.
The controls and UI responsiveness at times is controller-throwing frustrating. This game at times has pissed me off more than anything in recent history.
End fights were poorly designed and executed.

Undecided:
The story.  Some parts were very interesting.  It kept me going through, if it weren't interesting, I likely would not have completed the game.  The end is something I don't care enough about to dig for meaning in some of the reveals.

Overall, it felt like they had a good direction, good framework and good enough story in place for this game.  Where they failed was the guts.  This is problem that a game like skate shares, where you're basically doing the same thing over and over again, inside a greatly designed framework.  However, where Assassin's Creed differs is that the individual objectives don't differ themselves enough.  The sandbox aspect, perhaps due to the sci-fi layer of abstraction, isn't compelling enough to warrant playing the game just to fool around.   It's interesting, to me at least, that two games with similar problems and similar construction can elicit such different reactions and esteem based on the execution and commitment to offering variation. 

Assassin's Creed 2 could be a masterpiece if it addresses the flaws it inherits in the franchise.  As is, Assassin's Creed is an enjoyable disappointment and gets put next to Bioshock in the "potentially going back to Gamespot" stack.

[Azazel]

SirBruce Time!

Well, I beat this today.  Overall, it was enough fun to beat, but I honestly might have trouble recommending a friend to buy it.  I'd lend it to them, no problem.  There's no great injustice in playing this game, it just fails to deliver the experience it could.

Likes:
The environment is great. Even with the sci-fi trappings, the cities are just well done. 
The game looks very good.  The visuals are really well done and work well for what they're trying to do.
The controls can be very fluid and give a cinematic feel to the game.
The short blade killing animations never get old.

I agree with almost all your likes. Wandering around the small modern area is painful and Not Fun though.

Dislikes:
Is there anything about this game that isn't repetitive?  I mean hell, they even skimped heavily on the voice work.  There's like 6 total voices used for the citizens and they all say the goddamn same thing.
The combat isn't fun. Or challenging except when the AI decides to do nothing but gangbang you with block-breaks. There really need to be different approach here I think, because outside of the counters, nothing else works like it feels it should.
Drunks and retards pushing you is just annoying.  Not fun, not challenging, just stupid.  Beggars that get in your face are annoying, both virtually and in real life.  It's like putting a popup add in your game.
The controls and UI responsiveness at times is controller-throwing frustrating. This game at times has pissed me off more than anything in recent history.
End fights were poorly designed and executed.

I'm now 6 kills in, and the repetitiveness started to sink in when I was hunting my fourth assassination target. Luckily scaling towers hasn't gotten old yet and I find eavesdropping is painless.

Pickpocketing is just.. not painful. Just not particularly enjoyable. Same with interrogations.
As far as the informant missions go, extra assassinations I enjoy, though "collect the flags" breaks immersion and is UnFun more than almost anything else in the game.
I also agree with you on the voice acting. The worst of it I find to be Altair and his jarring American accent. A close second is the fact that all the people you rescue say the same four phrases, despite the fact that they clearly got at least 6 voice actors (or different accents) for the parts - fuck, if you're going to re-record some dialogue and keep them all, at least give them something different to say. Bystanders and passers-by don't bother me so much, as you're at least not locked into listening to them after the 65th time you've saved a citizen.
I also find the drunks, beggars et al very annoying. I tend to either punch them, which sees them off if a guard is around, or just shiv them with my wrist blade. This makes the unfun portion slightly fun.
Not sure if by end fights you mean the assassinations or something I've yet to get to. I do agree that the combat is weak from the start, and only progresses to playing the wait-for-counter-attack minigame one at a time with the 14 guys attacking you to move on.
And yes, the controls are fucking frustrating. So many times you're trying to get dickhead to do something. Simple or complex it doesn't matter. And yes, he fucking does something else that's entirely not what you wanted him to do.

Undecided:
The story.  Some parts were very interesting.  It kept me going through, if it weren't interesting, I likely would not have completed the game.  The end is something I don't care enough about to dig for meaning in some of the reveals.

Overall, it felt like they had a good direction, good framework and good enough story in place for this game.  Where they failed was the guts.  This is problem that a game like skate shares, where you're basically doing the same thing over and over again, inside a greatly designed framework.  However, where Assassin's Creed differs is that the individual objectives don't differ themselves enough.  The sandbox aspect, perhaps due to the sci-fi layer of abstraction, isn't compelling enough to warrant playing the game just to fool around.   It's interesting, to me at least, that two games with similar problems and similar construction can elicit such different reactions and esteem based on the execution and commitment to offering variation. 

Assassin's Creed 2 could be a masterpiece if it addresses the flaws it inherits in the franchise.  As is, Assassin's Creed is an enjoyable disappointment and gets put next to Bioshock in the "potentially going back to Gamespot" stack.

I don't mind the story. I've been able to see a twist for awhile now, but it's so heavily telegraphed that I'm wondering if there's a double-turn. Don't spoil it, I hope to finish this thing over the weekend.

I agree generally with almost everything that you're saying. I think the combat needs to be improved greatly, especially in light of the fact that you simply can't avoid combat with 10-20,000 guards, so they may as well make it fun. Flag gathering in all it's forms is ridiculous. I can at least handle Templar-Hunting. Aside from booting it up to climb a tower, check out a vista and show it off to a friend, I can't see a lot of replay value in the game at all.

I'm considering trading it in to EB since their trade-in price for it is pretty decent still (AU$54)- sure it's half of what they charge (AU$109/119), but I bought it new somewhere else for AU$75, so it becomes a 2-month rental for $20...   it's the kind of thing I'd almost repurchase in a couple of years when it can be had for $20, just to take another look.



edit - fixed quotes

[Rasix]

Wandering around the small modern area is painful and Not Fun though.

I kept holding down the right button hoping he'd run. 

Not sure if by end fights you mean the assassinations or something I've yet to get to. I do agree that the combat is weak from the start, and only progresses to playing the wait-for-counter-attack minigame one at a time with the 14 guys attacking you to move on.

Something you've yet to get to.  I'm referring to the roughly last 4-5 final fights, of which two come in your final Jerusalem assassination.

[Phildo]

Has anyone bothered to complete the collection assignments?  Do you get anything at all for them?

[sidereal]

Do you get anything at all for them?

etc

[Azazel]

Apparently if you find every hidden flag in the game, and also kill every templar you unlock an extra hidden memory. I'd read up on it, but I don't want to read a bunch of spoilers until after I finish the game.

I decided to give them a go, using this website I found yesterday.
http://www.assassinscreed-maps.com/index.htm

Since I'd been picking them up in my normal gameplay, even though I followed the guide carefully through Masyaf, I could only find 19/20. Even though I double-checked each one.
At this point I decided that it would be fucking insane and stupid of me to try and find them, not to mention a colossal waste of.. I don't know? 2 days maybe? of my time to find them all. Or not quite find them all.
Fuck that.

I'd try to find all the templars, but you know what? Fuck that, too.

Anyway. Just got my last assassination to go (on the docks in Acre). Then it's final mission time. I imagine I'll be done with it this evening.


By this stage, the grind has kicked in. Where at first I was amazed and in awe of the beautiful vistas you get when synchronising, I'm now at the stage of "yeah whatever hurry up" for many of them. The citizen-saving is fucking painful, too, as each citizen now attracts 10 guards, so I'm forced into the poor quality counter-attack minigame that passes for combat for 3 minutes, followed by the game not giving me control of my fucking character while the same voice actress I've heard 38 times before tells me "why thank you zur, I dont have anything to offer but oy will make surr my brothuurs hear of your help to me todiay".

Yeah, can't see myself replaying this one. Best to trade it in after finishing it, seeing as how there's doubtless going to be a sequel for either this Christmas or next year at worst.

[Azazel]

Finished it, because I was a fool and played the game without reading spoilers I missed out on 2 achievements/bits of the story, which of course you have no way of doing after you finish.

Not really a spoiler, but if you want to not miss out, you need to talk to Lucy during every intermission (ie shufflinf up behind her and pressing a button).

To gain access to Vidic's computer you have to exit the animus whilst in a memory (do not complete the block!) and if Vidic is looking out on the city you will be able to walk up to him and pick pocket his security pen (Press B). Once again enter your room and then exit the room and you will be able to access Vidic's computer.

edit : Here's Lucy!

Well the Conversationalist Achievement goes as follows:

After Block #1
Two Conversations (means you have to interact (B) two times)
After Block #2
Three Conversations
After Block #3
Two conversations
After Block #4
No Conversations
After Block #5
Three Conversations
After Block #6
One Conversation (After the Doc gets a phone call)


You know, stuff that wouldn't have usually occured to players during the usual course of play.


Oh yeah, the end fights got fucking tedious, and the sci-fi story just kept getting worse and worse.

All in all, I am glad I played through it, but for all it's potential, it's a deeply flawed game.

--

Rent it. 

[Calantus]

I'll throw my BIIF in with the others here:

The first 30 minutes to an hour of this game is nice but after that it gets just so samey I could die. All the opponents are roughly the same. The better the helmet the less likely chain attacks are to work, the more likely they are to grab you, the more likely they are to feint, and the more health they have. And that's it. They just get harder. I think it really lacks because everyone is a human soldier with the same fucking weapon. Archers are rare and not really dangerous, and once you're close to them they're basically the same as swordsmen. Moving sliders up and down does not variety make. They needed magic users, different races, animals, good ranged enemies, different weapons, enemies with wildly different styles, anything that didn't carry a goddamn sword and attack like everybody else. The combat is actually pretty good I think, counters and chain attacks are quite fun to do for a while, it's just the boring sameness that drags it down.

Free running was good, but there's nothing to find while doing it. There's no awesome secret places or weapon stashes. There's just the same people to rescue (excuse to fight guards), flags to pick up (sup gamefaqs), buildings to climb (A+UP+RT != challenging and engaging gameplay), "follow this guy and press a button at the right time" minigames that cover pickpocketing and beating people for information, and the most thrilling minigame of all: sitting on a fucking bench and pressing a button. The building climbing is the biggest tragedy. Occasionally a tower would require a little figuring out (emphasis on little) but most of the time you just run around the building till you find the easy to spot climb points and just press up while occasionally pressing left or right. It was awesome the first couple times the way in panned across the cities but you just do it too often. And what is the point of climbing literally the same tower design multiple times? I would have much preferred puzzle-based climbing of 1-3 towers per city. That would have been awesome.

The run between cities also dragged the game out. I'm not interested in a bad travel simulation, I don't want to gallop across the countryside on the back of a horse to get to other cities or kill guards at remote outposts for no purpose whatsoever. Just cut out all that crap and let me "fast forward to a more recent memory" and put the time getting the horse to work and building up the world to making the cities interesting.

Funnily enough, the assassinations were too sparse, which is surprising considering how beaten into the ground every other game mechanis was. I would have thought assassination in assassin's creed would have played a bigger role but obviously I am stupid and wrong. Stalking the marks for the opening to ram a dagger in their back or chasing them across the city because you messed up (or because the game forced it to be that way) was also pretty awesome. I wanted more stealthy, backstabby, puzzly, assassiny action and less "Altair: Guard Slayer! Oh and some important people die too". Assassin's Creed should ultimately have been an action puzzle game where the puzzles were assassinations and the tools were stealth, timing, and a dash of combat. What we got was a game that had a good base and some serious potential but washed down the fun parts, stretched out what was left, and filled out time with repetitive, uninterestng gameplay.

BIIF? Yes, for the first hour or so, then it's tolerable. It's definitely worth playing but also not worth buying. This is a renter if ever there was one.

[SnakeCharmer]

Heh, love all these reviews that mirror exactly how I felt about the game after I finished it.

The control scheme I actually enjoyed.  The biggest problem with it was the lag I got after finishing a cutscene and I was immediately attacked by the bosses.  I would bring up 'block' or whatever it's called, and Altair would just stand there getting smacked around no matter how many times I pressed and released the block buttons.  The second to last assassination misson when the 8-12 guys circle around you was the worst instance in the game where this happened. 

The following is burned into my memory forever:
'Please sur Ah don have 'ny monee Ahm po' 'n' sick 'n' Ah need halp!'
'YOU WILL BE AVENGED!!!!!!'

If you remove the cockblock horseriding, the cut scenes that you can't forward through, the city view synchronization cockblock (sure it's nice the first time I see a city, but goddamn after 12 of the fuckers....), the game would be extremely short.

Heh, beggars.  Pop up ads.  Perfect analogy.

Assassin's Creed:  What could have been, should have been, but wasn't.

[Ookii]

[Phildo]

I wonder if she even played the game.

[Azazel]

No time. Busy being photographed and interviewed.