|
The spiritual successor to the Prince of Persia is one of the year’s most ambitious games and also one of the best. Given the game’s ambitious nature and the hype surrounding it, Assassin’s Creed had high expectations to live up to. While the game isn’t perfect and has some flaws, it is one of the most satisfying and fulfilling games yet.
In Assassin’s Creed, you play as Altair, as you explore Jerusalem, Damascus, and Acres. As you probably know, these are the three main cities of the Holy Land as Assasin’s Creed takes place in the 12th century. One of the first things you’ll notice is that the cities are full of life. There’s plenty to do and even more places to discover, since you’ll notice that citizens go about on their regular routines, shop at the market, or just lay around like the drunken people they are. The story itself is quite captivating with a lot of grey areas and sometimes shady actions. In short, you’ll play as Altair as he has to assassinate nine people, who aren’t always exactly evil. The game plays off this moral balance quite well and makes you want to keep playing.
Assassin’s Creed is a mix of combat, platforming and stealth. The game gets progressively more difficult as you play and you’ll need to be stealthier and slyer in how you proceed with things. Initially, you’ll want to get information on your target so you’ll have to pickpocket an important letter, beat someone into giving you information or simply lay low and listen in on a conversation. You typically want to choose the stealthier methods since engaging in combat will make your job more difficult. The game rewards you for pulling up to your target, going for the kill, and escaping unnoticed. Of course, sometimes you’ll have to call attention to yourself and you can easily do this by picking fights with the guards, angrily dismissing the beggars, or simply speeding by a guard on a horse.
Though not encouraged, combat in the game is quite fun. You can throw daggers at enemies from afar or sneak up to them and get in that one-hit kill. You’ll eventually discover counterattacks and have to fight more enemies at one time, which make the already satisfying combat even better. Aside from fighting and assassinating targets, you can also get some vigilantes on your side by rescuing them from the town’s guards. Having them on your side is helpful because they’ll make your getaways easier by causing chaos. If things get too crazy, you can always blend into the crowd or go into a group of scholars, which will throw guards off your trail.
Visually, Assassin’s Creed puts that new HD set to amazingly good use. As I mentioned above, a lot of time and effort went into modeling the three cities’ roads, buildings, citizens and towers. Every piece of architecture in the game looks amazing, and features very sharp textures that really bring everything to life. Despite the fact that the game throws many NPCs at you, they all animate very well. Altair, of course, is in a class of his own and it is astonishing to watch him run through the crowds and rooftops, then make a sudden leap down.
The presentation holds up with the sound, as well. The orchestrated score sounds amazing and fits in with the game very well. The voice acting is all around excellent from Altair’s character to the primary enemies in the game to all of the NPCs doing their thing and complaining about life in general. The sound effects really bring the game to life. Head to the market and you’ll be overwhelmed by different sounds: people singing, beggars begging, vendors selling, etc. But head to the rooftops, and you’ll just hear the wind pass you by.
So, is Assassin’s Creed perfect? Not exactly. The main game will run around 20 hours but you’ll see most of what the game offers in the first few. While the developers did build an amazing world, and you have a lot to do, how much you’ll get out of the game depends on how much extra time you want to spend with it. If you’re really into the game, though, you can easily spend double that time and have an amazing time. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Nov 26, 2007
|
