I put Assassin’s Creed on my rental list, not expecting to like it much. Sure the graphics looked good, but it seemed like a stealth game, and I never do well with those. Years ago there was a game called Thief, which was very well done but I couldn’t get into it. The game required a lot of sneaking around, which I guess I wasn’t very good at. So yesterday, after getting thoroughly disgusted with Fall of Liberty, I put in Assassin’s Creed.
I was pleasantly surprised. This game is GOOD.
It actually is a mix of stealth and action, with some sci-fi tossed in. The majority of the game is set in the 12th Century, during the time of King Richard and the Third Crusade, but there’s a story-arc encompassing that. A team of scientists have kidnapped a bartender, and stuck him into a machine called The Animus. The Animus is capable of retrieving not only the memories of the subject, but those of the subject’s ancestors, which are locked away in DNA. Desmond, the captive bartender, happens to be the descendant of Altair, an assassin, and for some reason these scientists need information from something Altair did. In order to get that information, you play through Altair’s memories; each memory is a mission in the game. In between your missions as Altair, you get to interact with the two scientists, gaining information about why you are there.
And then, the real game starts. You, as Altair, are part of an Assassins’ Guild, and your mission is to kill nine people in an attempt to stop a Holy War. You start out in Muyasa, a small village and your home base of operations. The missions here serve as a practice session, teaching you various forms of combat and defense, the different ways to get around (some actions are subtle, others attract attention,) and how to navigate the rooftops. Soon, you’ll be sent off to explore the three major cities – Damascus, Jeruselem, and Acre.
The cities are breathtaking. In order to get your bearings, you have to climb to the top of towers and lookout posts, which Altair does without effort. As long as there is a brick or a seam in a wall, you can climb it. Once you reach the top, you are treated to a panoramic view of the surrounding city – as you play through the level, you realize that, just like Oblivion, anything you see, you can go to. All the buildings, huts, towers, and rooftops are accessible (although some areas are locked off at first, you will eventually be able to get to them.) As you make your way through the streets, you are treated to a living, breathing world. Street merchants bark out their wares. Beggars accost you for coin. Stand near someone too long and they tell you to go away. Crowds react to your actions – climb up a wall and passers-by will make comments like “Have you ever seen someone do that?” or “He’s going to hurt himself.” Doing so also will attract guards’ attention, and they don’t always like people wandering around the rooftops, hence the stealth aspect of the game. You can be subtle and your mission will be easier, or use force and have a lot of fighting on your hands.
As expected of an assassin, your missions all involve assassinating someone. How exactly you do this is up to you, and there are always different ways of getting there. You check in with the local Assassins’ Bureau and get a few starting points where you can find information on your target. You can pickpocket someone for information, eavesdrop on conversations, or you can “interrogate” someone (usually involving a beating.) Each method has consequences if you’re caught, in the form of guards attacking you. You can fight back or run, but it usually involves hiding out for a while until the heat’s off. The more hostile acts you do, the more suspicious the guards get, and that makes your job harder.
As each mission progresses, you gain new skills and weapons (sword, hidden blades, and throwing knives, as well as new combat moves like counter attack and the ability to break someone’s hold on you and use it against them.) However, the guards also get more familiar with you, so you won’t be able to move about as freely. During your first mission in Damascus, you can run from roof to wall to ground and back again with no hindrances, but when you get to Jerusalem you find guards patrolling the walls and roofs, and they do not like people up there. This not only makes it harder to get bird’s-eye vantage points (required for finding objectives) but jumping to the rooftops is not a guaranteed escape.
There is character development here too – it’s not a static mindless kill or be killed plot. As he carries out his jobs, Altair speaks with his target as they die and gains insight into their motives. He starts to question what he is all about, and whether he is on the right path. He swore to uphold a Creed – do not kill an innocent, be subtle, and do nothing that would bring shame upon the order. He seems to have his own ideas about what that Creed truly means, and it affects his decisions.
Graphics-wise, the game is top notch. The cities are beautiful, and the level of detail is amazing. Yet, with all this detail, there is no sluggishness, no drops or seizures in frame-rates. There are often dozens of people on the screen at a time, including you and your target, and any number of guards, yet everything is still smooth. The animations were smooth as well – you could run along the street, jump at a wall, and scale it to the roof without seeing any skipping as the game switched from “running” to “climbing” animations. Lighting was realistic, and while it plays no part in your actions (i.e. it’s easier to sneak around in shadows) it is still well done. Everything casts shadows, and again has no effect on the framerate. Riding from town to town, you could see shadows change as the sun went behind a cloud and then re-emerged.
Audio is really good – get closer to a crowd and you hear the murmur of street conversations, the shouts of merchants, the mumbling of guards, and cries for help from a citizen being harassed. Climb to the top of a tower and all you hear is the breeze and the occasional flapping of pigeons. Conversations did not overlap either – while talking to someone, their speech wasn’t drowned out by a nearby idle conversation. Voice acting was good, and conversations were fluid (not the typical conversation where it was obvious that the two voice actors were taped at different times, resulting in a choppy exchange.) Being set in ancient Palestine, you’d expect a lot of bad accents, but surprisingly it’s not over-the-top cheesy. The voice actor for Altair needs some polish, and does seem out of place at times, but it’s forgivable since he doesn’t talk much.
The controls were surprisingly smooth. Most of the times when I play games that require combinations of button presses for a “combo attack,” or worse when a button has multiple functions depending on where you are at the time, I have nothing but trouble. I get into a fight and suddenly my brain freezes up trying to remember, okay was it right trigger + X and then press B Y B while standing on my head? Navigating through the city was very easy, and it made sense. One trigger switches between subtle actions and those that will get you noticed, so you don’t accidentally hit someone when you were just trying to move past them. You can’t hop up onto a wall and then leap to a rooftop while in subtle mode, so you do have to hit the trigger to jump, but it makes sense to do this since hitting the wrong button can blow your cover. Then you realize, whether you’re climbing up the side of a tower or jumping from rooftop to rooftop, it’s the same buttons. You don’t have to remember whether to use right trigger or left, right button or left, swirl the stick which direction, ah crap you’re dead anyway because you weren’t standing on your head. So if you’re hopping from building to building and come to a tower you want to scale, you just run to it and the game does the rest – no cramping your fingers becausse you had to change combinations in a hurry.
My only complaint with the controls is with the “Blend” feature. When you think guards are watching you, you can blend in with the crowd to hide, or while on horseback you can slow down and cover your face with your hood so they don’t notice you. However there are some spots, especially between towns, where you have to hold down the button for Blend for a long time. My thumb was sore by the time I got to Acre because I had a guard walking behind me the entire trip! I was soooo tempted to kill the guy, but you’re not supposed to do that. (So as it is, I got tired of a beggar jumping in front of me every time I tried to pickpocket someone, so I punched her. The guards were not amused.) Also in some fights against multiple targets, it turns into a button-mash. It tells you that if you hit X, and then hit it again at the right moment, you’ll do some sort of combo attack, but when there are four other guys beating on you, that’s kinda hard to do. So you alternate between blocking and just beating the snot out of them, and eventually you either die or kill them all.
The game handles death in a unique way. You’re replaying through someone’s memories, so instead of a Health meter, there’s a Synchronization bar. If the bar is full, it means you’re following the path that Altair took, but if you skew too far off of what he would have done, the bar starts to shrink. It’s unlikely Altair, as an assassin, ran through the crowd slaughtering innocents, so such actions will lower your synchronization. Also, since you’re playing through a set series of memories, it’s not too likely that he got himself killed by guards when there are memories following that one, so if the guards start to get the better of you the sync bar shrinks. Beat them off, or find a place to hide, and things fall back into sync.
I’ve been playing for two days now, and am only at the third mission. This might be one I buy, simply because it has so much going for it that I would enjoy taking my time with it. A lot of games that I rent turn into grinds, starting out as oh neat that’s cool, but by the time I get close to the end I am just rushing through it for the sake of getting done with it. Not so here – there is no rush to do things, and the game remains fun no matter how many street gangs I break up. (Doing a Leap of Faith and landing in a pile of hay never gets old.)