Assassin’s Creed

2007/11/22

Since you brought about the Assassins’ fall into disgrace, it is for you to redeem yourself and the honour of your insidious association of murderers. Altair’s status drops from Murderer of the Month to Trainee, and in order to make up for this horrific entry in his CV, he must despatch nine people to the next world. So commands the Master, and the Master will brook no quibbles or faked headaches. Well then, let’s get to work and saddle the horses!

A wonderful, open world awaits you and your nag, who will bring you to impressive, ancient locations. Historic cities such as Damascus, Jerusalem or Acre can be freely explored, and local houses complete with roofs and brickwork await testing with your firm grip and footwear. Masses of people mingle in the lanes and streets, traders loudly hawk their wares, and scattered watchmen cast mistrustful glances in your direction. Should the mistrust become too acute, you can adopt a devout scholar’s posture and thus escape attention.

As you are a real one-man show, you must avoid attention as much as possible when you do something villainous. Otherwise the watchful guards will quickly become a nuisance, forcing you to turn tail and find a hiding place as soon as possible. Allergies in those days were not so common, so you can quickly leap into a haystack and thus escape pursuing glances. Benches and roof gardens also offer good shelter. So long as no one sees you, if you jump in immediately, the search for you will soon be called off.

If you suffer a cramp during your escape, or if you simply fancy getting bloody, you can send your man into battle. The fight system is very innovative, as is the overall control system, in that the four main keys are allocated to parts of the body – the triangle for the head, the square for the weapon hand, the cross for your free hand and the X button for the legs. As long as your finger is on the side keys, you remain in ‘inconspicuous mode’ while a touch of the R1 button brings you into ‘conspicuous mode’. In this mode, you can perform all kinds of tricks such as climb walls, make daredevil jumps, counter-attack, side-step, fight with opponents, and so on. The counter-attacks in particular provide beautifully animated opponent attacks.

Assassin’s Creed is obviously reliant on the Parkour inserts, the fight scenes and the sneaky murders. It is an amazing amount of fun to run across the top of a wall, and then to cross entire areas under attack with high-flying leaps and adroit climbing inserts, and thus leave the clueless guards far behind. Eagles soar over high buildings, so-called lookout points, all of which can be climbed and which provide pointers and references for your current mission. Unfortunately there is little variety in the roll-out of the different missions, and you must first seek out the Assassins’ office in each city before embarking on a mission.

Seek out the office, scale lookout points, beat, rob, eavesdrop on or silence various people for the necessary information, and then get back to the office to finally receive the order to eliminate the target in question. Except for a few exceptions, there are few deviations from this principle. The game will motivate you to the very end, but you get the feeling that you have not seen everything nor got it all. You would soon call the game monotonous were it not for the amazingly attractive stunt inserts and action. Even if the entire game development is linear, the story, which you live and decide yourself, and the way in which you do so, is fascinating.

Last but not least, the slick wrapping in which Assassin’s Creed comes and which gives it its hip pace, makes it something special. The realistic shading, the suggestion of sunlight and the far horizons in the huge, beautifully modelled cities are totally convincing. The cities are subsumed in a real middle-ages atmosphere as you make your way through it all with careful button presses and jerks of the controller. The interaction with the entire environment and the objects that you find there provides for an experience which is truly alive. Movements, gestures and conversations are well done and contribute to the verisimilitude of the scenarios.

Unfortunately, you will find that there are some awkwardnesses, especially in the PS3 version. You will find yourself fighting a running battle with tearing and clipping errors, frame drops and system crashes. Cloned character models and the repeated expressions of NPC’s are also not only occasional occurrences. Nor do the guards always react reliably. Even in direct line of sight, you can take out your target with your hidden blade without the guards coming after you. This does not however take too heavy a toll on game play fun. A driving and exhilarating soundtrack, great sound effects and the superb graphics go a certain way to making up for this.