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Assassins Deja Vu

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: April 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Assassins Creed is, to flip a common phrase, five pounds of gameplay in a ten-pound sack. It has been repeatedly criticized for being repetitive but its repetitive nature is simply a facet of how its small amount of content contrasts with the grand stage on which it is presented. This isn't too surprising as it's the most common problem with 'open world' games. It's also the general result of people cashing in on a trend.

Do you remember lens flare? When lens flare was the big gimmick, everybody just had to have it. Sometimes they wanted you to notice their great lens flare so bad that they'd literally blind you with it. They even did it in first person. Disregarding the fact that the human eye doesn't lens flare like a camera, the problem with the lens flare fad was that it was a checkbox feature that hindered the gameplay.

The same problem can be seen with a lot of open-world games, like Burnout and Assassins Creed. In AC the open world is more often a burden than a blessing. You will spend more time getting to your mission area than doing your mission. And that time will not be fun.

You are given two choices in AC: either travel slowly and discreetly so as not to alert bad guys, or run. Walking is not a real option. You would never get anywhere. So you have to run but it still takes forever, made worse by the fact that you have to keep the right trigger down the whole time.

For some reason running tends to tick off soldiers. This is another source of aggravation in AC as the soldiers, all wearing full body armor while you wear a tunic, all run faster than you. They run almost as fast, on foot, as a horse in full gallop. Even more hilariously they will follow your acrobatic moves step-for-step. Makes you feel a little less special.

You can choose to fight them, but fighting is pretty much button-mashing. The best move is to wait for their attack and counter as it's usually an insta-kill. Once you get the patterns down it's hard to lose a fight.

That's another issue. You're supposed to be an assassin, not a T-1000. There's no incentive to be stealthy and sneak. And that's probably good, because really there's no way to be stealthy and sneak. You can just 'blend' with the crowd and walk in a praying pose. But there's no crawl. No corner peek. The game doesn't feel stealthy at all.

What stealth is present is auto-pilot. Press the button to sneak in to the fortified building through the front door in the middle of a group of guys all dressed differently from you. Push towards the bench to hide in plain sight from your pursuers. Dive into a bale of hay.

That's really the biggest problem with the game: that it never makes you feel like an assassin. I felt like a mass murderer, like a killer robot sent back in time with but one purpose: to do the same mini-missions over and over again.

Even with all the mentions I don't feel enough has been made of the repetition. It will drive you bonkers. It's not a matter of 'ADD' gamer versus 'patient' gamer. It's just the same five or six things over and over. In every area you have to climb some towers, pickpocket a guy, beat a guy to get information, eavesdrop, save some civilians, and off some figurehead. Over and over.

And the payoffs are always the same. The towers are all from the same small set of geometry. The pickpocket is just a follow-and-button-press, you get the item and the guy looks right at you and asks "Who did that?" and runs away. To interrogate you punch the guy a few times and he tells you another name, then you kill him. Eavesdropping just requires you to sit on the bench and look at the two guys who will wait forever for you to do just that, and you hear the conversation. The civilians will be harassed over and over with the same dialogue until you save them, at which point they'll repeat one of three 'thank you' speeches.

The assassinations themselves are incredibly lame. It is rarely an issue to get near the target, except for being pushed around by those idiotic grunting shirtless guys (seriously), and when you kill the target you and he soul clutch for like ten minutes while he tells you his boring life story.

Tying it all together is a wet paper bag of a story that has you randomly popping out of the real game to wander pointlessly around a futuristic lab and hear sophomoric dystopian-authoritarian speeches from some scientist gasbag. In this part of the game you will do exciting things like sleep! and listen to irrelevant conversation through your bedroom wall! and so on. The sad thing is that at times it's a welcome respite from the game-world story which is the most long-winded, overbearing, and pointless series of lectures and diatribes I've yet to see in a video game. And that says a lot, because I played Metal Gear Solid 3.

Whenever someone tries to tell me that games are just like great literature, I want to strap them down Clockwork Orange style and make them play games like Assassins Creed. Not everything works in every medium. That's why there was no Tom Bombadil singing his stupid song in the Lord of the Rings movies. You have to learn how to make something work in the medium in which you present it, or have the grace to leave it out.

The writers of Assassins Creed must have been paid by the word. The story is delivered in massive concrete blocks of thudding dialog and pretentious speechifying. And for each chunk you are locked in a little pen, only able to slightly move the camera, spin in a circle, and/or occasionally change the POV.

The game is also a little buggy and very unpolished in random areas. Things got off to a bad start for me in the first cutscene, in which for some reason one of the actors kept bouncing up and down while standing on flat ground and speaking. Animations and the camera routinely clip through objects. The camera constantly gets obstructed during key moments, particularly in fights. Altair and his horse have weird motion bugs that cause them to jitter on objects or teleport short distances. Your stays in 'the construct' can be incredibly long or very short, both of which have problems. The long stays are boring because you have nothing to do - it's just an empty room. The short stays result in the audio tips being cut off midway, right after the intriguing proposition, such as "In large fights where you are dying repeatedly, to win you can ..." and then the level finishes loading.

The controls are a little complex, but that's easy to master. What hurts is that they're spotty. Sometimes you'll end up bouncing off a wall to your death. I've jumped to my death off 'leap of faith' perches by accident, which is supposed to be impossible. And too many common items are modular - requiring the triggers to be down - resulting in hand-cramping sessions of gameplay. If developers are going to keep requiring triggers to be depressed the triggers have to have a lock position, like a gas nozzle.

So overall I can't say it's a bad game. It's just repetitive, dull, and easy, with a control scheme that fatigues your hands and a story that fatigues the rest of you. Now I understand why there are so many used copies available at every game store. There's just not enough game there.

Average, at best...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: November 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Man, I was really looking forward to this game, Maybe Mass Effect will be better? I am just a little disappointed in this game, for the simple fact that it is just repetitive. The graphics are great, though, and it is fun for the first hour... It is no "Hitman" or "Elder Scrolls"... That is kinda what I thought it would be like... Oh well.. Mass Effect on November 20th, lets hope I can give more stars to that!

Wasn't blown away by it.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: November 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I remember about 8 years ago when I first played Tenchu: Stealth Assassins for PS1 and was completely blown away. A few years later I played Hitman 2 on PS2 and was similarly blown away. And then I played by the GTA series and was blown away by the freedom of it.
I was expecting to be equally blown away by Assassin's Creed but unfortunately I was not.
The combat system is easy and repetitive and seems like it's meant just to show off cool counter attack graphics. Also, the AI is stupid. It's even easier to kill an enemy just by pushing him with one arm than it is using your sword...ridiculous.
The stealth aspect of the game is weak and there are some skills that are just plain useless like 'eagle vision' and I've also found no practical use for lightly pushing citizens out of the way. I also don't like the fact that you can't disguise yourself, except as a scholar. Every city Altair goes to he's dressed like an assassin.
The missions are repetitive; helping citizens who are getting bullied and pickpocketing someone and eavesdropping. Then you assassinate high profile target and escape. Redundant and totally linear.
They could have increased the NPC's dialogues too. The bullies on the citizens say the same thing over and over again. The preachers on the corner yell the same stuff over and over.

I could go on...

This game does not live up to the hype.

Eh... it's okay... I guess...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: November 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The game itself was beautiful, polished, and very pretty. Graphics, while astounding far away, were somewhat lacking up close. If you happened to get real close up into someone's face or looking at their person, there was... well... a lack of detail. I'd still give em a 4 out of 5 though.

The gameplay was fast paced, but choppy. Major cutscene action which couldn't be skipped... I mean, who does that? ...forces you to sit through crappy video-game dialogue and backstory? Boo.

The actual game itself was pretty GTA style. You could run through the cities (i think there were five of them), and free-run around, off, and on top of the buildlings. You could also climb on virtually anything, as long as there was something to grab. There were side-missions to complete, like collecting flags, saving citizens, and hitting up sync points. But mainly it was a linear mission style game. You could skip the side stuff and just go for the plot oriented stuff, but personally I liked saving citizens. Feeds my ego. Yum.

That brings me to the plot, which was predictable, but still entertaining. My complaint being that it took so long to get to where it was going, that by the time you get there it's obvious what's going to happen. They shoulda totally took a cue from Silent Hill and switched things up a bit.

I'll give them props for the combat, it was fun. However there's no variety in the weapons, and the combo system, while neat, should yield wayyyy more options. Esp for something on top of the line systems. I don't get why the game kept getting pushed back, it overall it's unfinished. They lack upgrades, items, and special abilities. These are basic components of any adventure style game. Take Ninja Gaiden for example, Resident Evil, or Devil May Cry for another.

All in all I don't know what all the fuss is about. The game looks great, but that's all. It lacks content, and that's what makes a game, country, or human matter.

My Grade: C+

Fun game with little replay value

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Assassins Creed (AC) is an over-the-shoulder 3rd person free-roaming game - think GTA only in the middle east around 1191 A.D. The objective is to assasinate targets in various cities.

The story - spoilers ahead - is divided into two parts. The A story follows the middle ages assassin who's killing folks around the time of the crusades. The B story follows a futuristic character who's being forced to relieve his ancestor's past to discover clues to a treasure. Although this explains some of the gameplay mechanics (like why parts of the city are off limits early in the game), it ultimately mucks up the story too much and comes across much more hokey than the A story - which is good, albeit a bit convoluted.

The gameplay is fun at first, but it gets repetitive quickly. When you enter a city to assassinate a target, you must gather intel. You can max out your intel and complete all the side missions, or you can complete the bare minimum (although this will make killing your target somewhat harder). There are 6 basic things to do in every city - climb a high tower to "synchronize" (read unlock objectives) on your map; save citizens - which means fighting a bunch of people at the same time; pick pocket; rough up an witness; protect an informer; and a final type which essentially is a race.

The open fighting is nothing new, but it hangs together pretty well and it doesn't feel like you're mindlessly mashing buttons. For an assassin game, it's really the quiet assassin kills that are the most fun. It's simple enough, but if you're spotted, you'll be attacked by guards.

I think the game developers intended you to run at that point. Running from roof top to roof top and through crowded streets is fun - at first. Like all the other gameplay aspects, it gets frustrating at a point. When you have to run for five minutes to get away from the guards and then truck it all the way back to your objective - it gets a little tedious. By the end, I would simple fight any guards who messed with me, because it was quicker than running away.

The graphics are pretty good. Some of the cities look a little washed out on blue or red. This creates a good atmosphere, but takes a little away from the realism. The background citizens look really good - they move very realisticly in the crowded streets. They react pretty much like you would expect in any given situation. The climbing animation is great too. You can climb pretty much anything that looks like it can be climbed and every step you take was painstakingly animated.

The main problem with this game (outside of repetition ) is that once you beat it - there's little incentive to go back and play it again. (There are "flags" to collect in the various levels, but this makes playing the game feel like work; and as far as I can tell it doesn't add to the story). This is a great game to rent over a long weekend and take back to the store on Monday.

This was worth the wait

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing Assassin's creed for about a week. I'm not finished with the game, so I cannot give an expert, overall review. What I can do is describe the game for what I've seen thus far.

Graphically, the game on XBOX360 looks utterly amazing. The landscapes, the NPCs, the birds flying in the sky and every being in the game look amazing. The feel of the terrain and the light of the sun are perfect. Nowadays, most "next-gen" games look very good anyhow, but the frame rate you get even with hundreds of characters on screen is simply breathtaking. When you go into a viewpoint cut scene, which opens up map areas, you'll be simply stunned by the outlay of the world beneath you. Even after doing it a twentieth or thirtieth time, it never gets old and always stuns.

The gameplay itself is very good. As an assassin in 1191AD, you must carry out orders and kill 9 people. Each assassination requires an investigation to be performed and a city to be explored. The cities, Damascus, Acre and Jerusalem are based on their real life counterparts throughout the years of the crusade. As you conduct your investigqation you'll need to pickpocket people whom carry documents you need, eavesdrop on conversations and interrogate people in private where you cvan beat a confession out of them. All of this takes place under the watchful eyes of the cities guards, whom will attack at the slightest criminal offense. When you carry out your kills, a deep, dark story unravels and even incudes portions taking place 1,000 years in the future. Yes, the future, as there is alot more to this story than anyone expected at release.

The mechanics of the game are fluid and responsive. Fighting is not difficult and certain assassination manuevers look very pleasing and satisfy your thirst for the revenge that you'll eventually seek on people such as guards, beggars and henchmen. You'll acquire a bunch of moves each time you progress the story, try them out in the battleground and off you go to carry out your next order.

The game has been fabulous for me thus far, and if the next half is anywhere near as good as the first half, I have a lot to look forward to. Being that this game is supposedly part of a trilogy, I'm sure the anticipation for the next chapter is going to swell unbelievably as I get closer to completing it.

Rent before you buy

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: November 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I had been looking forward to the release of this game since I heard about it months ago. I'm afraid it didn't live up to the hype for me. It's not that it's bad. In fact, the world they've created in many ways is quite amazing. I just have found it to be repetitive and fairly uninteresting. The story is somewhat compelling. It has me interested enough to keep playing, but just barely.

The world for Assassin needs to be bigger and more varied. If they took what is good, the 3-D, the movement of the characters, and brought in a more interesting story and less repetitive game play, they'd really have something.

Bottom line: Rent it before you play it. Some people would still buy it, but I wouldn't have.

:[

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

i was really looking forward to this videogame, i mean what's better than stabbing a guy in the neck? however i found that the game's sound bites were repeatative as well as the gameplay. the pace does not increase as i hoped it would either. it is a solid rental but i would not suggest purchasing it... a shame, the concept and idea good, but very poor execution(if you're shopping around this review will be repeated in some sites)

Interesting new genre, needs some work

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Quick Review
----------------------------------------
Pros

-Stunning graphics
-Unique story
-Sandbox feel to it
-Quick learning curve
-Excellent recreation of historical cities
-Interface is very intuitive

Cons

-Battle system is flawed
-It is very difficult to go anywhere without getting noticed
-Game can get repetitive
-Little incentive to do the side quests
-Hard to switch between fight and flight modes during battle
-Story is hard to follow and doesn't make much sense
-No way to skip dialogue
-No subtitles

6/10
----------------------------------------

Critical Review

My personal experience with Assassin's Creed was not a pleasant one. I really enjoyed the first few hours of the game, but the story is very enigmatic. Being put in this "animus" which transports you back in time, or something? I never understood this. Not able to finish the game would prevent me from truly understanding the plot. I left the first town for Damascus which was amazing and looked very historically accurate. Here I went around the city attempting to save citizens, most of the time dying or having to run away. Another thing that was kind of fun was climbing up to the tops of the eagle perches. This apparently updates your map of the city. There are missions to do within each city as this assassin, such as interrogation, pickpocket and a boss fight. After finishing things off in Damascus, I went to Jerusalem.

This is where things went sour. Jerusalem looked pretty much like Damascus. Ok. Then I found I was doing the exact same things I did in Damascus. I tried saving citizens, did some pick pocketing, then fought the boss and failed miserably. The story and missions were nearly identical to what I did in Damascus. However, once I fought the boss I became enraged. I was expected to fight seven guys or chase the boss. I decided to run, because I kept getting killed. I had a hell of a time trying to change from fighting to running. Then once I chased down the boss, he ran into a group of guards, so I was fighting four or five guys again. I was demolished. I decided to quit before losing my sanity.

Ultimately, this is only my opinion and I am by no means a professional reviewer. Many people really liked this game. I didn't. Many of the reviews by websites were incredibly bloated. One website even gave it a perfect score. This game is far from perfect. I believe that there has been such a shortage of quality games in the past year that even decent games seem better in comparison

Things I loved about the game

-The graphics are brilliant. Light and reflections are very accurate. The colors are not washed out or too cartoonish. Cities have amazing detail with true dimension given to shutter, wood and other pieces sticking out from the sides of houses. Clothes have wrinkles and even shadows are cast on other parts of the body. It is very next-gen looking. This is the crowning achievement of the game which is both good and bad.
-Animation is very natural and life-like, especially the walking and climbing actions
-If you need help, there is always a tutorial to let you know what buttons need to be pressed for what you are currently doing.
-There is a real deviation from the norm with this game. Instead of a FPS or sports game, this game take a story from where few if any games have tread before; the time of the crusades and the location of the Middle East. If I were to pick a game that was somewhat similar, I could only think of the Metal Gear franchise. You have the ability to hide instead of risking open conflict. There are also two modes of action: action mode and blending mode. In blending mode you can appear to be in prayer and just push people gently to get through a crowd. In action mode, you can tackle people or attack obviously.

What I liked about the game

-The sandboxish feel to the game is a welcome change from the endless stream of FPS games.
-Being able to climb up almost anything adds another dimension to the game
-The action or blend modes are very helpful when you don't feel like dying.

Things I disliked about the game

-The game can get very repetitive. From what I played through, I did the same thing in Damascus as I did in Jerusalem. This seems to be the rule instead of the exception with the new games-less unique content more work put into the graphical and presentation aspect.
-Interaction between sword and person look cartoonish. In other words, the sword looks like it is cutting through paper instead of flesh.
-Side quests seem to be thrown in, to add playable content, such as finding the little flags for each city.

Things I absolutely detested

-There are no subtitles. I have no idea what the people are saying sometimes and more importantly I didn't see the words to have recollection of what I am supposed to do. I just followed the blinking icon on the map.
-Going along with the subtitle problem, I don't know what is going on in the story and frankly I didn't care. None of it seemed to tie together.
-There is no way to skip the dialogue. Come on. This needs no explanation. I can't even believe they thought gamers would want this.
-It is extremely easy to get caught doing nothing wrong. What I mean is that if you are sprinting or even riding your horse fast, guards will chase after you just based on the fact you are suspicious. I can understand this, but it should have been a more intelligent system.
-Being able to change between fight and flight mode is very difficult. You could be surrounded by 8-10 enemies and instead of blasting through them to get away he gets stabbed. I find myself constantly running because I couldn't take on more than a few guys at a time without getting killed.
-To me the game really seemed like a more advanced version of Prince of Persia with a sci-fi twist. If you get right down to it, the game is incredibly simple while at the same time very frustrating.

FUN for 1 Hour

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

So I was really excited to get my hands on this game. Even after carefully reading customer reviews of Assassin's Creed of it being boring and repetitive didn't phase me.

Now I enjoy all different types of games and this is a great game however, the gameplay is only new to you for an hour.

Every action in the game is repeated endlessly throughout the game. It is gorgeous to look at. I find there to be too much dialog where you can't even bypass so you listen to stuff you really don't care about. Its cool to wonder around and climb buildings but how many times must I pickpocket, assassinate and interrogate people. Honestly, that's all you'll do.

I've played about 8 hours of this and I'm bored playing it.
Again, amazing graphics, poor gameplay.

So in conclusion, if I recommend renting the game and decide from there.

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