User Reviews (1 - 11 of 30)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Please do not buy this game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: September 01, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The best games have the power to take you into another world; one that is richer and stranger than your own. It may be fascintating, beautiful, or frightening, but when you enter into it you feel that you are really there.

Building this world often starts with the graphics, and Assassin's Creed cannot be faulted here. The effects are gorgeous, and the textures and details are wonderfully rendered. But if this is to be a properly immersive experience, where you, the player, become part of the world, then the interaction and gameplay become just as important, and it is here that Assassin's Creed fails so abysmally.

The basic character controls are stupidly, pointlessly, clumsy, and making the character do what you want becomes an excercise in keyboard-punching frustration. The tasks that your character has to carry out are infuriatingly hard, not out of any inherent difficulty, but because of the ridiculously obstructive game mechanics.

As well as the simple difficulty in controllng the character, many of the assignments that you have to carry out are deliberately set up to irritate you. When trying to follow a man in order to pick his pocket, beggars will accost you (but not him) and refuse to let you go. (They want money. The game system doesn't let you give them money.) Random deranged lunatics will stand on street corners and block your passage (but never anyone else's).

Many of the little details that seemed so convincing to start with soon become annoying. The street-corner preacher that you walked past in Damascus is also there in Jerusalem, saying the same thing over and over again. The suspicous guards, who are alerted when you walk too quickly, seem like a vivid detail to begin with, but when the game's ludicrous plot forces you to walk past them again, and again, and again, it soon gets tiring.

The character that you control has lots of special moves. He climbs like a cat, and can clamber up to the highest tower in the city, where he can scan the streets below for activity. The first time he does this, it is genuinely breathtaking, as the camera suddenly pans around the assassin, perched on hie eyrie. The tenth, or the twentieth time (becasue you have to do this in order to fill in your map) it become pointless and tedious.

If all of this is beginning tonsound irritating, bear in mind that you will have to do it over and over and over again, as you continually return to one of the three game cities in order to carry out yet another misison that is a bit harder, but basically the same, as the last one.

I genuinely wanted to like this game. I am fascinated by the period, and I loved the idea of mingling in the throng of a crowded Middle Eastern street. But the truth is tht Ubisoft spent a lot of time on designing the scenery, and no time (and even less thought) on designing a real game.

Yes, the game has its scenic moments. But for every time that a dusty flock of pigeons rises into the air as you crawl across the rooftops, there are dozens of stupid, contrived and frustrating exercises that will quickly drag you back out of the game world, and leave you annoyed and angry in front of your keyboard.

Ultimately, a game has to be played, not looked at, and the gameplay is so terribly, terribly, bad that nothing else really matters. It is, as I say, a shame, because I wanted to like the game, but that simply isn't possible.

Please do not buy this game. Please do not buy this game because you think you can handle a few annoyances for the sake of an interesting world. Please do not buy this game becasue the graphics look good and the trailer is spectacular. Please do not buy this game becasue you love the Middle Ages, and you think that any game set there cannot be all bad. I bought this game for precisely those reasons, and I was brutally disappointed.

Please do not buy this game.

Needs more power than I have

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I have a Dell Inspiron notebook with 2.2 GHz CoreDuo, 4Gb of RAM and a fast HD running Vista. Admittedly, my video card is a bit underpowered - it's only a GeForce 8400 with 128Mb. The game is virtually unplayable, even with all rendering settings set to the bottom. Be sure you have enough horsepower before you buy the game!

The PC is not the Xbox!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

When the PC version of this game tells you to click the "green hand button" (or something like that), you'd suspect that this game might have been directly ported from a console version. That is, without even changing the instructions on what key to push or which mouse button to click. The game might be the best thing that ever happened to computer gaming, but the controls on the PC version make it a nightmare.

Not only that, but even the character's movement is something I'd expect to see on a console (like PS2, Xbox, etc.) - really weird and difficult to manage.

I could gripe about the controls for days on end, but the bottom line is: if you want to play this game, buy the Xbox version, or if you already bought the PC version, buy an Xbox controller for Windows. If both of these options are unacceptable to you, like they aren't for me, shelf the game and keep its icon on the desktop as a reminder to read reviews before purchasing potentially frustrating games.

Such a shame.

Gorgeous environments, chases over rooftops and fun swordplay in this game (PC version)

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game on Steam.
The video game was amazing. Here are the pros and cons that I saw:
PROS:
1. The outdoor environments are huge and all beautifully detailed. You also get to ride on horseback.
2. The buildings, mosques and churches and other architecture are amazingly realistic and I think these along with #4 below "made" the game. These really made it feel like you were in Jerusalem or Damascus. FREAKING amazing. I think this game is a landmark video game just because of the quality of the graphics for the buildings. Even the golden domes on the mosques shine with the sunlight. The game should get an award for this.
3. You will have many hours of fun because of the swordfights. Every time the player levels up, he acquires new swordfighting and combat skills. This makes combat always interesting and there's always something new to try out on your targets.
4. Both the "Bourne Identity" movies and the new James Bond movies have scenes where the hero has the climb walls and jump from roof to roof all with just his bare hands. In this game, YOU are Jason Bourne doing all that stuff. This and #2 "made" this game. When you're jumping from roof to roof and you're being chased by 12 guards while archers are taking aim at you, the feeling is exhilarating.
5. When you are in a city, you have a lot of freedom about where to go and what to do. It feels like "GTA" with horses and not cars. There is even a meter that indicates how "wanted" you are by the guards.
CONS:
1. The "Save a citizen" quests feel very repetitive after you've done a hundred of them.
2. You cannot swim. If you land in the water, you die. Why? If the hero is able to pull off the roof jumping stunts, why can't he swim?
3. You have to pick the pockets of armed thugs to replenish your knives. There is no assassin's store.
4. There is not enough variety in the dialogue spoken by NPCs. It becomes irritating to hear the same thing said over and over by towncrier-type NPCs.
Note to the folks at UBISOFT:
UBISOFT, be careful that the depiction of the Christian religion in your video games is fair compared to the depiction of other religions or beliefs. There are people who seriously consider that when choosing to buy your high-quality games or high quality games from another company.

Great game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game that offers many hours of play time.
Some people might be worried about the controls in the PC version but once you get used to them they allow for much quicker actions than on console. If all else fails you can always buy a Xbox 360 controller for your pc.

Has a Few Flaws and no Ending but UBISOFT is Working on a Sequel

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Assassin's Creed is one of the best games I've played, but it has several flaws that I hope they correct in the sequel.

The main flaw in Assassin's Creed is that there isn't enough variety and planning in the assassinations. Most of the time it is impossible to get to your target without fighting your way through the guards so planing and stealth doesn't help much in the actual assassinations(it's a good thing that Assassin's Creed has a great combat engine). The other flaws are: The assassin can't change disguises and you would think a real assassin would, The assassin can't swim and it seams like someone so well trained in all other ways would know how to swim, and the story doesn't end but this isn't really a flaw because they are making a sequel but I don't know when it will come out except that UBISOFT has started on the sequel and it probably won't be out this year(2008)

Assassin's Creed is a good blend of action/adventure and open-world. It far longer and more open than most action games and much more story driven then most open-world games. Also it has far more realistic and detailed game Play and graphics than any game I've played: running, jumping, climbing, and fighting are all smooth, fluid and realistic. Game play is well balanced between your mastery of the controls and the difficulty of your opponents while maintaining a smooth realistic look(I never got tired of the fights even though some of the other aspects of the game got rather repetitive and dull).

I recommend a X box type controller and even though the game's tutorial isn't designed for it a PlayStation type controller also works well if you set the game on X box and press 1 when it tells you to press 0, 2 when it tells you to press 1 and so on(I used a PlayStation type controller)

Assassin's Creed worked great on my computer and the only problem I had was that it froze three times:

* Windows Vista Home Premium
* EVGA Nvidia nForce 680i SLI 775 A1 Version
* Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 2.40GHz
* Corsair Dominator 4GB PC2-8500 DDR2
* 2(SLI) EVGA Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS Superclocked
* Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty with 64MB of X-RAM.
* 2 Western Digital Raptor X 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drives in Raid 0 Array,

Simply Gorgeous

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I decided to give this a try on the pc since it was only 30 bucks and don't want my pc to collect dust.

I'll start with the good: This game is beautiful and has the most immersive maps I have ever seen in game. It's like watching HD for the first time. Truly the best graphics I have ever seen and yes better than the crapiest game on earth, Crysis. The movement during fights is as realistic as can be and is fluid with you in full control. I've never seen that either, I've seen fight sequences that go into automode to impress you but you lose control of the fight. These fights, you are in complete control and are making the movements which to me is revolutionary for an action game. The audio is top notch with excellent voice overs. This game is so realistic, I actually got a knot in my stomach when I climed the highest tower thinking I was scared of falling! That's impressive when a game can do that. The whole virtual story line was also kind of refereshing. Hollywood is probably already making a movie out of this. Also, there were absolutely no glitches on this game! I ran it at it's highest settings and not one freeze lockup or crash! The game was extremely smooth. I'll put my pc specs at the end of this review.

Okay now the bad:

This game is for a console. The learning curb for keyboard and mouse is extremely high. I had so much trouble the first couple of days trying to get used to the movements. This game becomes very hard to control because of this. So much so I actually considered stopping all together, but the key is persistence and practice. Eventually the controls became second nature and I was able to play it fairly smooth with the keyboard and mouse. You could also add a pad to the pc but I didn't want to go through the troule. Also, the game became extremely repetitive half way through. It's basically climbing towers, pickpocketing, saving citezens and assasinating the leader. This was constantly repeated and became boring a little half way thorugh the game. I was also very annoyed at the capturing the flag side missions. First of all, what the hell do you get for getting them all? Second of all, it's boring looking for every single one. So I passed on that side mission as it was way too boring. While the cities were immersive with many citezens making it seem real, in the end the immersive maps and people looked more an more unreal. Like robots since the missions and actions were so repetitive. Example: you save a citezen and the second your done with diologue they look at the bodies and are horrified as if you never saved them at all. This is done so repetively that the dialogue is the same citezen after citezen. There was little interaction you could have with poeple. It's like they were locked to do only basic functions like robots. I don't fault the game too much since I'm sure most of the resources were probably used for the graphics and immersive maps.

This game is without a doubt a classic; however, I play this now just to show people how amazing it looks but I don't play it for replay value. If you have a next gen console, get if for that but if you only have a PC 30 bucks is a bargin if your willing to through the high learning curve with the controls.

PC SPECS AS PROMISED:
Vaio desktop pc
300 gb hardrive
2 gig memory
2.8 gig dual core pentium D
Nvidia 8800 GTS 640 mb graphics card

Unstable and disappointing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 18, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought the game before discovering that there is a significant reputation for lock up and crashing problems on the three platforms for which it is available. It is truly unfortunate that the stabillity issues are not being addressed by releasing company. I can only blame myself for not researching the game better before purchasing it. The graffics on the PC are wonderful, given some good horsepower, but the game crashes within 5 minutes. The problem is slightlyt more prevalent on nVidia based systems (my preference) but the problems are common on PS2 and XBOX 360s as well. I will check once a month for the hoped for update. Wait for the price to drop, as it will, as a reuslt of the stabillity issues, and later it may be a good value, after the needed fixes are available. I have hope for a fix on the PC, those unfortunates with PS2 and XBOX 360s may be SOL for an update.

Good luck, you have been warned.

on the plus side though, the graphics are amazing :)

AWESOME!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game for my husband as a gift. He's been playing it non-stop once the sun goes down and is on the computer for hours! In his words, it's just awesome!!!

Tourist in the Holy Land

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I could not have imagined experiencing Damascus, Acre or Jerusalem in the 12th century. And yet, here is something that seems like them, alive (at least audio-visually). The experience is the best part of AC.

But AC takes its play from console FPS/TPS games. This means that many of the actual missions are more like arcade games than interactive stories. There are also some kinks in the ways your character and camera move during action that get your character and views stuck in the wrong places at the wrong times (with a mouse/keyboard setup, anyway). The game also suffers from one of the worst faults of console ports -- checkpoint saves. That is, you can't save at will and are doomed to repeat missions many times if you have the patience to do so. These issues reduce the fun.

The story that plays out to tie the action together is a mix of Near Eastern history and modern-day sci fi. I found it engaging and imaginative. It is linear. But it is well-told and has interesting characters. Add to this the immersive tourist-in-the-holy-land experience, and AC is good entertainment that I recommend if it comes at a bargain price.

Review Page: 1 2 3 Next 

Actions