Whats going to be the excuse to hate on Assassin's Creed this time?

[Reasonable]

Mummelmann said:
It was repetetive but I still like it. Most games are, especially RPG's, which is my favourite genre by far. Mass Effect, Final Fantasy and similar games aren't exactly filled to the brim with variation and they're really long on top of that (FF anyway) but they're still good games.

I encourage people who found Assassin's Creed repetetive to find me a game that isn't (and lasts more than a few hours).

AC sins for me weren't so much the repetition (because most games are based on repetition and increased challenge) as the following:

 

1) lack of depth of mechanics - seriously, the game felt 1/10th finished.  You walk up behind someone, you pickpocket them, job done.  The actual pickpocket is meaningless.  You get a message, for example, saying you've now got details on the guards routes, except nothing of the sort occurs in the game.  You find a high spot.  You're done.  To me it felt like they'd built the engine, put in place 'stubs' for actual missions and contents, then realised they'd spent a fortune already, had to release, and just went with it.

 

2) fake length - towards the end, the game cheats to draw things out.  It forces you to fail in your assassinations (a huge no, no IMHO) then forces you into extended fights.  Then towards the very end it puts in barriers that you can't pass until you defeat a large number of foes.  I just really dislike these obvious, annoying methods to try and extend a too short game that doesn't have enough gameplay when development time has expired

 

3) weak use of your 'real world' character.  Again, this just felt unfinished.  A few tiny snippets of info, a semi-decent bit of exposition and a neat ending and a lot of time to wander around with no purpose.

 

4) weak combat mechanics - just like Heavenly Sword, the game suffered IHMO from having a potentially deep combat system, but allowing you to also get buy just using the same repeat, simple button sequences.  The polite foes who line up by the dozen to fight you one at a time didn't help either.

 

But, the setting was great, the engine fantastic (even with screen tearing, etc) and Altair a suitably cool cat to control.  It's just a pity IMO he was set lose in a mostly uninvolving open world with so little to do with missions who's outcome is predetermined no matter how you try and creep in and complete them without causing alarms.