I really liked Assassin's Creed. The gameplay was incredibly redundant but so much of the game was done right that I'll give it a bit of a pass.
The arms/legs control was incredible and the attention to detail in a completely underutilized game world (medieval Middle East) was absolutely breath-taking and the climbing mechanic still had me amazed 10 hours into the game. The actual assassinations were fun and the myriad of ways you could approach the situation was encouraging if you failed one or two times. You always had another way of getting the job done. Running across rooftops during the chase sequences were always exhilarating and had you on your toes.
Now for the bad.
The story had an interesting twist but they revealed it 20 minutes into the game. Ugh. And after the first 20 minutes of play, you walked around like some frat boy toolbox for 45 minutes and listened to some crazy dude and a shitty computerized version of Kristen Bell blather on and on about stuff you didn't give a rat's ass about. It also sucked that a stealth game suddenly went all John Rambo, Medieval Edition for the last hour of gameplay.
The enemies... Seriously, Ubisoft. You gotta try harder than that. There's only so many times I rescue the same chick with the same voice before I just want to knife her. The beggars were even more annoying than the enemies and actually caused me more problems than the guards I was trying to avoid most of the game.
Overall, a pretty good game that was hugely flawed, much like how I view Uncharted (though I think Assassin's Creed had a lot more potential and was a lot more imaginative). I would probably give the game an 8.5/10 or so (versus an 8/10 for Uncharted for your comparison).
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