^I think 8.5/10 is rather high for a game that is more topping than ice cream. I believe it's not very objective of you, either. I also disregard ALMOST all "videogame specialized media" as trusty reviewers. My opinion is they barely play the games before they write about them. I highly doubt they even finish many of them. If you were to break an AC review down IGN style I think you'd be hard-pressed to give it more than 7 for gameplay and more than 6 for replay value. Presentation could go as high as 10, but the graphics and animation, although very good and beautiful indeed, they are practically the same throughout the whole game (very fitting to the overall repetitiveness of it), so I wouldn't score graphics higher than 8.5.
My scores would be something like : Presentation : 8, Graphics : 8.5 Gameplay: 5, Sound : 6, Lasting Appeal : 5. Overall 5/10
For me it was half a game, so I can't give it more than half the score. From the go it was flawed, and after a couple of missions you could see that everything Ubisoft did was "copy/paste" one level of design. Horrible story, no drama, repetitive even to the very last detail (gameplay or not), primitive AI, linear gameplay (not exactly a bad thing in itself, but the way you do it always repeating the same kind of thing is absurd). There's no real planning of the assasinations, you don't do anything different or motivated to do it any other way, you can just force your way through the crowd and kill the target admist all the chaos), the game has NO ENDING. Final boss (predictable from half the game at least, he was the bad guy). This assasin never disguises himself, never goes INDOORS, never attacks at night, he instead goes around saving citizens (?) The whole "sync" system is flawed too. You can attract attention easier just by running around town near some guards than actually pushing around and KILLING of those preachers you always have to interrogate, again and again. Dude, I could go on and peel the skin of my fingers off typing it all. But it would just get repetitive. Anyway, kudos for Ubisoft 'cause they didn't play it safe and made a beautiful stage that has a lot of potential to be exploited in possible sequels. But this one sucks.
