One of the benefits of working for EB Games is that I get to check out used games when they come in for 4 days and play them to see what I think. I got a copy of Assasin's Creed today and played the hell out of it for about 8 hours straight trying to beat it before my time is up. I ended up with the 360 version because my brother has the Xbox and he let me borrow it as long as I let him play it before I give it back.
In any case, the purpose of this thread was to evaluate the game of what I think so far. I won't spend too much time harping on things just give my honest opinion.
First if all, I went in to this game with certain expectations, none of them were necessarily great or glowing thoughts, but I'm open minded and decided to play it and see.
One of the expectations I had was that the game was going to be extremely short. To some degree this is true, in much the same way that you can beat MArio Galaxy with just 60 stars sort of way. You can literally beat this game by doing two side missions per quest and then going on to the assasination attempt. However, that makes the game way more difficult than most people would be comfortabnle with. I found that by saving more citizens and gathering more information; the final kill was much easier than if I had just done the two required missions. By that I mean, I was rewarded by doing the extra work with a much more satisfying kill than just running in and sword fighting the target. In particular, during one mission I rescued a civilian who happened to be a priest. This unlocked some scholars that allowed me to infiltrate the area where the target was without being seen, thus resulting in a stealth kill that would have made Solid Snake jealous.
Number two on my expectations list, that the level desighn itself would be boring and drab. This is definately not true. The game has some of the best visuals I've seen in a game, and while the enviroments lean on the desert side of things (it is the middles east) none of them seem overly repetative (save for the fact that there an awful lot of rooftops).
Number three, The story was going to suck. I am 100% dissapointed to have to tell you guys that it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Well, I take that back, it makes perfect sense while you're in the 1300's killing people for the Assasin's Guild. However, the whole future memory of the ansestors thing makes about as much sense as using an umbrella underwater. Had they not included that little tidbit of nonsense and just went with a traditional storyline, the whole plot would have been much better. Instead it comes off as the writers just trying to do to much. It almost seems as if they had two plot ideas and only enough money to develop one game but didn't want to dicard the other one.
Finally, I thought that because of the hype I wouldn't enjoy the game. I can safely report that I was definately wrong. There is a ton of stuff to do in this game, and it is certainly worth $60 for at least one playtrough. Provided of course you take advantage of all the extra content and play the game like you should instead of just flying through it.
I highly recommend this game, other than the story, but to make it all better I'm just going to pretend that the whole second unecessary nonsense plot doesn't exsist and enjoy the much more contxtual one.one that does make sense.
