Assassin's Creed

Hey Folks,
Sorry for the long pause in posting. My computer burned out and I had to get a new one before I could continue posting again. Anywho, enough about that. Let's talk about Assassin's Creed.

First of all, let me start off by saying that I loved this game. They could have accurately called it The Game For Chris instead. For this reason, I am obviously biased as a reviewer. This is a good time for me to point out that when I discuss a game on this blog I am not about reviewing it. I am trying to take an honest look at the design of the game from a functional and creative standpoint. That is why I end the posts with section called Things to Learn and not one called Review Score.

On that note, let's start with the things I really enjoyed about the game. The most obvious thing to anyone that has played the game is the Free Running mechanic. Take notes on this one. This is a perfect example of making the player feel cool by doing something simple. By holding down a button and pressing a direction, the player can get all the excitement of bounding across rooftops and making spectacular getaways without having to manage his character's actions too much. This way the player can spend more time enjoying how cool his character looks escaping the enemy and less time focusing on pressing buttons. I thought this mechanic was brilliant in Galleon, and I think it is even more brilliant now. This game is up there with Spiderman 2 when it comes to the subject of making it fun for the player to move around the world.

I also really enjoyed the combat system, once I figured it out. If there had somehow been a way to communicate to the player that the combat system was very similar to a rhythm style game mechanic from the very beginning it would have been better, but that is without a doubt a very tough thing to do in this type of game.

Next is the story for the modern day portions of the game. The kidnapping of an innocent man and his struggle to understand who he was and what importance he was to his captors made for some very compelling storytelling. I was immediately sucked in to the world of this John Doe. Very subtle tones of paranoia and a race against time made the story stand out and gave the player a sense of urgency about his missions. Excellent.

Now a segue into some of the things that could have been improved on, starting with the story. The story of my ancestor Altair did not keep me interested at all. I understood that I had to assassinate some people, interrogate some people, and pick-pocket some people. I understood that I was doing this for the good of my assassin's guild and for the world. I did not understand why Ubisoft decided it was a good idea for the player to have to sit through what must have been about an hour of extra cut-scene dialog to tell the player that his character has also fallen out of the good graces of guild. Then they try to tell some back story about a man that Altair killed and his one-armed brother. Honestly, I don't even know the storyline for that part. It was overly complicated and bothersome. The obvious argument to do this is to give the player a taste of what he is going to acquire later in the game (a mechanic which I personally disagree with), but this only works when the player has those weapons and abilities long enough to try them all out a number of times. In this game, the player doesn't.

Next up is something I thought was a problem to the Stealth Kill mechanic. The player has been given a character that can balance on small beams above city streets, undetected, and can stealth-assassinate his enemies. The fact that the player cannot drop down onto his enemies and assassinate them in a spectacular way was almost inexcusable. Wasn't that mechanic in Splinter Cell 3? I know they share tech between their studios because I worked on Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow at Ubisoft Shanghai for over a year. We shared lots of tech between studios. This was a feature that everyone expected the game to have. So where was the disconnect there?

The biggest gripe (if you can even call it that) that I have about the game is that there wasn't enough. The types of different missions were very few, and obvious additions could have been easily made. For instance, another thing I thought was glaringly missing was a mission that made you race across the rooftops. The game's main selling point is the navigation. It's fun to do and anyone can do it. The best way to do it is as fast as possible. Why wasn't there a goal to chase down a rogue agent or rush to stop a guild brother's execution? Give the team an extra month and I bet they could have put a game's worth of those missions in there. The closest thing to this were the missions where you had to run around in a large circle and collect all the flags in a given time limit, but this was a poor comparison at best.

THINGS TO LEARN FROM ASSASSIN'S CREED
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1. Players love to feel cool even if they aren't very skilled. This game nails it.

2. Rhythm based combat systems can be done correctly. Now the gaming public has to have a game that introduces them in an easily understandable manner.

3. A great story can keep people interested in the game, a bad story gets ignored. This is bad if you ever want your game to turn into a franchise. Luckily, the good story in this one is exceptional.

4. If there is a feature in your game that you think may seem like a glaring omission, it probably is. Sometimes, unfortunately, these are necessary. Budget constraints, ship dates, and shareholder meetings sometimes take priority over the "completeness" of a game. That being said, I still find it a huge let down.