jogobom

7 out of 10

There are two schools of thought on this game. One gives it 9/10 and says the technical achievements and general coolness outweigh any frustrations or limitations. The other camp gives it 7/10 and says the opposite. I'm one of the latter. However, there's no question that those technical achievements and general coolness are very, very impressive.

This game is a stunning achievement. The fact that the team could actually ship this product is nothing short of a miracle of game production. Working for Ubisoft, I know rather more about the development of this game than I'm allowed to tell. Suffice to say, an awful lot of people went to a huge effort to get it out of the door. It's a massive project, incredibly complex, and worthy of a great deal of praise.

There are many brilliant elements. The city environments are truly wonderful, giving a very convincing atmosphere and sense of place. The interaction of the main character with the environment is deep, beautifully animated and almost flawless - the consistency and detailed planning of the world really helps here. The graphics are amazing (most of the time). The camera is intelligent and works well considering the dense, complicated levels. The combat is great fun (until you become a bit too powerful for the game's own good). There are many fine and subtle touches, such as: the chase camera when fleeing from soldiers; great depth-of-field effects; the constantly moving light and shadow; the way main character Altaïr lands on his horse; and some lovely set piece moments during the big assassination missions.

These moments of greatness make the moments of weakness all the more frustrating.

I will refer you once again to this article on The Future of Sandbox Games. It dismantles those aspects of Assassin's Creed much better than I can.

This is a story game and to be honest, it's not a very good story. The cut-scenes are often dramatic but they're also annoying. They're unskippable, which is very irritating, but they try to incorporate some "interaction" to make up for it - you can press a button to change camera and sometimes pressing at the right moment will switch to a "secret" camera for a special view of the "action". Wow.

There is a laborious tutorial and opening section to the game which puts a lot of players off I think. It tells you what the buttons do without telling you how to actually play the game well.

The worst problem by far is that there are only 8 different mission types that will repeat over and over. Of these, 3 types are so trivial that they hardly seem worth the effort (one merely requires you to sit on a bench and listen to a conversation!). Another involves assassinations and is plagued by dodgy AI and the fact that if you fail once, the corpses from your previous attempt are still lying around to alert the victims when they reappear to be killed again. Another involves collecting flags in a certain time, which is quite nice but is also the only example that is willing to break the reality of the world and tries to be more "gamey" - it doesn't seem to fit.

Speaking of flags, there are lots to collect in this game and most of the time there is no guidance about where they might be. Hunting them can be soul destroying.

However, there can be no doubting this game's accomplishments. It is a true "next gen" game and sets the bar for Ubisoft productions that our team at Reflections now needs to surpass. No pressure...

A wonderful, flawed, beautiful but irritating game. A game of conflict, between protagonists and antagonists but also between player and game. If only it had learned some sandbox lessons from Crackdown it could have been truly brilliant. I can't wait for whatever this team produces next...