Play time…

The basic game play of Assassin’s Creed is a mix between action and stealth.  Throughout the course of the game, these two seem to switch back and forth, depending on how well Altaïr is able to keep knowledge of his intentions a secret.  Unlike most stealth games, the only penalty to the player for getting caught by a guard is either starting over one of the investigations, running from the pursuing guards or staying and fighting.

The movement in Assassin’s Creed is unique.  Although Altaïr is controlled with the left stick and the camera with the right, all of his motions are controlled through the face buttons.  The buttons are set up to deal with certain limbs.  The bottom button (A or X) takes care of the legs, the side buttons control either his weapon hand or his free hand while the top button puts the view into Eagle Vision, which lets the player look at the surroundings and see who in the crowd is hostile or an ally, among other things.  That’s the simple part.  Then there’s the high profile button, which makes Altaïr’s actions more noticeable such as sprinting and attacking people.

One of the more impressive parts of the game in terms of control is the free-running.  Altaïr has some crazy moves that allow him to not only kill people, but also flee from a situation that might not go his way.  One of the main selling points for Ubisoft Montreal was the fact that Altaïr could go anywhere in the cities by free-running.  By using the high profile and sprint buttons, Altaïr’s able to run up walls, jump from rooftop to rooftop and scale the tallest points of the city, which allows him to find hiding spots and investigations to further his hunt.  This is quite possibly one of the more impressive parts of the game as Altaïr literally grabs onto whatever he can to get where he wants to go.  It’s not just a random movement, either, as it really seems like every move Altaïr does is calculated and the right move.  All this is done while the player holds a few buttons, both giving him/her the ability to take in the scenery and watch Altaïr do his magic.

There are many times throughout the game where the computer has the opportunity to figure out you’re an assassin, leading you to dash through the city streets or stand and fight against the guards.  On the other side of the coin, Altaïr is an assassin, meaning that aside from being very good with a blade he’s also very good at sneaking around.

Throughout the game, Altaïr gets more weapons to use against his foes, which makes the fighting mechanic a little more dynamic as the game progresses.  For instance, if faced against one or two enemies (which doesn’t happen often), one might want to use his regular sword, which will help with his blocks and strengthen his attacks, but it will render him slower.  If faced with a large group of enemies that surround him, Altaïr can use a throwing knife as a hand-to-hand weapon, giving him much more speed and agility while losing the strength of the attack.  While there is much room for choice in that respect, the actual control the player has in combat is a little limited due to the contextual control system put in place for the game.

To fight effectively, the game tells the player to lock on to a target with the left trigger and hack away with his weapon hand, while reminding that the right trigger is the block button.  As the game continues, different commands get mapped to different buttons, bringing a little more depth to the combat.  Things like being able to counter your opponent’s attacks and breaking the grabs on Altaïr help to make the game a little balanced as the difficulty in missions and the heightened awareness of the guards start to get harder.

The big problem with the fighting, however, is the enemy AI.  When surrounded by a bunch of ruthless guards, hell bent on your death, it’s a little heartbreaking to see each of them standing around, waiting for their turn to take a shot at you.  This makes it almost too easy to pick the enemies off by countering every one of their moves.  If the AI was a little more aggressive in its attacks, maybe the game’s focus would have been less on the fighting and more on the running, as originally intended.

Along with those faults, the camera, both in-combat and out, is a little wonky at times, making certain parts of the game harder than it should be.  On top of this, certain cinematic parts like watching Altaïr perform one of his more daring counterattacks becomes unwatchable as the camera gets stuck behind one of the other guard’s legs.

All in all, the controls and contexts on which they are used are a little odd at first, but that’s only because Ubisoft went and did something different.  Once learned, the game is pretty easy to manage, allowing the player to then go out and gather information on the assassination targets.

There are four ways to gain information on any given target: interrogate someone, perform tasks for an informer, pickpocket letters and maps from unsuspecting people and eavesdrop on conversations.  If that doesn’t sound like a whole lot to do, that’d be a correct assumption.  The problem with a game that centers itself around just four things is that by the later stages of the game, things become to redundant that not only does the idea of doing these things become boring, it just makes the completion of these tasks become nothing but a nuisance.  By the time the third “collect these flags for me” missions from their informer have been completed, everything seems a little bland.  Also, haven’t “collect these completely out of place items scattered around the environment” missions overstayed their welcome?  Something tells me that’s not very next-generation.