On a silver platter…

If there is one thing that Assassin’s Creed does exceedingly well, it’s the presentation of the cities and people that Altaïr encounters.  The textures and models of both the environment and the people that inhabit it are nothing short of amazing, even if the character models are repeated a lot within the cities.  The three cities of Damascus, Jerusalem and Acre all have beautiful looking architecture, even if they do play in generally the same way.  Throughout the game’s development, Raymond constantly reminded people of Ubisoft Montreal’s attention to detail, citing that they used primary source material including maps and blueprints of the ancient cities to recreate them as accurately as possible.  Famous landmarks such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the ports of Acre are in the game, driving home the authenticity.

Each city has a rich, middle and poor section of them, which brings in a slight change in game play for each section.  For example, there are most beggars and handicapped people in the poorer sections of town that can potentially become an obstacle for Altaïr, while the richer sections, will see a slight increase in guards.

While the sights of the game are great, the sounds are pretty good as well.  While walking through the busy streets, one can hear the many merchants calling out to potential customers or the random chattering of recent political affairs in that region.  The thing that really can be an annoyance in this area, however, is the people standing out in the streets shouting about either how the crusading King Richard I is the scourge of the land and how his army of “infidel soldiers” needed to be cursed. Even how Saladin, leader of the Muslim forces, is a brave man that would save Jerusalem from Christian rule or how the Muslim defenders were naturally evil in their hearts, with the latter showing up only in the Christian ruled Acre.  In each city, the speeches remained the same and it became a little grating to hear them over and over.

To the end…

There are some games that transcend the hype.  Some games are just made solid from the ground up and support the claims of their developers and publishers.  Assassin’s Creed had the chance at doing that.  Everything was just good enough to be enjoyable, but not for the full length of the game.  With a little bit more variety, the smaller problems would have been a bit more to handle.  This doesn’t mean that the game was horrible; it just wasn’t what was being billed to the average gamer.  Many will find this game to be adequate, which in all honesty, it is.  Yet in the wake of games like Mass Effect and Rock Band, it’s almost sad to see a game with so much potential come out the way that it did.

It’s just another victim to hype overkill.

+Amazing presentation
+Free running/climbing is impressive
+Dynamic combat system 

-Repetitive missions
-Repetitive diologue
-Screwy AI; camera
 

Gameplay      3.0 Story             4.0 Sound            5.0 Graphics        5.0 Value             3.0