Assassins Creed                                                                      

It was well worth the wait. Assassins Creed was scheduled to release for as long as we could remember and we all began to grow frustrated with Ubisofts latest title. But as soon as Assassins Creed hit shelves on Wednesday and everyone ran out to get their copy, it met and exceded everyone’s expectations. At first the game may seem a bit difficult to grasp and the controls may seem out of sync, but once you get the feel for things, you won’t be able to put the game down. There is never a dull moment whether your scaling rough tops, pick pocketing, fighting soldiers, or of course, assassinating.

Your character is placed in the future, and a doctor is taking scans of your DNA which contains memory from your ancestors, and one of your ancestors happens to be an assassin during the Crusades. The doctor will force you to lay in a DNA memory scanning machine to recover your memory’s, and that’s where you come in.

You relive your memory’s by playing out the storyline as Altair, an arrogant assassin who doesn’t care how he does things, as long as he completes his mission. These actions will cause him to lose all his weapons, and making him relearn all of his skills, which is how you get the chance to grasp the true feeling of Assassins Creed.

At first, the fighting may seem very difficult and inconsistent, but after playing for a while and getting into a fair share of fights, the controls will begin to grow on you. The way you can block, counter, and attack fluently allows you to kill the enemy with ease. It’s also very easy to switch between locked on opponents so you will never get stabbed from behind as long as you are well aware of your surroundings.

Perhaps one of the funnest features is the ability to scale rooftops and climb up any ledge. This allows you to get anywhere you want quickly and easily. Guards will be on the roof but they do not do a whole lot as long as you are not sprinting. When you are in a chase though, rooftops can be very difficult because alot of guards can jump from rooftop to rooftop just like you.

Escaping from guards after assassinating someone may be the most difficult thing in this game. Guards can keep up with you for the most part and there is so many that it is nearly impossible to get away. Once the guards do lose sight of you, you have hardly any time to find a hiding spot. (Hay, a bench, in a loft on a roof) It is difficult to get to these places because most of the time they will see you try to hide. Sometimes it feels like the only way to escape is to have the guards lose sight of you and accidently run into a hiding place. Scouting the whole map out before hand serves almost no purpose to your escape because your escape will never go as planned.

The last negative part about Assassins Creed is sometimes animations can seem almost Old-Gen style. When you go to pick pocket someone is looks like you are poking their behind or their waist. Also sometimes when you are fighting someone you may force them into a wall so it looks like you are fighting a stone wall. For the most part the game runs smoothly but some animations are just awful.

Overall, Ubisoft’s Assassins Creed is one of this year’s best in the gaming industry. The sweet killing animations and roaming freely throughout the cities creates an excitement we have not seen before on any video game system. Assassins Creed is definitely Novembers Game of the Month and a nominee for 2007 Game of the year.