Assassins Creed review

You move through the roof tops, searching for your target. You see him. Your alerted to a guard behind you. "your should not be here". You whirl around, and a blade concealed inside your gauntlet reveals itself, finding its way into the guards neck. He falls onto the street below, causing a panic. What do you do next? The choice is yours.

Assassins Creed is different. It set the path for the stealth game of the future. In that game, you hide in plain site. No more shadows. No more hiding. This type of gameplay is clearly on display in Assassins Creed, and looks good in Splinter Cell: Conviction. In AC(Assassins Creed), you can do allot. This simple thing is what sets apart this game from the rest. The period is th middle ages, in the middle of The Crusades. You play as Altair, a man who works for the Assassins. These people are not like the Assassins of today. They are not for hire, and strive for peace by killing anyone who prevents it. This may sound brutal, but it's really not. The game strives on shades of gray, mostly by making you wonder if you person you just killed is really that bad. This works, but the way of presenting feels forced. You and your victim have a tense conversation after you have stuck a blade into his neck.

So enough about the story. The gameplay is incredibly immersive , as there no true load screens and no non-interactive cut cutscenes. There might be one, but that's about it. In order to kill your target, you must first gather some information. This is done by intimidating the target through violence, pickpocketing, eavesdropping, and talking to informers. This works, but the method of gaining information is chosen. So you HAVE to eavesdrop on a conversation, instead of maybe pickpocketing. Luckily, the order is not chosen for you. This creates some real freedom, but that is an illusion, albeit a skillfull one.

So an average information mission might go like this: You scan the area for a high point. Upon finding one, you go ot it and climb it. You scan the horizon. The missions and view points are now on your radar ( a view point marks missions, but you can stumble across them through exploration). You drop down and once again take to the rooftops. You eliminate him, hoping no one else notices. Then you artfully bound from rooftop to rooftop. Closer to your objective, you get down from the rooftops to start preparing. You scan fro guards. Upon seeing one you grab him and stick the hidden blade into his throat, and slowly walk away. Now your ready. You listen intently to your target, and when he's done, you silently stalk him. You reach out your hand, and grab the contents. You slowly walk away, hoping he won't notice.

Now dos not really describe the stealth part. Simply put, you try and disappear in the crowd. You can gently push people out of the way, and you can even pretend to be a scholar. The guards are not trigger happy, so you can get away with a bit before they attack. You have three states: Anonymous, which is ideal and means guards don't suspect a thing, yellow means that they now something is up, red means that they are informed and will attack on the slightest disturbance. This system works well, but I found it a bit hard to shake a guard who was on yellow and red. It's realistic though.

When everything said and done, Assassins Creed is a great game, if a little repetitive. 9 out of 10.