PS3 Review: Assassin's Creed

Again, this is a game I don't think anyone should buy, so let's keep this short and sweet. Or bitter.

This was a game that had fantastic ideas but piss-poor execution, just as with Lair, though Assassin's Creed is definitely a few notches above that aborted flight-simulator.

The idea is that you're an assassin working to eliminate nine targets spread across the Holy Land, and you get full access to three full-sized Crusade-era cities to romp through along the way. That's a fantastic idea. The first two hours of gameplay get good marks. But then the game really begins.

The game calls itself a platformer but there's no jump button. Call me old-fashioned, but does that make any sense? All you do to jump from building to building is push forward on the left stick and hold down the "action" button. Free-running like this is ocassionally cool, but whenever you actually need to get somewhere, the controls do a piss-poor job of figuring out which surfaces you want to jump to and when. When you're being chased, the problems only get more frustrating.

Even if you get good enough to predict the computer's mistakes and sort of pre-empt them, the game is really just plain boring. The biggest problem, by far, is one-button combat. One button! Oh, sure, they try to mix it up by giving you the option to use a wrist-blade or a throwing knife, but there's no reason to use anything that isn't the sword if you don't want to. The combat consists of hitting the circle button whenever an attack is coming your way. You counter once or twice and it will initiate an admittedly-cool-looking takedown animation, but once you've been in thirty fights, it gets old. And you've got hundreds of fights to go.

And beyond fighting, there really isn't much to do in such a big stomping ground. There's pick-pocketing, eavesdropping, mapping the city, and finally taking out your assassination targets, but most of those tasks come across feeling like chores.

The story tries to play itself up as high-concept, but really it's just about a mindless loser who goes along for no reason with the demands of his kidnappers by inserting himself into this "Animus" machine which projects the main assassin story (something about his "genetic memory"). Playing as the assassin, you kill your nine targets and--surprise!--your boss double-crosses you. The inevitable betrayal is foreshadowed so heavy-handedly that it borders on patronization. It doesn't help that all of the voice-acting (especially the assassin himself) is awful.
I said I'd keep this short, so let's sum up: the combat is boring, the controls are lazy and frustrating, and the story is nonsense. What's good about it? The aesthetics. Yep, decent graphics and a sense of scale. But you know what else had great aesthetics? Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009). Oh yeah, I went there.

In fact, yeah, I think I just gave out this game's award.


--Serge

PS: Myah! 4 out of 10.