Internet Apocalypse

With a backdrop so gorgeous in its design, a fluid game play style and a sexy new monk\assassin look for your main character, it is easy to see why Assassins Creed generated so much attention and hype prior to its release. For months, myself, colleagues, friends and the MOG Army awaited its release with anticipation and delight at the thought that one of the classic gaming genres, the assassination game, was about to get the 21^st century makeover it so rightly deserved.

The genre already had many gaming gems, including the “Tenchu” stealth assassin games and the fabulously brutal and complex “Hitman” series that had both set the standards high in graphics and game play. It seemed obvious from the day the titbits and teasers for this title were released onto the internet that the game intended to not only compete with, but totally reset the benchmark for the third person “stalk-and-kill” game play style.

I got the game on for the 360, my console of choice for the time being. (I may have to write a blog about the trials of choosing between the three big consoles some day.) Got myself comfortable, made sure there was a readily available source of snack food and alcohol nearby and began to play.

As soon as the game play starts, you realise the potential of the game, the movement of the character, the free running style he uses to move between buildings. The story allows you to quickly sample all the weapons and puts you in a friendly start area to allow you to learn the basics of movement, combat, sneaking and escaping detection.

Just as I'd hoped, the game is easy to pick up and learn with an intuitive control system and fluid character movement. The ability to clamber up onto almost anything in the environment and stylishly jump, flip, wall run or swan dive off it again still hasn’t gotten boring to this day. The character itself will seamlessly interact with the buildings and I saw no clipping or strange collision bugs. The NPC soldiers have an annoying habit of being able to climb buildings almost as well as the assassin can, although they are not nearly as graceful when doing it. I felt a sense of smugness when, after brutally killing a guard, citizen or beggar I managed to perform carious acrobatic escape manoeuvres, ending in a leap of faith into a bale of straw and off the guards radar.

Sadly the beautiful backdrops and fluid movement of the character don’t make up for the games lack of real game play and, once you’ve assassinated a few people, you’ll begin to realise that, not only are you completing very easy sub missions but they are all in fact exactly the same. Even the script for the NPC’s is identical in each city which completely bemused me. They have DIFFERENT voice actors, but the NPC’s all say the same thing!?! Not good.

The combat system is fantastic, especially the counter moves which offer you the ability to dispatch your enemy in a number of stylishly brutal ways, think Dead Or Alive 3, which offers a similar system for countering attacks.

To summarise, this game is great to play and good looking but it has no substance. I think Assassins Creed 2 will be the real winner, as I’m guessing they can spend less time on the combat & movement and maybe focus more on creating a game with more missions, more weapons or maybe an RPG element that allows the player to choose the skills and weapons their character can specialise in. The game gets repetative quickly, so i'd rent this, rather than purchase. Still, whatever keeps you occupied after the apocalypse eh?