‘Assassin’s Creed’ fun to watch and play
Reviewer’s Rating: 3 out of 4 stars
Console: PC
Rating: M for Mature
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Jumping from rooftop to rooftop in the 12th century doesn’t really sound too exciting, but Ubisoft has managed to bring a good bit of fun, flare, and brutality to the PC with “Assassin’s Creed: Director’s Cut Edition.”
The player becomes an assassin named Altair who is tasked with taking down nefarious and corrupt leaders in various cities around Masyaf, Damascus and Jerusalem.
As a member of a brotherhood of assassins, you are given instructions and a handful of skills and weapons to use to complete your tasks. As you progress through the missions, you gain new abilities and weapons. These not only help you reach your full potential, but they also make you one tough, and dare I say, elegant, assassin.
Each of the main cities has an assassin’s bureau that you must visit and gain permission to remove your target from that city. However, in order to gain permission, you need to first collect intelligence information on your target. This is done by completing mini-tasks around the city. These include pick-pocketing important documents, beating up informants until they spill their secrets, and listening in an important conversation.
After gathering at least three items of intelligence, you can then return to the assassin’s bureau to be given a feather, which you dip in the assassination target’s blood to show proof of death.
This game sports a well-detailed engine, and large play areas. The animation is excellent and gives the game an almost cinematic feel to it. Also, with the high rooftops, there are plenty of great vistas and viewpoints to see.
The voice acting works well and the dialogue never sounds forced. While the voice of Altair is somewhat monotone, you come to understand that you’re just not a happy outgoing person. I guess that professional killer occupation can do that to a person.
Most of the fun in this game comes from combat. Even though climbing around on virtually any ledge is fun for a while, the hand-to-hand portion of this game really kept me wanting more. With reactionary maneuvers and knockdowns, the fights are just plain fun to watch. Taking on three or more guards isn’t too much of a problem if you keep your eye on them, moving and reacting to each as you try and take them down.
If you do get low on health or tire in a fight, you can run away. There are several hiding spots scattered around the landscape in town and in the countryside. The most common of these are bails of hay, but in the cities, there are also small covered huts found on the rooftops. If you hop into one of these, you can wait for the guard alarm to turn off.
There are several other features that I could get into, but doing so would spoil a good portion of the plot points in the game. Also, the “Director’s Cut” version for the PC adds four new side-tasks to help break up the repetitive main plot missions. Generally, these missions are pretty much the same tasks in each city.
I found “Assassin’s Creed: Director’s Cut Edition” enjoyable to play and fun to watch. With a large plotline to follow and many side-tasks to complete, this game will have my attention for a while to come.
