Tuesday, February 26, 2008

I'm an Assassin, with no Creed

Assassin's Creed. This Ubisoft title has caused a spur ever since it was announced to the world, back in 2006. Does it live up to the hype? Well...

First of all, this game is good, not great. If you measure a game solely by its visual performance, then you'd place this in one of your all-time top ten favorite list. This is a game which apparently set up with a sequel in mind. I've been disappointed before by many North American games, which takes you into a something like open-end ending kinda thing (or you got better and proper word?). Try Halo 2, or Gears of War (those are great games which I enjoy very much, but whine on its ending).

Gameplay wise, it's interesting but not captivating. Basically you were dispatched by your boss to kill nine bad-guys. In your journey to wring the neck of those poor souls, you have to meet some requirements, like pickpocketing, eavesdropping, catching flags (catching flags??), killing some soldiers discreetly, beating up some guys in the middle of the street, and... um, basically that's it! Yeah, for every single stage, out of 9, you were basically required to do the same process all over again. That's the only flaw of this game, and the BIGGEST one. This lacks creativity, cuz it's just too bad that Ubisoft created this game so grand in visual, but the gameplay is so lame. The sword-fighting part is not that OK either. You start to really enjoy your action scenes only on the later part of the game. During the beginning to the middle of the game, when you cross-swords against your enemies, usually you can go and win a fight barely unscathed (except the Templar Knights, they're slightly more challenging). But the story can be different when you're up against many Templar Knights at the same time, en route to the final boss stage. That's when everything gets to be interesting. By then you can starting to feel how this prick gets really tough.

Playing Assassin's Creed is like a roller coaster ride. At first you're going to be awed with its stunning graphics, cuz you start from the apex of a roller coaster and slide down in full speed then at the bottom you're twisting and turning with screaming along the way. But, after the screaming part wanes, you're entering a flat course, rolling to another apex or twist n turn, but this time the flat course is just too long it makes you drowsy and just can't wait to hit another screaming part. That's what happened to me. In second half of my journey, I always skipped the non-required part and head straight to kill the main bad-guys, just to keep me from yawning of these unnecessary repetitions.

All in all, this game is certainly having a sequel. Let's just hope that the Ubisoft guys listens to the the screams of the fan cuz their roller coaster has not enough apex and twist and turns (cuz I know game developers won't listen to me cuz I live in Indonesia and they don't have much luck in Indonesian software market =p)

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