Review from Star-Telegraph
For years, Assassin's Creed has been shrouded in secrecy, with Ubisoft giving the media only the briefest glimpses of the game, and teasing it with information.
Rule No. 1: Do not tease members of the media. (Trust me, we were all teased plenty as children.)
After a few lackluster showings, including a buggy demo during Microsoft's E3 press conference in July, the Assassin's Creed backlash officially began. Suddenly, the game went from being one of the most promising triple-A titles of the year to being voted "The Game We're Most Worried About" by the staff at Electronic Gaming Monthly.
The game's big secret -- and if you've been following it closely, then you've probably already figured it out -- is that you're not actually a cowl-wearing assassin in 1191 Jerusalem. You're a humble modern-day bartender.
You read that right -- a bartender.
But apparently one of your ancestors was indeed a cowl-wearing assassin in 1191. The sci-fi premise of the game is that the memories of our ancestors are actually stored in our DNA. And a pair of scientists, for reasons that eventually become clear to you, are holding you against your will, and forcing you to relive those ancestral memories.
The story isn't the only aspect of Assassin's Creed that feels complex.
During your memory sequences -- ostensibly flashbacks -- the control scheme also is complex. In fact, it's complex enough to merit not one but two nearly identical tutorials in the first hour of gameplay. No doubt you'll spend some time pressing the wrong buttons before you get the hang of them.
You play the game as Altair, the aforementioned cowl-wearing assassin. Think of him as a kind of Old World Batman. Your mission is to track down and assassinate various crime lords, politicians and all-around bad guys. You're not a welcome presence in the cities; if the street-roaming guards spot you, they'll take chase. So, like Batman, you'll spend much of the game lurking on rooftops, peering down at the action below, tracking your marks and finding the right moments to strike.
You pickpocket targets, eavesdrop on conversations or trail targets into back alleys, wait for them to be alone, then beat a confession out of them.
Sound complicated? Oh, it is. Indeed, there's a pretty substantial hump to get over in the first few hours of the game.
It's difficult to see the appeal of Assassin's Creed in the first hour or two of gameplay. It's not an easy game to like. It's heady. It's mature. It's complicated. The game's world -- three massive cities spread over hundreds of virtual miles -- feels too vast, too overwhelming.
To its credit, Assassin's Creed feels decidedly adult. In fact, it's one of the most adult games, in theme and content, the 30-or-so-year-old medium has ever seen. It made me realize how few games display this degree of maturity. We could certainly use more of them.
I admire Assassin's Creed for its scale and scope, for its terrific writing, for its supremely gorgeous look, and for its ambitions, for what it attempts to do.
I only wish that I enjoyed playing it more.
