Today's review is a 2007 classic from Ubisoft: Assassin's Creed
Assassin's Creed tells the story of Desmond Miles, a 20 something bartender who comes from a clan of mysterious assassins and his ancestor, the Persian Assassin Altair and his quest for redemption during the Third Crusade.
The meat of the game takes place in the Holy Land cities of Acre, under Crusader control, Jerusalem, under Saracen control, and Damascus, equally under Saracen control. Altair is tasked with killing nine agents of the Knights Templar, who it turns out are an order even older than history tells us and bent upon achieving peace through domination. The Assassin brotherhood who believe that everyone has a right to freedom and free thought oppose them.
The graphics are 2007 amazing. Very pretty, very moody, and very smooth. Level design is very cool. I don't know how accurate the maps are in this early game (I know that by Unity the maps were pretty damn accurate) but the cities are vast enough to give it a good open world feel even if you are on a bit of a track from one mission to another. What's very refreshing is that you have flexibility in how you complete your missions and how many of the 54 preparatory missions you complete first.
The entire concept of the game's character movement is Parkour, the French game/sport of running, jumping, climbing and rolling. I'll leave the joke alone this time regarding the French inventing a sport based on running away ..opps...guess I didn't.
AC took a lot of criticism in the day for some clunky controls which on my first play through last year I didn't find. This time I found the controls to be pretty clunky even in comparison to AC: 2 but especially in regards to the later titles.
Fighting is pretty dynamic, though honestly I don't think I ever intentionally used the short swords. Your primary weapons are your sword and hidden blade. The hidden blade is a spring loaded dagger hidden in a bracer used for covert assassinations in a crowd and close fighting. The best part of the blade is that when you get good at counterattacks, the hidden blade will one-shot most enemies, including some bosses. The game is fully voiced, with an in-game "mechanic" as to why everyone suddenly speaks English throughout the Holy Land. The only problem is that while EVERY NPC has the proper accent you would expect them to have, Altair, the Persian master assassin, has the most bland and monotone American accent I've ever heard. Ben Stein would tell this guy to learn inflection. Altair's angry voice and happy voice all sound exactly the same and they all sound like someone who isn't American doing an American accent. Oops.
The best part of Assassin's Creed to me is the history. Sure, it isn't history as we learned it, and it isn't history as it happened, but the plot is damn entertaining and the basis for the real history is there. The setting was real, many of the people were real, and the fun was quite real.
Summing Up:
Graphics: 5/5: Top Notch for 2007 so that age difference is taken in to account. Hell, they're pretty good for 2016.
Controls: 2.5/5: They're clunky. I don't know how many times I found Altair humping a wall despite me moving the control stick the other way. It's funny until it gets you killed.
Sound: 3/5: Background noise was pretty good and all the voices were great except for poor Altair.
Playability: 4/5: It was great to play again and I recommend it. There's one mission and two fights that I'd be more than happy to never do again but still high scored. The point loss is due to the beggars and harassers, NPCs in the game that do what their name says. A little too much and a little too often. Nothing is more frustrating than slowly over ten minutes setting up the best kill situation to have a harasser come up and shove you into a guard and go from observed to "Die Infidel!"
Story: 5/5: Absofantasticllyawesome. It's a strange thing to say you can learn and have fun and not sound like an 80s infomercial or bad cartoon, but you live history in this game. While it is a re-imagined history, the basis is there and can be enough to trigger someone to want to learn more about the time. I even encourage parents to let some of their older children play (turn off the gore if you like). If your kid comes away wanting to know more you'll thank me. Altair is a very cool protagonist and a damn cool Halloween costume (right Myles?)
On to Bioshock II