Power Glove Love

Assassin’s Creed seems like an exercise in copying from as many games as possible. It’s like they said “Hey, let’s take the sympathetic mass murderer main character idea from God of War, the sandbox concept from GTA and, oh yeah, the completely obvious twist ending from Crackdown.” Though they don’t seem to have ever admitted it, AC is pretty obviously supposed to be a spiritual successor to Prince of Persia, the way Bioshock is to System Shock. The problem with this is that Prince of Persia really sucked towards the end of the series. Like Samuel Johnson is alleged to have said about another writer’s manuscript, Assassin’s Creed is both good and original. Problem is, the original parts are not good, and the good parts are not original. Luckily for us, most of the game isn’t very original.

Let’s talk about gameplay. Much has been made of the way the game integrates parkour-like movements. These look great; I can do bad-assed things all day long, just running around and jumping from roof to roof, throwing knives at guards. (More on that subject later.) I can do this all day long because it’s incredibly easy; you just have to hold down the right trigger and A button, and move the directional stick, and Altaïr does all the hard work for you. I’m not saying I want the complexity of a flight sim, but a little bit more choice in how Altaïr gets around would be nice. Maybe they could have grabbed the control scheme from EA’s skate — Lord knows they stole plenty of other things — and let me flick a control to make a hard right turn as I bounce off a pillar or something. You could make moving Altaïr around the city an entire game in itself if you wanted. It would probably be a better game for it, too, because as it stands, this is the single best part of the game.

Anyhow, the main reason you’re going to be getting around on the rooftops is that there’s nobody up there except the occasional idiotic guard. Down in the streets, there’s drunkards and beggars to get in your way. (Seriously, what numbskull thought it’s enjoyable to have a drunk guy push you down while you’re trying to get somewhere?) We were promised that the populace would help or hinder Altaïr, depending on his actions. What actually happens is that if you kill someone, the folks around you freak out, but forget about it fifteen minutes later. In short, being on the ground is boring.

There are, however, a wide variety of enemies. For example, you have city guards who attack you with swords, city guards who attack you with bows, and for good measure, Knights Templar who attack you with swords. You also have nine assassination targets, who do a pretty good job of exhibiting different strategies, such as “wait obliviously for you to slit his throat”, “run away”, and “try to kill you”. The guards aren’t very good at being guards, either; you can fool them simply by jumping over their heads, or walking around with your palms together like you’re a scholar. (For some reason, this tactic works even in places where you’d never find scholars in this game, such as jumping from rooftop to rooftop.) Their reactions to finding the dead body of another guard are always the same as well; they stand over it and shout “Who did this?” before drawing their swords and walking around, just begging for you to put them out of their misery. Despite the shockingly short life expectancy of a city guard, they never seem to run out of respawns — ahem — new recruits. As mentioned before, it’s like the world resets itself every 15 minutes. Lame.

Well, what about the plot, then? By now, just about everyone has heard about the way the plotline takes place both in the past and the future. The bulk of the game consists of the memories of the Prince — oh wait, I’m sorry, the genetic memories of an assassin named Altaïr, experienced through his 21st century descendant, a bartender named Desmond. This would be awesome if we were ever given a reason to care about Desmond, who despite being an assassin himself just sits around and whines a lot. The scenario developed in the future portions of the game is intriguing, but nothing comes of it; Desmond and his captors talk, and talk some more, and that’s about all that happens there until the freak-out moment just before the end credits. It’s another half-assed measure in a series of half-assed measures. You get your stock enemy (Templars who are actually atheists and control the world, wtf?), your stock cute girl who’s really not working for the enemy, and your stock “To Be Continued” ending. I can come up with a better scenario any day of the week. The past portions of the plot are equally predictable.

Assassin’s Creed looks and sounds great, and the sandbox portions are very enjoyable, but there really isn’t any substance to the game. When it comes down to it, “Jade’s Game” should have been delayed until they had an actual game to release.