Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles

I'm a fan of the Assassin's Creed series. I really am. For all the criticism the series may have for epitomizing 'the Ubisoft formula', I just can't quit the almost intoxicating loop of exploring historical cities and jumping off really tall buildings. I've meandered my way through the entire main series, but realized I have yet to touch any of the handheld games. Immediately, I've been met with the notion that pursuing these spin off titles may have been a mistake.

The very first handheld spinoff game is, as you can see from the page, Altair's Chronicles. The first major red flag is that this is a Nintendo DS game. Now I don't mean to drag the system entirely, as it does have a rich library of truly excellent games. The problem is, for every great DS game, there are four terrible ones, and that's being generous. The second red flag is that this game was predominately developed by Gameloft. You may know them as a mobile gaming developer. Yes, this game was relegated to the team that produced flip phone refuse.

As one might expect, this game does not feature any sprawling open worlds. There is no voice acting, the level structure is completely linear, and I'm hard pressed to find a single mechanic from the original game that's been even remotely faithfully represented here. Yes, Altair's Chronicles is a slightly 3D action platformer. Imagine Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, but barely functional and not fun. Gameplay is divided into two basic halves. Platforming, and fighting. Neither of these are fun.

The platforming exists in a 3D space with a D-pad, so that's a good start. Controlling Altair is floaty at best, and aggravating at worst. Too many times, you'll end up jumping towards a platform only to completely overshoot it, dying immediately. There's really no good way to handle it with a lack of any kind of analog control. Combat isn't much better, as it mostly consists of incredibly easy melee fights where you spam the same combo constantly, and incredibly frustrating encounters with crossbowmen who can stun lock you. Every encounter plays out the exact same. The only variable is that you might get to use your hidden blade on someone first, if the clunky controls let you.

Speaking of clunky, it wouldn't be a DS game without forced touchscreen gimmicks. All weapon selection is done on the touchscreen. That is to say, you're better off keeping your sword in hand whenever possible, because whether or registers or not seems to be completely up to chance. That's not all, though. Intermittently, the game will decide to throw you into an exceptionally useless mini game. These consist of pickpocketing, where you drag a key through a low framerate twilight zone of moving objects, and an interrogation minigame, which I can only describe as the slowest Elite Beat Agents clone you've ever seen. It's harrowing stuff.

Presentation wise, there's absolutely nothing going for it. Textures are muddy, music is repetitive and grating, and all the story is told through exceptionally poorly written dialogue boxes. My personal favorite recurring phrase is Altair uttering 'hush now. Can you hear the angels?' if you silently dispatch someone. Nevermind how out of character the line is. Nobody could use that line without it being an absolute disaster. Seriously, as a complete package, there is absolutely nothing appealing about this game. The fact that they put the video codec that they used for the games two whole cutscenes in the intro splash speaks volumes as to how much clawing for anything good they had to do.

So, yes, this game is a mess, and I hate it. It's a horrible way to start off the handheld entries, and I can't imagine anyone could find much fun here. It's a blithering waste of time, and never had to be created. It doesn't add to any overarching story in any meaningful way, and it certainly doesn't offer a gripping gameplay experience. One star. Because at least it technically functions as a video game, which is more than I can say for some games I've played.

This game is really just a little thingy to play on the go, or maybe to have a little bit of an Assassin's Creed experience if you didn't have a good PC or a modern console. The gameplay is as barebones as it gets and the only thing that was actually fun was the pickpocketing minigame.