Assassin's Creed

Looks absolutely beautiful. Plays like shit.

Okay, that's a little on the unfair side; the controls are fluid and fairly intuitive, unlike a few other early PlayStation 3 games that really do play like shit. But Assassin's Creed felt utterly pointless and soulless to me - sure, it's great that you can scale a building and have a look around at the city (if you're going to play this, make sure you play it in HD just for that), and you can run past and kill a few innocents for shits and giggles, but why? Why play as a character when I don't really know who he is and haven't been given a reason to care less either way? Why go after the enemies when they have the exact same problem? Why get emotionally involved in a storyline when it feels like a toddler trying to get to grasps with the conspiracy theories in Deus Ex? Why even move forward at all in the game, doing the same things over and over again like a drone, when it's actually more fun to run around doing nothing, and that's not particularly fun either?

I have been promised by quite a few people that the sequels are vast improvements (for what seems to be a pretty popular game, it's surprising that nobody has ever really argued with me when I've told them I think this game is very poor). In truth, I probably will play them at some point, because you can see glimmers within Assassin's Creed of a good game hiding in there somewhere, waiting to break out; it's really not hard to imagine a sequel being very good, because while the flaws here are numerous, they're also very obvious and, in theory, very easy to fix. As for this, though....well, all I'll say is that I ended up playing this at a time when I'd basically stopped playing console games for a few years (due to money as much as anything), and it made me think it probably wasn't worth ever getting back into it. A ridiculous opinion, of course, but Assassin's Creed briefly made me believe it.

I was a big fan of the sequels to this game, so naturally I checked this out to see where the magic came from as like many others, I didn't realise the franchise was a thing until the second game came out. Suffice to say, the games had a humble beginning due to how repetitive its first entry is.

The basic structure of the franchise is intact here, you travel around a vast landscape looking for clues to complete your assassination to a target. The problem here is that each target has the same approach as each other as you have to 1. pick pocket a correspondent to receive details about your target 2. eavesdrop in on a conversation to learn about your target 3. interrogate someone by beating the crap out of them to learn about your target. As you can tell, there's a whole lot of mechanics that set out to achieve the same goal, which it to assassinate a target to progress through the story. To break up the monotony, you start each sequence at the assassin’s temple and have to make your way across the middle east to the respective cities your targets are located in, there being plenty of side quests for you to achieve during each if your contracts such as finding treasure, killing templar guards and removing propaganda from said templars. There's also updating each map by finding a viewpoint that's become a staple of the franchise, although it's way more monotonous here thanks to rather uninspired recreations of these cities from the time period this game takes place in. I guess there's also the real-world interactions which later instalments thankfully minimised as the story in the real world is very uninteresting, it's basically your character being forced to relive the memories of his past life that eventually becomes the set up for the cat and mouse structure the sequels use later in the franchise. Something really annoying is that this game has Lucy as your only ally here despite later games making her friendship with you far more dubious, I won't reveal why due to spoilers but suffice to say, everything that happens with her here us retconned in later entries.

It had a good foundation for a great franchise, however it's only worth checking out once to see where the magic begun as its only when Ezio Auditore enters the mix that the franchise truly begins to shine.

Yeah, the first Assassin's Creed... is not good. Having a million exact same sidequests with exact same rewards and exact same towers to climb is not good game design. However, I'm still having fun with it, mostly due to the setting itself. Crusader times Palestine in this game looks gorgeous. The cities are large and sprawling with pedestrians in the streets, and the views from rooftops are great. That's what you're here for, right? Running through the roofs, stealthily killing guards, and doing a leap of faith into a pile of hay if you're seen. All of this is here, and is fun. However, it's not the main meal here - the majority of content is those completely mindless missions which are hard to ignore since you constantly see people screaming for help, and, I dunno, I'm not sure whether it is morally good to kill three guards accusing an old lady of theft? I wasn't there, how do I know she's not a thief? I imagined an Assassin to be some sort of a noble hero, carrying out assassinations of high-profile Crusader leaders, but oftentimes he's just a common muderer. There's also constant backtracking through the cities, and almost all of the towers (another iconic part of the series) are completely copy-paste. I come back to this game from time to time, but I don't expect to finish it any time soon. It's fairly long, and not engaging enough. Oh yeah, the story - Desmond's story is quite interesting, but I'm not invested at all in Altair's story. Sorry, not sorry, the complete lack of cinematics in this game does not help.

PS. Why does Desmond move so slow in those sections where he just has to reach his bed from the Animus? Why do I have to do this? What were they thinking?

+ Novel setting and innovative traversal system.
+ Great soundtrack.
- Tedious and repetitive storyline.

Assassin's Creed's simulated historical playground is a fascinating example of a concept that starts off so intriguing but becomes gradually less important and almost detrimental to the series it's attached to. The game's two plots are properly interlinked, which continues until 2013's Black Flag, where everything becomes a bit "oh go on, put the modern day in for the sake of it".

Altair is a blunt, stubborn killer who believes himself to be better than his subordinates. Thing is, he's right - in terms of sheer skill and who he will later go on to become, Altair is revered as one of the greatest assassins who ever lived. For the purposes of the plot, though, Altair's attitude costs the Assassins a mission and a brother. This sparks a series of missions where Altair is tasked with ending the lives of nine men across the Levant in 1191.

For a 2007 title, the first game holds up remarkably well visually - it has this timeless look to it, with textures at a decent resolution and models that don't look bad. Gameplay wise, AC is a slog. Altair may be slightly more maneouverable than his descendants, but my God is he slow. Altair climbs buildings at a speed far slower than Ezio will in the sequel, but I do think this all adds to the game's intent on being a proper assassin adventure game, where action is mostly discouraged. The gameplay loop of Arrive, Scout, Execute in each city gets dull, quickly - however, Altair only needs one bit of information to unlock the mission, saving some serious time. The Kingdom, a hub world where you travel on horse to the various locations, should have been replaced with a loading screen.

Altair's development is understated, and he receives far more important characterisation in the novel The Secret Crusade, which is well worth reading as a fan. In the modern day, Desmond Miles is strapped into the Animus to relive Altair's memories so that Abstergo Industries, a big pharma company working as a front for the Knights Templar, can find the location of the Apple of Eden, a device that can control minds and alter reality. This sounds quite silly written down, but it is honestly very compelling when you get into it.

Assassin's Creed works best when Altair and the player are in perfect sync, which involves learning the mechanics beyond what the game's awkward and irritating tutorial section tells you. I have completed this game in full once, long after release. I don't intend to go back any time soon.

Please, can you spare a few coins? Just a few coins, please! My family is sick and dying. No, you don't understand, I just need a few COINS!

"Patient gamer" isn't the right kind of word for someone like me, who's playing a game from 2007 for the first time 16 years later. At this point it's retro gaming. Coincidentally, I've also never played any other entry in the franchise, so I'm really starting at the top.

So, with fresh eyes, is it any good? Well, it's decent. I'm glad there's more in the franchise, because this shows a lot of promise. But it's also flawed in a lot of ways. The missions are incredibly repetitive. You pretty much do the same thing nine times in a row. Sometimes it's in a hospital, but other times it's on a boat! Meh.

The information gathering is okay but gets really annoying later on, when the city becomes more hostile towards you because you're a known quantity. And that's not just the guards, it's also the beggars, and the random dudes who shove you around when you come too close. Taking to the rooftops, like the game probably wants you to, solves this to an extent. Though you still have to maneuver around the rooftop guards and go down to the street to do the info gathering. By the end, I found myself dreading to do the view points, even though these little scenic cutscenes are probably a highlight of the game – just because I had to go down to street level afterwards and get shoved around by NPCs, risking to be discovered and having to hide.

Combat is stupid but fun. You can easily take on a dozen of enemies, especially later on. The game knows this, as the last mission is basically just a lot of fighting, presumably to break up the pace. Which is somewhat disappointing, considering it's a game about assassins. Admittedly, the forced fighting is a welcome change of pace but especially in the penultimate mission I would've at least appreciated a viable stealth route to the end fight.

Coming back to the original question, yes it is still good. Though by the end I was cursing out all the NPCs getting in your way in the cities, I found myself drawn in by the intriguing story, driving me to the finish line. And it was worth it. The setting is pretty damn cool – if anyone has recommendations for any historical fiction set during the crusades that somehow catches this vibe, please let me know – and the story is compelling, at least the part that plays in the 12th century. I kind of wanna go on playing this series now.