Ok i gotta say Assassins creed - When it was first announced i was a huge fan, i was looking forward to it the most.
It looked like a cross between Prince of Persia and Hitman two favorite game series of mine, it was made by Ubi Soft (they made the latest series of POP) who also happen to be my favorite developer it had what seemed to be a very interesting story and well, it was hyped to hell.
What could possibly go wrong? Quiet a bit really.
Now don’t get me wrong, i like this game. But I’m not ignorant, I’m not an idiot and it’s by no means a good game, not by the quality of games that are out right now.
I spent a good few days now trying to place my finger on just WHAT Assassins creed reminded me of and I figured it out today, this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EJq9oBkQftU
And while i know it’s a terrible game, i know it’s bad. I liked it. What saved spider man was the web slinging. Being able to just swing around an entire city, hearing the wind go by and just being free was relaxing, which is odd for a video game.
Honest to god you could swing about for ages and not get bored of it.
Now assassins creed isn’t identical. There is more variety but it is still, extremely repetitive. Within the first hour, if you play properly you’ll have done everything once and if you want to max the game you’ll have to do it all again at least another 100 times.
The difficulty is all over the bloody place, the flags you’re supposed to collect are bloody hard to spot and in, frankly stupid places. Good luck finding all those without a guide. The look out points, are areas you’re supposed to find, clime to and use to scout things out i get that, ok.
WHY are they shown on my mini map then? Call me stupid but what’s the bloody point in having them in the game if the mini map is going to tell me where they are right away, the fun of it is hunting for it. The same goes for all the other mini missions that are stuck on my map.
I suppose they thought climbing up to the point was the fun part. Err..NO. I can genuinely say this, I’ve loved climbing buildings and jumping about in crackdown, i liked it in spiderman. Those two games got it down perfectly. Assassins creed acts like it’s catering for a retard, who quiet frankly shouldn’t be trying to clime walls anyway. I’m not joking, the controls for climbing are layed out for a moron.
All you do, to clime and you do NOTHING else is pull the right trigger and point the stick in the direction you want to clime. Hold it like that till he reaches the top. Now, that’s not fun. The animation, the way he climbs it’s very realistic, very well done. But watching him do it for five minutes because all I’ve got to do is hold this bloody trigger and button down isn’t fun it just hurts your hand after a bit.
The climbing in creed sucks. I prefer to run through the streets, free running and only tackling walls when needed. Which i must say, free running feels a lot better, it’s pretty decent on rooftops but the lay out of the roof tops lacks, you’re constantly finding yourself against big gaps you just can’t make and it sucks the fun out of it i want to be able to use the rooftops to get to one side of the city to the other.
The story, from what I’ve seen so far is pretty complex and very interesting. Top quality which, is what i expect from Ubi, they’ve always had good stories.
Now i know all I’ve done is bitch and it seems like i hate this but I don’t. It’s saved, much like spiderman due to one thing - The combat:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hnj4RHFG038
Again, it’s been dumbed down. But it’s a good thing this time. I hate button smashers, i hate games that pack in so many bloody moves that involve me to hit X, A, Y 10 times over to pull off one trick. It pisses me off, it’s not possible and it’s useless because you’ll be dead before it happens.
Creed does it differently. Creed has one button for all your combat moves. You just press X. Sounds boring? Yeah, i thought so to when i heard it. Except the way they’ve done it is clever. It’s not about button order to make moves happen, it’s about timing.
Enemy trys to throw you? Moment he makes contact with your arm press X to counter it. Gotta get your timing right or you’ll be thrown.
Enemy swings sword at you? MOMENT it hits your sword, moment you hear the clang Press X and counter attack while he’s vulnerable.
On the attack but just can’t break his defense? Hit X to swing and the moment you make contact hit X again to string a combo together.
This might sound simple, because on paper it is. But it takes practice to get it right in Creed. The Camera is fantastic when fighting, it makes you feel like you’re watching a film, you can go through a hundred enemy’s and not take a single blow if you’re good enough.
The combat is perfect, it’s fun, it’s not frustrating and i actually go looking for fights over avoiding them because i just love taking out 10 odd guards without one of them touching me.
Rent it if you’re interested in it, if you want my opinion. Buy it once you’ve decided if you like it or not.