Tale of the "Less than subtle" Assassins Part 1 (Assassin's Creed)

2007 was a banner year for the games industry.  In case you weren't overly plugged in, too young to grasp all the releases or were in an extended coma during 2007 here's a quick run down of what came out.


Supreme Commander

God of War 2

Stalker: SoC

Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles

Fornza 2

Dirt

Bioshock

Halo 3

The Orange Box

The Witcher

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Mass Effect

Assasin's Creed

Rock Band

Crysis

And those are just the big name ones, tons of other fan favorites came out.  If you were plugged in during 2007, you'll no doubt remember an incredible game trailer that came out at E3 that same year, the one for Assasin's Creed.

In case you missed it, here's the youtube version so you know what the hell I'm on about.

At this point in my gaming career, game trailers were kind of a new thing.  We used to have these novel things called "Demos" where you got to play part of the game, you know,  the part that actually mattered.  Now Demos weren't completely gone by this point, I remember fondly playing the first 20 minutes of Bioshock about 40 times that same year.  But the game looked awesome, so what could happen?

Well since it was an Ubisoft game, the game didn't launch on PC, and it ended in a major fiasco for them, but more on that later.  But luckily for me, I was living in the dorms at my university at the time of it's release and my roommate had gotten one of the shiny new Xbox 360 Elites that came out that same year and a fancy LCD TV to plug it into so I got my shot.

This was my first HD console game and the graphics blew me away.  Everything was sharp, the models looked fantastic.  The level of detail was amazing, the cities actually felt alive with more than just clones of people.  The combat was smooth and the climbing was like nothing I'd ever seen.  But there were a few problems.

The first problem was it being a sandbox.  The major sandbox game up until that point was Grand Theft Auto III and it's ilk or if you were a die-hard pc gamer like I am, you had the Elder Scrolls.  The thing about sandboxes is freedom is the key.  In GTA and ES, you could do anything within the bounds of the game, go pretty much anywhere, kill anyone, complete missions with as much or as little subtly as you liked.  This was not the case in AC.

I remember vividly walking through my first city and some asshole pushes me into a wall.  Well I wasn't going to stand for that, I'm mother fucking Altiar, the most badass assassin that ever haunted the streets of the cities of the third crusade.  So like any unstoppable badass, I shanked his ass.  Screen goes all red bordered and I lose some sync points.  "The fuck!?" I remember shouting.  No killing civis?  Asshole had it coming, he pushed me.

This is not freedom, you're an assassin and they won't let you kill everyone.

The cities were blocked off into sections, which in it's self isn't that bad, GTA did that and it kept you playing.  But unlike AC, GTA didn't have you climb to incredibly high places all the time to look at all the the areas you weren't allowed to go.  I remember seeing the Dome of the Rock from one of the first few viewpoints in Jerusalem and thinking, "Holy shit, let's go check that out!"  No dice, memory wall.

After I finished AC the first time through, I hung it up and moved onto Bioshock and it kind of faded into memory.  That is until an opportune Steam sale put AC back on my game list.

I still looked on AC with some fondness, I thought the game was fun, both story lines were engaging and even though a lot of people didn't like the sci-fi twist in the final game, I actually did.  So with AC 3 looming on the horizon, I decided to play through all the PC ones leading up to the launch of AC 3.

AC plays much better on the PC, kind of.  It certainly is a lot prettier.  With filtering and higher texture quality due to not being limited by console hardware, the game still looked new after 5 years.

That's some draw distance for you

There was one huge problem, the controls.  AC is a full bred console game.  Lack of variable move input and having to hold down keys pretty much constantly, the keyboard falls short.  W only has two settings full on and full off.  So after about 15 minutes of play, I said "Fuck this noise" and plugged in my gamepad.

The game is almost exactly the same as I remembered, good and bad.  Climbing viewpoints still remains the best part of the game.

Don't look down

Combat still flows, even if it is even easier than I remember.

Using the sword is for filthy casuals, dagger all day

But the game is glitchy in more ways than I recall.  Lots of textures go through each other.  Bumping into people often appears as though you're removing their heart Indiana Jones style and guards have about as much reservation in staying their swords and not trying to slice you into Assassin cubes as someone not trying to smack a mosquito that landed on your face.  Since, apparently, knocking a pot of someone's head is of death penalty severity in the middle ages but getting into a fist fight in the market is totally cool   And textures load at weird rates, especially at long distances, I ran into invisible guards at least 4 times in one mission, but the distant skyline sure was pretty the whole time I was running from them.

Working on core strength apparently

And the game gets repetitive in a hurry.  100%ing the game is an exercise in masochism.  Collect 420 flags scattered around fucking everywhere?  Are you out of your fucking mind?  Who the hell thought that was a good idea?  I think I got 10 total the whole game.

It's still fun, I guess is my final conclusion.  If you look at it as the alpha build/tech demo for AC 2 then it holds up better, but the video got my hopes up higher than was fair and I'm still a bit bitter about it.  I thought it was going to be Hitman in the crusades and it turned into GTA with less freedom and RPGs.  Next time, "Tale of the less than subtle Assasins Part 2"