I had this on day 1 ad loved it and then bought it again awhile ago and fell back in love with it, its the game that started it all and had the best stealth mechanics i had ever seen.  I suppose that it had its faults, the load time might be a bit long in places and when you are not in the Animus its dull as hell but it had a great story and one of the best game conspiracies I have ever seen.  I think that this has to go down as a console generation defineing game

Hi all

I got half way through on the 360 and as ever never completed it.  I needed an excuse to stop grinding Eternal Sonata, so I will go back and visit it again, try and get some more achievements.  Main snag was the collect stuff, especially that pillar with the flag where I died for about 2 hours before realising I needed to gain the ability to hang off ledges. Oh and a glitched achievement that meant if you skipped a cut scene, you missed it. I really like the animations when fighting though, it was pretty awesome and had a good storyline.

One question which versions better 360 or PC?  I might do it on 360 for the achievements – I want to try and break 20k before i die.

Cheers all

Otto

Well I think I've sussed it, I've now done seven assassinations, but I don't feel like an assassin, I feel like a butcher. If you play a hit man game, you know the planning, the stalking , the patience. With assassins creed you get none of that, and the fact that Altair is now at level 8 means he I nigh on unstoppable, you can kill 30 guards without breaking a sweat, the 'blade in the crowd' line is ridiculous as you invariably leave a trail of destruction and assassination behind you.

Some of the informant jobs are time silent kills, and these add tension, but when you know your way around the game you can stab somebody in the middle of a street next to another guard, and get away with it. You become almost godlike in your abilities, and the problem is that being god gets boring. There is no tension when the alarm is raised because you can wipe out the whole town guard If it wants a shot at the title, and when you get bored with that – jump in a haystack. Reset the alarm everybody is happy.

I have now got further than ever before, and whilst I still think it's a reasonable game, I can understand why I normally have stopped a this section. The graphics are occasionally clipping and the camera controls can be a bit annoying at times.

I tried it on the PC where the graphics are better, but playing it with keyboard and mouse is for masochists.

So I'll keep posting and let you know if I fall in love with it again.

So that's it assassins creed completed, about 4 years behind everyone else but perseverance pays.

If you felt a disturbance in the force at about 1400 that was when I realised I had collected 99 flags in Jerusalem but didn't know where the last one was, 2 more achievements until I 1 k it, so being the sick OCD bastard that I am I a, now going around Jerusalem again.

Top tip either use an iPad or a laptop for the flag maps.

Next post will be my final review and yesterday's podcast is luring towards pulling mirrors edge of the POS.

Otto

The Review.

Firstly a couple of caveats. I am a mediocre gamer to say the least, and am not a wizard at computer games. Secondly, I have not played any of the successor games, so some of the faults identified may have been rectified in later games.

Assassins Creed is a third person open world game published by Ubisoft. In the game you are Desmond an ancestor of an assassin called Altair, who is the main character through whose actions you play the game. Using a machine called the animus, Desmond 's DNA is interrogated for the memories of his ancestor. This ancestor lived in the 12th century and therefore the game is set during the crusades in this period. Folliowing a failed mission, Altair is stripped of his rank and abilities and given the job of assassinating nine people. The game has a very large open playing space, with a central area of the kingdom, linking together the three cities of Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus.

Ubisoft must be commended on the size of these play areas, the cities seem to be historically accurate and the feeling of jumping from roof to roof or climbing a high point is exhilarating. The high points actually give you the feeling of scale as you climb to the top of the tallest building. The missions start with Altair being given his mission and being despatched to a city. On arrival Altair has to climb to the top of a tall building and synchronise his map. this will show him the location of areas in the locality, to which I will return. After meeting at the Assassins bureau Altair is normally given 6 missions which are the prep work prior to conducting the hit, normally only 3 missions need be completed. These side missions are split into pickpocket, eavesdropping, informer and interrogation. The eavesdropping missions are a waste of time as all you have to do is sit by a bench and listen, there is no stealth and one wonders why this type of mission is included. The tutorial states that interrogations should be conducted away from the public, but punching the target in the middle of the street starts the missions and no one interferes invariably you win and you get the info, normally finishing by killing the target. The fact you've just beaten a bloke up in the middle of the street and stabbed him in plain view of the guards doesn't alter the AI and you just walk away. The pickpocket missions are frustrating, as you either get bumped by a nutter or waylaid by beggars but you will always pick the targets pocket. The informant missions involve either collecting flags or conducting stealth assassinations within a time limit. These are quite nerve wracking as if you've killed 3 targets with 2 minutes left you can't risk drawing attention to yourself or you have to restart the mission. The streets are populated by thugs, beggars, mad men and guards. As s sidequesr, you can save citizens being bullied, this helps later as the citizens will hinder guards following you. The saving citizens becomes very repetitive, you can normally kill 2 guards before the other one raises the alarm, so all of these degenerate into fights, which you always win. This is the main problem with the game, and a hit man style notoriority counter would improve the game by preventing the wholesale massacre of groups of guards where there is no consequence. The invincibility of Altair and the ability to redo any mission take away any feeling that their is a consequence to your actions, and this takes the fun out of the game. You never feel, if I mess this up it's game over, you think if I mess this up I'll restart, OK you can do this with any game but the linear nature of the game could have been improved. You mess up mission x and therefore mission y isn't available. You work for the crusaders, or you work for Saladin give the player the choice.

The story is good, though cliched at time, and there are twists. The ending is left open for the sequel. The achievements are fair, and the collectables give the game some continuity, but don't even consider playing it without maps. Trust me I've been there. The PC version looks much better ( I'm running it on a 9600 graphics card) but it needs a wireless controller, and it also has no achievements. The achievements keep you hunting in the 360 version, however with no achievements in the PC version there is little incentive to go back to it. There is 1 mod for the PC that improves the already good graphics.

So overall, not a bad game. Very repetitive with a flawed combat system, however beautiful to look at with an engaging story line.
2 more achievements and a game leaves my pile of shame, cheers guys.

Sorry if it's too long.
otto

Before we begin our Gaming, I would like to say a few words. And here they are:

Ok so before we begin we need a little pre-gotm to give you a little back story to where I was at last month.

The long story short last month’s game of the month was a huge miss for me because I was in the middle of the biggest gaming funk of my life.  I could always find something I wanted to play more.  Well I say play, I mean hate on more. Jeez, I could nitpick on games so much that I hated everything

How to train your dragon – repetitive

Fecking Tiny Tower – Dear God save me now – finished, ok this raises an interesting question, I have just spent  10 minutes trying to think of the word to signify that you have completed a game centre game, platinumed…..taken, cheevo’d……taken, I’m going to suggest pipped, as in the seed of an….aaaahhh see what I did there – #ItsStillAllDarensFault

Fifa 11 – Controls are just wrong, different, no likey

Fight Night Champion – 1^st amateur fight just annoyed me to hell as I couldn’t last the 4 rounds and I wanted to just knock the guy out

Farmville – It’s never so bad that you resort to this

F1 2010 – Round and round we go and round and round we go and round and round we go, change tyres, round and round we go, round and round we go

And then the good lady came forth with words of help and wisdom – “Why are you playing all the games that begin with F, is your gaming sponsored by Sesame Street at the moment”

You also need to know that if I am playing games at night I tend to play without volume so I can hear the little one and I have no headphones (Oh Yes, I am an online gamers’ dream partner ain’t I). 

So then I made a decision, I would lock all my games away apart from Fifa 11, Fight Night Champion, and only play that and whatever the rental company sends me, I mean we have some immense games to look forward to and I have put everything on Low priority apart from these new releases so I should have tremendous gaming to look forward to right? Wrong.  Please see http://bit.ly/pgconP for details.

This was 2 days before the GOTM was announced and NOW I have to finish Ice Age 3 before I can get my hands on the game of the month.  This could be a bad one this time

Week 1 – Subtitles? We ain't got no subtitles. We don't need no subtitles! I don't have to show you any stinkin' subtitles!"

Well completing Ice age 3 wasn't as painful as I imagined and most importantly I finished it so I could unlock ma booty chest and get Assassins Creed out

So the set up is as it always is.  The good lady is watching some inane American TV show with a catchy theme on her laptop and I have no sound on my ps3.  So first things first let's turn on the subtitles.

First lesson you learn with Assassin's Creed is that after 5 minutes of perusing various menus it becomes obvious that subtitles were not an option.

So I began soundless and began my tutorial with all instructions clearly on my screen, this isn't bad I thought – I don't need subtitles.  This thought although waning at times continued until my character was nerfed and I lost all abilities.  Damn it, I must have done something wrong or missed something, I’ll restart again tomorrow.

In-between the last paragraph and this, the good lady went out and bought me a Bluetooth headset so I could listen to my game I was playing.  So I paired it up with the PS3 and got it all working and was ready to play the game again and then I discovered that a Bluetooth headset will only let you partake in in-game chat via the headset and the game sound has to come out the TV.

So I play again without sound, blah de blah blah get nerfed, think I have done something wrong rage quit etc etc

This is where we can enter quote of the month entry 2.  "Honey, if I plugged in my laptop headset into my laptop to listen to my programme could you not just turn the TV up", yes, yes I would but when did you get a headset? "Oh I bought one at the same as your Bluetooth headset"

So now I have sound I realise I missed nothing and did nothing wrong I got nerfed purely because the story dictates that you have to be.  I have replayed the tutorial and first section of this game three times for no reason but it also doesn't explain that weird arse distortion when I'm not in the anumis.

And thus begins the theme for week 2

Week 2 – Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs. Lancaster?

Ok this game does look nice, in fact the good lady asked when I booted up the game this week and was just letting the title video play she actually asked "what are you watching, I thought you were going to play a game" and my god I think I have lost about 3 hours in the last 2 weeks climbing up towers and watching the "Michael Bay" style pan but that was before I knew that I actually had to do that to progress the game.

So I have been given my first assassination mission and I have been a good little assassin and completed all of the set tasks to get all of the quality information required to send the target into an everlasting sleep.  I watch my target from afar, gradually getting closer and then I'm in and I get the kill, time to make my escape.  Now this is where it went a little pear shaped for me.  It's as if by completing the kill both my PS3 and I went for a few drinks because both the controls and the AI just seemed to go to pot.

Buttons stopped being as responsive as they were before the kill resulting in me running around the block of houses 5 times whilst trying to perform a number of jumps, grabs and swings to make my escape. It is at this point where the funniest moment of playing this game happened.  My game turned into the Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd show.  Before you start thinking, seriously Si you HAVE been drinking let me explain.

In order to make my escape I knew I had to break the line of vision between me and the guards, so I spot a nice escape point.  In this case a high wall with beams leading to a building that I can scale, so I run at and jump onto the wall.  In a moment of too much button pushing I jump off of said wall before I have a chance to position myself to grab the beam so, for the benefit of those who are not keeping up the scenario is as follows

                                                                       ME

————————-       ————————————

                                                                     G    G

                                                                    G  G  G

So forgetting the line of sight thing I decide to run through the gap in the wall so I can repeat and jump onto the wall to grab the beam whilst one of the guards is climbing the wall

This led to this scenario

                                                             G           G

————————-       ————————————

                                                                      G

                                                    Me          G  G

The guards on the same side of the wall as me carried on climbing the wall and following my line of travel even though I was just stood next to them therefore hence the Elmer Fudd moment

Me – "heeeeeeeeey what's up doc"

Guard – "We chasing that wascally assassin"

Me – "Where did he go?"

Guard – "He leaped over this wall but we got him caught now"

Me – "Is there any way he could get out? A hole in the wall perhaps?"

Guard – "Heeeey what are you twying to say, oopps sowwy gotta go it's my twurn to jump over the wall"

Ok time to head back to the batcave, I mean the assassin's guild hole in the roof.

Right before I go any further, there are how many towers in this game that activate the Michael Bay mode? Are you trying to tell me that not a single guard or their bosses had the idea to go up the INSIDE of one of them and have a look down?  If they did why did they not see either this opening in the roof of a building or for that matter the symbol of the Assassin people emblazoned on the roof next to it?

Anyway, onto my 2nd mission, what new tricks do I need to do for this mission? Oh the same tricks? Again? Aahhhh different people to target. Ok do I need to do all ten of them again? No cool, I shall meet you halfway and do 5 then.

Right before anyone has a go at me and says look you're not playing the full game if you are only doing 5 tasks in order to progress I say this.

If you mug a sweet old granny on the street but only take half her money you are still mugging that sweet old granny therefore I am still playing and completing the game.

And that's all I have played so far in week 2 mainly because of a teething daughter and it has opened up 2 questions that I must answer sometime in week 3.

1 – If the game is seriously this repetitive, how did it get a sequel when less repetitive games have not been able to get one yet (Mirror's Edge I'm looking at you)?

2 – What is with that damn distortion when I am not in the Anumis?

Week 3 – Now I get it. Now I understand. You want it to happen… but it's not going to happen

Firstly let’s get my act of stupidity out the way, the distortion out of the anumis is meant to relay the fact that you are watching through a cctv. Kind of makes sense now that I have realised it.

And how did this game get a sequel?  Because it was planned that way.  As the credits roll I feel like I have been cheated in a way and all I have done is completed the tutorial for Assassin’s Creed 2 but ***SPOILER ALERT*** (you never know there MIGHT be someone else who has never played this) the incorporation of certain “blood” aspects after the credits have rolled did and will appeal to conspiracy theorists like myself.

I seem to remember Assassin’s Creed being a much coveted Triple A title.  After completing it I feel that parts of it are but there is too much that hasn’t stood the test of time to rate this as an average game.

As I said the graphics are unbelievable even now 4 years later and the accuracy of the animations for the Parkour element is pretty cool.  I loved the story too, more so after the blood reveal at the end and putting pieces together in my own head.

But, and this is a big but, and I cannot lie, this game is repetitive. If you imagine doing the training mission for Assassin’s Creed 2, resetting your machine and doing it again and again until you have done this 9 times, you will pretty much have the Assassin’s Creed experience.

It feels like Ubisoft spent so much time making it look pretty and fluid that they ran out of time to develop the missions and just threw something together and set phasers to repeat in order to stretch out the campaign gaming time. The fact that I picked this up for 7 quid helps ease this a little but if I had bought this day 1, man I would have been annoyed.

You haven’t slept for a long time now. Have you made a decision?

Overall, the graphics, storyline along with the MLG communities reaction to this game being suggested as GOTM will push me on to play at least Assassin’s Creed 2 if not Brotherhood and Revelations. But the repetitiveness brings the overall score down to a 5.5/10

PS. As there was no big boy to find this month, bonus points for anyone that can name the 4 movies and 1 song that was quoted in my review this month.