Assassin's Creed Review - Xbox 360

8.5

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 9
Audio: 9
Innovation: 9

For a game with almost as much hype as Halo 3, Assassin’s Creed had a lot to live up to. There are many mixed opinions around the internet with people basically reviewing the game based on whether they liked it or not, as opposed to whether the game is actually good. They may say “This game is not great” and “This game is bad”, but in the end it comes down to one person’s opinion for their review. If they don’t like adventure games, chances are they aren’t going to find Assassin’s Creed fun and therefore give it an average score purely because of its AAA status. Assassin’s Creed is what you make of it, and in this review we’ll look at the key features that make it great, and some of the simple reasons why others are finding it puzzling.

Gameplay

At the start of your Assassin’s Creed story, you’ll find the first hour or so will teach you the basics of combat. You’ll learn about low profile and high profile, and how to use them to your advantage in various situations, particularly assassinations. As you rise through the ranks of your assassin’s guild, you’re granted new moves, new weapons and items, and are given higher profile targets to kill. This is the basic flow of the game, without spoiling any of the plot, and it is as much as you will hear about the story in this review.

Originally, everybody thought that Assassin’s Creed had a three-stage combat system. If you play the game this way, then it still does, but pulling off clean assassinations of key targets is a lot harder than we were led on. Combat in Assassin’s Creed usually consists of the approach, the fight, and then either the escape or the wonder off. The combat is so amazingly easy and simple once you get used to it (what game isn’t?), that you can stay and fight it out against a couple of dozen guards until there are none left in the area, and then simply walk away from your massacre. If you don’t want to fight, you can always run away and look for a place to cool off, just like GTA, Need for Speed, and all those other games where you get chased by authorities.

Personally, I found it was often easier to just kill all the guards around me instead of trying to find an escape route, but neither option is ever the smarter choice, as you can’t really have any idea of how many guards are going to fight, how easy they are going to be to fight, or how easy it would be to escape if you chose to run. For this reason alone, the combat system in Assassin’s Creed separates from all other adventure games on the market. Never before were you able to decide whether to run or stay with serious consequences no matter what your decision is.

Running and climbing around the Assassin’s Creed world is an experience like no other. You’ve ...