Assassin's Creed

less repetitive would've been nice

They offered a huge amount of new features that just felt fresh for this game. The problem was that it was the same new features offered through the whole game and it never evolved into anything more. The storyline was alright, but it wasn't enough to keep me entertained as much as I should of been.

I have to admit though, once I learned how to counter and actually beat some ass on the game is was entertaining enough to play it all the way through.

I thought it was a great game, but it would have been nice when you went to a new town or village that there were new task thrown at you instead of the same ones you did at the previous towns.

Not requiring that the X button (PS3) be held down for sprinting or auto-jumping. I kept wanting to manipulate the camera (right analog stick) to look somewhere before I turned that way, especially when running away from guards.

I also enjoyed the game immensely. The fighting was very good, especially being able to keep up a sword fight with 10 people a once without getting hit. And the climbing looked absolutely real (anyone who cries nonsense, watch some Parkour movies or Dan Osman, there are people capable of actually doing that!)

There's only one thing that really jumps in your face:

The missions are insanely blunt. It's if they had taken 95% of their time to build the game's non story-related parts (game world, mechanics, interaction) and then tried to quickly add some story and missions for the game. All of them just use the game world for mundane tasks (Move from A to B quickly. Kill Person X unseen. Move from A to B and collect flags. Clobber Person X).

Personally, I DO hope that the developers indeed made a conscious strategic decision about investing a disproportionate amount of time into building a game system for their future games. That would mean we can expect absolute greatness from what is to follow. Being a fan of the Prince of Persia series, I can't wait to see what the engine will deliver for PoP 4 (or will it be called RDoP - "Random Dude of Persia" - now that the prince is gone?)

Speaking of PoP, there's a teaser video out there someplace for the new one, I saw it on Xbox live. I have some misgivings.

Regarding Assassin's Creed, it stands in my mind alongside the original Halo as one of the most heavily hyped games that ever almost lived up to the ridiculous hype. I'm saying the game is awesome. I've never been a huge fan of mindless eye candy, but AC uses its pretty graphics to good effect to give a great sensation of scale, speed and freedom. The much-reviled fighting engine really perks up as you get farther into the game and unlock the moves and tools that allow you to really enjoy the combat. The story's not great, but the concepts are adult enough that it doesn't feel like an after-school special, and the voice acting is good enough that it doesn't hurt to listen to. The stealth elements are good, the "hiding in plain sight" concept was entirely novel in my experience, and done very well. Screwing up and getting into a fight doesn't completely bone you, like it would in MGS3 or the original Splinter Cell, and you can kill your pursuers or hide in a cart for a few seconds, then get right back to what you were doing.

My gripes are not unique. I hate having to watch the pre-mission interview and then run down the mountain and then get a horse and then ride to the next goddamn county every time I want to play the game. The free-roaming sandbox play is the best part, in my mind, and putting five to ten minutes of bullshit in front of it is a good way to keep me from turning the game on just to go gather some flags or get a combat achievement, both of which are enjoyable activities unto themselves.

I never really had a hate for the missions. There are so few of them, and you only ever have to do half of them anyway. Sure, they're all the same, but they're basically cutscenes that you unlock with a simple sequence of movements (except the assist missions, which are sometimes a huge pain in my ass, so I skip 'em.) so I don't see what everyone's crying about. The guys at Penny Arcade made the observation that the missions would only become tedious if you're racing to finish the game in one day so that you can write an early review for a website, which makes that criticism more of a niche gripe that poisoned the well for later players.

I liked the future/past thing, too. Justifies weird gameplay elements like death and teleportation and time dilation, and it gives the sequels a lot of freedom.

Improvements I'd suggest:

1. No more insta-drown. At least just have him climb out of the water, like in Spiderman 2, and say, "Yikes, got my skirt wet." At best, let us cut a reed and hide in the water from guards. Being able to swim around to find paths around obstacles falls somewhere in the middle, but a drenched assassin would be a bit conspicuous, so I'm not sure that would work well.

2. Plug and play. No more waiting for the whole damn plot exposition for the chapter, no more climbing down the fortress mountain every time, no more horse marathon to the zone boundary. Just let me start in a city and get shankin'.

3. Variety of tasks. Make missions more interesting, and make them more the core of the game. As it stands, they're minigames, which gives the game a directionless feel. Let me have a few missions active, like in WoW or Diablo, so I can go for targets of opportunity while I wander, and not just hop from arena to arena, completing challenges.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage

You got it right on the dot. The repetitive missions aren't such a big deal if you pace yourself when you play the game. It took me a couple of weeks to finish AC and I'd usually do a mission a day (including all the side quests).

The instant-drown drove me nuts because most of the time when you drown its because the path finding didn't register where you wanted to go so you'd jump in a completely seemingly random direction... I hated it so much.

I just wanted to add that there wasn't anything to do if you weren't doing missions. Collecting flags is boring (IMO) so it doesn't count [lol]. In GTA4 if you don't feel like doing missions you can just hijack a car and see how long you can last with a 6 star wanted level. In fact there are a tons of homemade games inside of GTA4 to keep you busy... This is exactly what was lacking in AC. It's do the missions or get bored.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage I liked the future/past thing, too. Justifies weird gameplay elements like death and teleportation and time dilation, and it gives the sequels a lot of freedom.

I've yet to play the game properly myself, so I can't really comment much on the gameplay. But the sci-fi storyline concept is a big turn-off for me.

It just strikes me incredibly contrived, packed with enough pseudo-scientific waffle to fill a shampoo advert, and totally and utterly unnecessary. It screams 'frustrated sci-fi author/scriptwriter/da vinci code fanfic syndrome'. The story might have just about worked for a book or a film, but the idea of actually controlling someone in the past through some newfangled and completely improbable 'genetic memory' technology goes too far, and destroys suspension of disbelief.

I really don't see any reason why they couldn't have set the whole story in 1191.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage S 3. Variety of tasks. Make missions more interesting, and make them more the core of the game. As it stands, they're minigames, which gives the game a directionless feel. Let me have a few missions active, like in WoW or Diablo, so I can go for targets of opportunity while I wander, and not just hop from arena to arena, completing challenges.

I really agree with number three they went through all the trouble of scripting up these different events(note none of them completely recycle mission text) and yet they couldn't throw in a little bit of change up in the actual game play. What a waste of effort.

In the game you aren't "controlling someone" you are reliving their memory.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage I hate having to watch the pre-mission interview and then run down the mountain and then get a horse and then ride to the next goddamn county every time I want to play the game.

The PC version ("director's cut" edition) actually fixed that. When leaving the assassin's fortress you're presented with a fast-forward menu that allows you to teleport to the entrance or bureau of any city you've been to previously, or simply continue on foot. It also saves practically everywhere (after picking up a flag, using a viewpoint, just before an assassination, etc.) and lets you resume from that spot when starting the game again.


I thoroughly enjoyed assassin's creed, though I share many of other user's complaints. Instant drowning for example was acceptable in most places, but in the docks level it was rather annoying and strange, considering that Altair can overcome the most impossible obstacles when climbing, but couldn't manage to pull himself up onto a boat within arm's reach after accidentally falling into the water. Big break in the suspension of disbelief. The Investigation missions also seemed like a very artificial way to extend the game length.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet that annoyed me was the ending. Through my entire play experience I had no idea that Assassin's creed was designed as a trilogy, so the ending left me saying "what the hell" until I found information about it on a google search. Even knowing there's more to the story however, the ending of the "modern" half of the storyline felt rather sudden. On the other hand Altair's story felt complete, so it's kind of a wash.

Another small annoyance I had was being unable to perform an assassination using the hidden blade from above, say from on top of a low wall or the top of a merchant's stall. Not only did it stand out as something Altair SHOULD be able to do, it also hindered the gameplay in some places. For example in one spot I found myself perched on a low (waist height) wall behind a guard who had no idea I was there, unable to attack and unable to get down off of the wall without alerting the guard.

From a design standpoint Assassin's Creed is pretty solid, but I tend to agree with the notion that it was "five hours of awesome gameplay stretched over twenty hours of game." (Quoted imperfectly from an online review of the game)

I didn't know the PC version had the quick-start option. Very reassuring. I think the next installment will be everything AC did well and more. Ubisoft has a good record of improving as their franchises advance. I know Splinter Cell always gets better when a new one's released.

The frame story is always a point of contention. The "genetic memory" malarky is just that, although I just read a thing about epigenetics that makes a strong argument for life experience having an impact on which genes are expressed in subsequent generations, making Lamarkian evolution look just a little bit less retarded.

But yeah, if you don't like near-future scifi with glowing tables and mind reading and transparent conspiracy theories du jour, then you'll find that to be a turnoff, and the constant reminders, like the voiceover and the little hydrocarbon sequences around locked targets, would probably piss you right off.

My fingers are crossed for a totally different setting for the second installment, leading up to a final game with lasers and space ninjas and backflips. But that's just me. I'm sure lots of guys prefer a world where you're competing with cholera to be the baddest motherfucker in town.

I think that Assassins Creed was VERY repetitive. I played the PC version (on a keyboard) so my gripes may or may not be the same as some one on a console.

1) Collections of everything.
Gripe: I felt like I was playing I-Spy/Pokemon almost the entire game. I would kill a guard (unrelated to the story) and a message would come up saying you kill X of 60 Templars. I would climb to the top of a tower… message saying you’ve climbed to the top of X towers in this section of the city (for EVERY section!). I would be running through the city… what’s that?... a flag!... congratulations you’ve found X of 200 flags for Y location (for EVERY location!). Help a person being attacked by the guards… message saying you’ve saved X amount of people in this area (again for EVERY section!). Enough!!!

My Response: I gave up trying to get everything after about 60 flags total, saving everyone in 2 towns, and climbing all the towers in 2 cities. At that point I realized it wasn’t required and I unlocked no perks. It was extremely boring to do and I’ll never replay the game to do it again.

My suggestion to fix: Greatly limit the amount of things you need to do/collect at most to 100 for the entire game. Make flag finding have a challenge of its own, like fighting a mini-boss or escape the guards in a difficult area, rather than walking down a random alleyway and happening upon a flag.

2) Traveling through the kingdom
Gripe: Yes it was fun the first time going through it on the horse, maybe even the second time, but why would you make me go through it again and again? I think it was to expand the game play time with more collect flags/climb towers. At least later in the game (on the PC version) it allowed me to warp to the cities I had been too. I was also wondering what the whole purpose of attacking on the horse was. It was way more effective dodging guards completely or running people over rather than trying to time a sword attack while mounted.

My Response: I used the horse to run to the next town, avoiding all fights, and using the map to point me in the right direction. Why should I stop at every outpost and fight through countless guys and risk dying when I can just run by everything? The horse should have been more balanced or at least the content from point A to point B more interesting. Being able to run by everything on a horse untouched just made the whole area worthless.

My suggestion to fix: Make the player play the kingdom map once and then let them skip it if they wish. Let the guards ride horses, for crying out loud! There should have been high speed horse back sword fighting complete with jumping from horse to horse. Guards should set up barricades to block you or take out your horse. Archers should be able to shoot you off the back. Etc.

3) Unbalanced Combat
Gripe: Counter attacking was the single most ‘I Win’ move in the entire game (when in combat) and later the throwing knives come quite close. Timing the button press when the sword hit the opponent was too much work for how randomly long the assassin decided to take to attack. Further, if you just mashed the attack button, the opponent would eventually have their weapon knocked out of the way long enough for you to hit them. When facing many enemies the easiest way to win was to wait for the enemy to attack and then counter attack (or counter grab if they grabbed). The short sword/dagger attacked faster and had different fatality animations but was exactly the same as the sword (except when the sword increases in power later in the game). Later you also get throwing knives which are a one hit kill (except a few bosses) that work in and out of combat, extremely cheap.

My Response: I counter attacked my way through the entire game (except when needing to counter grab or hit the guys on the ground). Later when I got the throwing knives, I found that if I faced many guards, I could just spam the knives and kill loads of them before even needing to counter attack.

My Suggestion to fix: I would have rewritten the whole attacking system. IMHO, the combat did not have the same feeling as the rest of the game. I think there should have been a high attack and low attack, as well as counters for each and the combat should be much quicker (you’re an assassin after all). Prince of Persia (WW & TTT) did a good job of fast action combat. Something like that would have fit far better for non-assassination combat.

4) Unbelievable AI
Gripe: I guess this is all opinion but I don’t think that Altair with all his weapons/gear looked anything like the monk groups you could blend in with (what monk has a sword at the side, a dagger on the back, and knives all over). Holding your hands together in prayer does not make your weapons look any more monk-like.
You could stealth assassinate a guard and then magically every guard in the area happens to walk towards the dead body. As long as the guard was walking to the body even when you’re the only person around that could have killed him, the guard will not attack until he reaches the body. This lets you chain assassinate guard after guard as they travel to investigate the last death.
Also, the city guards would push you out of the way if you tried to walk through an entrance you weren’t allowed to enter. However, if you climbed the wall right in front of them and jumped across the beams literally 5 ft above their heads, they didn’t seem to mind you entering that way.
When running from the guards, it didn’t matter how many rows of houses you put in between you and the guards, they didn’t get off your trail until you jumped into a hiding spot. However, if you climbed a ladder onto a rooftop and hid right away in something so obvious, the guards were confused.

My response: I exploited where I could and shook my head in disbelieve when it got too ridiculous. Why does the crowd take a dead body in the street so lightly? They say something stupid like, “What happened to him?”

My Suggestions to Fix: I think assassin’s weapons should be concealed. No matter how cool it may look, strapped on weapons only make sense for non covert operations. Guards should be searching the crowd when a dead guard body is seen in the crowd. Dead bodies should be movable like Hitman and many other stealth assassinating games. I think that guards should stop knowing exactly where you are once you’re out of eyesight. They should then proceed to scan through the area they last saw you, split up, and other obvious things guards do.


Despite the things that annoyed me, overall I enjoyed the game. Many people so far said they didn’t like the story but that’s pretty much what kept me playing as I felt the gameplay was lacking. I wanted to see what hopeless scenario I’d be thrown into next that I must assassinate some raving lunatic. The ending was quite obvious though (well yeah, he looks evil and hides information, bad guy 101).

Sure it seemed weird dying by touching water in the dock assassination level but it also seemed weird jumping off of 10+ story towers into a pile of hay and walking away. Both of which I think should have been removed. The one major thing I thought the developers did well was the climbing and rooftop navigation. Running from the city guards felt pretty epic as you dove, climbed, and swung from different obstacles. Only a few times did I catch myself asking why in the world it did that (much less than Prince of Persia).

Yeah, seems like you didn't like the game.

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Original post by Rasm 1) Collections of everything.

I didn't gather flags or hunt templars either, but I don't think that the inclusion of content that I didn't pursue is a mark against the game. Unless you're of the mentality that 100% completion is the only way to play (and you don't seem to be), why would boring optional sidequests bother you? I didn't hunt down the crap in GTA either, even though that unlocks content.

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2) Traveling through the kingdom

Agreed, the travelling was a pain. I like that they linked the cities together, and if you're just looking for a large-scale fight, the Kingdom map is chock full of targets and fun things to climb on, but I pretty much viewed that as a timesink most of the time. I can see why they would require you to ride a horse to each city once, to introduce the map structure, before letting you port, I guess, but like you said, the horseback portions lacked depth and polish, and the meaningless combat (unless you're collecting flags, templars or achievements) didn't make it worth my while. Hopefully, future installments will either expand that or remove it.

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3) Unbalanced Combat

Seriously? I thought it was a lot of fun. A little easy, perhaps, but non-assassination combat was never really meant to be a do-or-die game element. If it was hard to win fights or get away, then I'd have thrown my controller every time I got spotted. As it was, combat was more of a minigame, and a fun one at that. By the end, you're using dodges and beat attacks and throws to manage large groups of enemies, make a hole in the crowd and escape. Then you run down a side street, leap over a fountain, dive through a market stall, scale a building, throw a sentry into the river, sprint along a rooftop and dive into a haywagon. Fun, exciting, and stylish. I loved it.

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4) Unbelievable AI

This goes back to my opinion of the fighting. If the guards checked every park bench and haystack and rooftop garden for you, then re-engaged again and again until they were all dead, then the game would totally suck. I don't want to be chopping my way through the whole city, and I don't want to have to dress in grubby rags and restrict myself to the hidden blade to get the job done. The AI is just about right for making it a puzzle game instead of a fighting game. I wish they were a little smarter and a little less athletic when it came to actually evading them, since it would be more satisfying to get up on a rooftop and have them curse you from the ground than to get up there and see them swinging across some beams and leaping from rooftop to rooftop to intercept you. Also, the common complaint about them enforcing the equestrian speed limit is a valid one. If I've got to go three miles on this horse, I'd better be able to gallop without those jerks setting up roadblocks. But that's more a beef with the horse than with the AI.

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Original post by stonemetal In the game you aren't "controlling someone" you are reliving their memory.

And thus logic and reason are thrown out the window.

I don't see what the problem is. I had no trouble with the scifi mumbo jumbo. New technology discovers that key memories can leave discernable traces on the genetic legacy inherited by descendants. There was a guy a long time ago who did and knew things that were known only to him, so the only way to unearth those secrets was to kidnap someone from his direct bloodline and extract the genetic memories. First, you get the basic low-res gist of what's happening from a scan, then you plug him into a simulator and put his current mind, crafted by the DNA passed down from Altair, into the approximate situations as they're known. If you're able to synchronize the simulation and the situations Altair was in closely enough, then memories will be triggered and rise to the surface like farts in the bath. You record these nuggets, use them to improve the simulation, and then set up the next one. The course of the extraction conveniently meshes with the usual story arc, building and climaxing, and it works well with the video game paradigm of increasingly complex levels.

What's the matter with that? I had a guy who hated, hated, hated the imaginary fight in Hero. There's that scene where Jet Li and the guy with the stick stare at each other in the rain and imagine how a fight between them would go, playing it out in their minds, and it's all sepia-toned and such, and then at the end of the fight, it snaps back to the real world, and they agree that Jet would win, and they don't have to fight after all. So, my buddy's on the edge of his seat through all the crazy upside-down kung-fu, he's having a great time watching the guys doing backflips and throwing Go boards at each other. Then, the fight ends and it snaps back to reality and he sits back and says, "Wait, what? They didn't really fight? That sucks, dude, I thought this was supposed to be an action movie!" That's all I can think of when people play Assassin's Creed and say, "It's total bullshit, they sold it like it was about a guy in ancient Jerusalem, but it's really a video game about a guy laying on a table."

everything is good in the game except the repetitive missions and THE VERY LONG TRAVEL...i frequently close the game when im traveling in the world of assassin's creed because it takes to long to get to one place to another,but if you finish the a chapter your instantly teleported to your home base...

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage What's the matter with that? I had a guy who hated, hated, hated the imaginary fight in Hero.

I understand the sentiment even if I'm not like it myself. To some people, the less "real" something is the less they feel they should care about it. If the action scene they just saw isn't real even within the story itself it adds another layer of disbelief for them to suspend. Whether they have a "right" to feel that way or can be dismissed for it is a separate matter, but people do feel that way for some reason.

As for me, at first I didn't like that Assassin's Creed took place in a virtual memory because I thought that would've made an excellent twist to reveal at the end. Even if they would have had to find other justifications for regenerating health, reloading failed missions without resetting the entire city, etc.

But I got over that once I realized I was just giving in to my picky "If I had done it, I'd have..." impulse. I started to like it as a framing device and found it to be kind of clever as a justification for the above-mentioned aspects.

Then I began to appreciate it because it was something I wouldn't have done. To put it another way, how many games that have this kind of idea actually throw it in your face right away? I can at least appreciate that they had the guts not to go the proverbial it-was-all-a-dream route.

That's not to say I especially liked Assassin's Creed. That particular aspect stopped bothering me but a lot of the rest-- like the awfully chatty dying targets, and wordy dialogue in general-- got on my nerves.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage I don't see what the problem is. I had no trouble with the scifi mumbo jumbo. New technology discovers that key memories can leave discernable traces on the genetic legacy inherited by descendants. There was a guy a long time ago who did and knew things that were known only to him, so the only way to unearth those secrets was to kidnap someone from his direct bloodline and extract the genetic memories. First, you get the basic low-res gist of what's happening from a scan, then you plug him into a simulator and put his current mind, crafted by the DNA passed down from Altair, into the approximate situations as they're known. If you're able to synchronize the simulation and the situations Altair was in closely enough, then memories will be triggered and rise to the surface like farts in the bath. You record these nuggets, use them to improve the simulation, and then set up the next one. The course of the extraction conveniently meshes with the usual story arc, building and climaxing, and it works well with the video game paradigm of increasingly complex levels.

Except the real science of genetic memory has nothing to do with a persons living memory. Rather it deals with how instincts are passed on...How a newborn horse knows how to walk, how a newborn knows to suckle from mothers nipple.



The game got a lot of intrest because of the advertised setting, a very under represented time and place in history for games. But insted of diveing into the pool, and really exploiting the potential gameplay richness of the holy land. The developers played it safe, sticking thier foot in the pool while standing on a foundation of conventional sci-fi virtual world trappings.

My big problem with this virtual memory crap in the game was it wasted developer time and rescourses on the least interesting and valuable parts of the game. Instead of addressing the many obvious complaints so far listed in this thread, the developers had gone off on some damn fool crusade to set up a sequel/franchise. Which either says "we couldn't think of anything better to do" or "We need to save some of our gameplay ideas for the next one".

Imagine if a quarter of God of War were removed so the developers could shoehorn into it some lame subplot involveing a modern day conspiracy hiding the "truth" about Aries dieing at the hands of Kratos...lame, lame, lame...on all counts.

An assasin that is seen is usually a dead assasin.

But then we have games where one guy kills half the German army and MMOs that remind me of that early Star Trek episode where "We killed thousands, and they still came"...