Before Game Review #3: Following the creed
As I finally clear out my backlog of recently-acquired games, I have finally come to a game that I have been eagerly awaiting for at least a year (and is the subject of my icon for this entry, courtesy of Penny-Arcade.com): Assassin's Creed.
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the same folks responsible for the revamped Prince of Persia games, Assassin's Creed is a sandbox-play, mission-designed third-person action game with a pretty fascinating meta-twist, which, 2-3 hours into the game, has yet to truly reveal its purpose.
...
I'm trying to stay spoiler free, here.
First of all, wholly tangential to the quality of the game itself, I give Ubisoft kudos for focusing on kick-ass, wall-jumping Arabic guys with swords as their main characters. I don't know their specific motivations on this score at all, but it's refreshing.
Okay, back to the game.
This game is so gorgeous it's absurd. The rendering details are some of the finest I have seen; you can walk right up to a wall without the texture get pixellated and splotchy up close. The lighting is perfect and the people really move like real people. The first time you slowly push your way through a crowd and knife someone in the back, it's almost breath-taking.
The story is very interesting so far, though I don't think I'm far enough in to comment.
The gameplay is a tough one and it's entirely the fault of the controls.
The comparison to PoP: Sands of Time is an apt-one and Assassin's Creed uses a similar control scheme, only the fighting is even more simplified.
While wall-jumping and scaling and dodging obstacles, and most importantly, the actual assassinations, are smooth like butter-flavored Parkour, the actual fighting in the game feels clunky and limited and kind of boring, especially in the beginning when you lost most of your combat skills as part of the game plot.
Now, granted, as an assassin, you're generally not supposed to run up to the guy's face and challenge him to a fair fight.
However, there are some instances in the game where direct fighting is unavoidable, and it's kind of annoying to play. If that was overlooked since it's not the primary focus of the game, or whether it was intentional to force the player to focus harder on assassination, I don't know, but generally I feel like if you provide the choice, you should make it a good choice.
Still, this is a minor quibble in the game's otherwise seemingly excellent qualities, one of the most major of which is how well they generally blended the sandbox aspect and the mission-based aspect.
Think of it as an opposite take from Grand Theft Auto. GTA is a sandbox-game with minor missions strewn about the success or failure of which barely matters. The running around is the fun part, not the missions.
Assassin's Creed is a mission-based game with full sandbox-content, and I think this distinction is an important one. Unlike GTA and other sandbox-style games, there is a definitive taste of urgency behind the missions that I have undertaken so far, which I really like because it feels like the story is actually engaging you instead of happening by accident like in the GTA games.
In any case, I'm really looking forward to playing more.
Initial Impressions: a flawed gem, but the gem is rare uncut diamond.
Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the same folks responsible for the revamped Prince of Persia games, Assassin's Creed is a sandbox-play, mission-designed third-person action game with a pretty fascinating meta-twist, which, 2-3 hours into the game, has yet to truly reveal its purpose.
...
I'm trying to stay spoiler free, here.
First of all, wholly tangential to the quality of the game itself, I give Ubisoft kudos for focusing on kick-ass, wall-jumping Arabic guys with swords as their main characters. I don't know their specific motivations on this score at all, but it's refreshing.
Okay, back to the game.
This game is so gorgeous it's absurd. The rendering details are some of the finest I have seen; you can walk right up to a wall without the texture get pixellated and splotchy up close. The lighting is perfect and the people really move like real people. The first time you slowly push your way through a crowd and knife someone in the back, it's almost breath-taking.
The story is very interesting so far, though I don't think I'm far enough in to comment.
The gameplay is a tough one and it's entirely the fault of the controls.
The comparison to PoP: Sands of Time is an apt-one and Assassin's Creed uses a similar control scheme, only the fighting is even more simplified.
While wall-jumping and scaling and dodging obstacles, and most importantly, the actual assassinations, are smooth like butter-flavored Parkour, the actual fighting in the game feels clunky and limited and kind of boring, especially in the beginning when you lost most of your combat skills as part of the game plot.
Now, granted, as an assassin, you're generally not supposed to run up to the guy's face and challenge him to a fair fight.
However, there are some instances in the game where direct fighting is unavoidable, and it's kind of annoying to play. If that was overlooked since it's not the primary focus of the game, or whether it was intentional to force the player to focus harder on assassination, I don't know, but generally I feel like if you provide the choice, you should make it a good choice.
Still, this is a minor quibble in the game's otherwise seemingly excellent qualities, one of the most major of which is how well they generally blended the sandbox aspect and the mission-based aspect.
Think of it as an opposite take from Grand Theft Auto. GTA is a sandbox-game with minor missions strewn about the success or failure of which barely matters. The running around is the fun part, not the missions.
Assassin's Creed is a mission-based game with full sandbox-content, and I think this distinction is an important one. Unlike GTA and other sandbox-style games, there is a definitive taste of urgency behind the missions that I have undertaken so far, which I really like because it feels like the story is actually engaging you instead of happening by accident like in the GTA games.
In any case, I'm really looking forward to playing more.
Initial Impressions: a flawed gem, but the gem is rare uncut diamond.