Assassin's Creed

I've barely had any time to play with AC, but already it's a puzzling beast. What you might not know about the game if you haven't played it, or seen it played, is that the "game" proper - that is, what's depicted in the title and box art - is not the actual setting. Rather, Assassin's Creed actually tells the story of a man descended from a line of assassins, in the modern world, who is hooked up to a machine that examines his "genetic memory" - in order to play back the events of his ancestor, Altair.

This is a really interesting concept that, while not exactly brand new, is quite rare, and I would say has yet to be explored to the depth that it is here. The modern-era frame of the story has its own plot distinct from Altair's, though it revolves around uncovering the story of Altair's life through the memories. This gives the game tremendous liberty to skip uninteresting portions of Altair's story, fast-forwarding through boring head-back-to-town sequences and jumping from important event to important event.

It also has the dramatic effect of giving you a fellow audience to reflect with, in the form of the characters in the modern frame story. This story, while intriguing and significant in its own right, does a good job of not overshadowing Altair's. Which is not to say that it works perfectly: it does feel odd jumping in and out of Altair's time on whims other than the player's. Given that immersion is one of the highest goals of the modern game designer, Assassin's Creed takes a roundabout approach to it, in that you are immersed in the real world story by way of contrasting it with Altair's (provided you suspend your disbelief about the whole concept of "genetic memory").

Anyway, the setup is very interesting, and I'm really anxious to see it develop further. The gameplay... well, it's very technologically impressive - Assassin's Creed has some of the coolest AI techniques in the industry so far, with the way people react variously to you and your actions - but, at least at my early point in the game, I have yet to be wowed by it. The PC controls have taken a little getting used to, but I really don't think the story would be different on a console; button/key actions change frequently based on things like switching between high and low profile, or mounting a horse, or climbing, such that everything is very context sensitive. It may seem overwhelming, but one of the successes of the game is that simple actions are boiled down to the point where it's easy enough to get by without becoming absorbed in the deeper intricacies of the control scheme.

In general, AC is very well polished. The graphics and sound design are stellar, and the way the game works in general is very admirable given its complexity. So far my biggest complaint is that it's something of a chore to actually exit the game: from within an Altair memory, you must pause the Animus machine, choose a menu option to exit the machine, then pause your modern character's game, then go to the Profile (save file) Selection screen, then select a profile, and finally Exit to Windows (because, even after all that, there is no Exit option in the Profile Select screen). It's not exactly game-breaking (obviously a case of the PC port team faltering in the translation process), but with the rest of the game's attention to detail I wish they had paid a bit more to the ability to quit.

Progress: Memory Block 2