Assassin's Creed

I don't think I can sum up Assassin's Creed in one word. If I had two, I would say (1) fun, and (2) disappointing. But this abridgement really doesn't do the game justice. Below, I have crafted an excruciatingly long explanation of why AC succeeds at being a video game, but fails at everything else. If you have a beer handy you might want to start drinking now.

Assassin's Creed is an incredibly complex product, with some daunting animation and AI technology, a bold narrative structure, and a real accomplishment of a control system. All of these aspects are especially impressive because, despite being remarkably deep and nuanced, they're implemented in ways that are easy to pick up.

The crowd-based AI drives how guards move, what they see, how much attention is drawn to you, and how much you'll be searched for before you can disappear; but all you really need to know is, when you're spotted, run and hide. The present-and-past story framing provides some convenient mechanics for skipping particularly uninteresting gameplay, and conveniently explains away how you're able to save your game, or die and come back. And though you're able to do a bajillion different things with the face/action buttons, a surprisingly elegant system of creating context sensitivity means that, past the intro, you should never be confused about how to execute an action.

So, technologically, this is really a marvel. I have a lot of appreciation for this - but, good tech does not necessarily create a good game, and Assassin's Creed makes this point in abundance.

The really interesting thing about AC's gameplay - and the story, for that matter - is that, in the lengthy introduction, it is totally different from the rest of the game. This is disregarding the tutorial portion, which is understandably mechanical, though also rather long (think the tutorial intro from Kingdom Hearts). The proper curtain-raising has you assassinate one soldier; shoved out of a combat situation by a real-time cinematic; climbing and running along a linear path; exploring a town that is completely friendly to you; jumping off a building in order to attract attention; and setting off a trap. None of this happens in the rest of the game, and in fact, what does happen tends to be the opposite.

Which is good, in a way. Because the introduction is long and boring, and the later gameplay replaces it with generally speedy action. But the intro also set up a large, engrossing, and deep game world, which the later gameplay almost entirely discards. Assassin's Creed boils most of its real-world actions down into video game tropes: complete X number of sub-missions to proceed; kill a certain amount of guys within a time limit; even more creative tasks, like beating information out of someone, becomes a routine of waiting until no one is around, then engaging in fisticuffs. There are even collectibles, in the form of flags scattered around the cities, although collecting them doesn't unlock, accomplish, or do anything. (Unless you're on a 360 and have a boner for gamerpoints.) And you're allowed to fast-travel to cities after visiting them once, which eliminates a stupidly-dull overworld, but also tosses the feel of immersion right into an errant pile of hay.

Some sub-missions are anti-immersive by virtue of sheer frustration. For instance, a number of them require you to do things without being seen, which becomes increasingly difficult as the game progresses, and the number of these things rises. So I stealthily assassinated four rooftop archers - but because a paranoid guard saw me on my way back to the mission giver, I lost it, and would've had to try killing them all over again. How many times can you kill the same four soldiers? You might be surprised.

I say would've, though - and here's a bit of good news - because I also have the choice of not doing it. The open world of Assassin's Creed may not have as many options as a Grand Theft Auto, but it does give you the ability to skip many of these sub-missions; you need to finish X number of them to get on with your main assassination, but there are always at least twice as many available. I gave up on a number of frustrating sub-missions, finding and doing easier ones instead, and feel like I've missed nothing in doing so.

The most fun part of the main gameplay, as I've already mentioned, is free-running across rooftops and ganking guards in the throat. On your way from task to task across a city, you're given free rein to accomplish things as you wish. Sure, you could blend in with the crowd in the streets, slowly making your way to your targets, with no collateral damage. Or, you could run through the city like a maniac, taking out people as you see fit, and running and hiding from your inevitable pursuers. I really liked a hybrid of these approaches, preferring stealth kills to direct combat, combined with the expertly implemented free-running, jumping and climbing. (It has the capacity to be almost as fun as the new Prince of Persia - I wish PoP had towers to climb!)

So while I came to find the core gameplay rather fun (fun enough that I barely turned the game off all weekend), it definitely didn't lend itself to a convincing game world anymore. Other flaws mar the immersiveness, too - a shortage of unique speech among generic NPCs, bizarre guard behavior in chasing me (they don't jump off buildings, they fall off), the fact that Altair is as good a swimmer as Tommy Vercetti, dying instantly if he falls into water.

On the other side of the game world, the present-day framing also becomes less compelling as it marches on. Plot twists abound, but are told poorly. Most of what you'll find out about the mysteries of the game's story are from reading email on your captors' PCs, while the spoken bits are vague at best, and stilted at their worst.

As for the ending, it's terrible abysmal vacant fucking awful. In the last hour or so, the game decides that even stealth is unnecessary, and you fight wave after wave of soldiers head-on with a combat system that was designed to discourage its use. Then there is an M. Night Shyamalan twist with the head Assassin, that you probably half-expected from the very beginning of the game; a ludicrous boss fight that trivializes the sort-of-well-written technobabble behind the story; a literal deus ex machina; and when you wake up, your captors say "We'll be back" and leave. Then there's some visual set-up for the sequel(s), and the credits roll. What the fuck!

There are a lot of bad things to say about Assassin's Creed. It is an ambitious title, and got a lot of things wrong. The game's saving grace is that the core assassination gameplay is actually good - I've had more fun with this than in any other stealth-related game. But in the end, all the parts of AC that don't feel like a video game are disappointing and lackluster.

The most depressing thing about AC is that it clearly took a fuckton of work - it is a massive accomplishment - but there is still so much more it has to do, before it can succeed as a hyper-immersive, story-driven experience. I will still play the next one, even if it's just more of the same. But I have doubts that even a second installment will reach this one's lofty aspirations.

I guess it's good that they're working on it, but based on the mistakes in this first installment, I'm not convinced that Ubisoft will ever be able to pull it off.

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