Assassin's Creed
Ubisoft Montreal/SCEE
PS3


You are Altair, a member of the Hashshashin (from whom we get the word "assassin"). You are charged with rooting out enemies of the Holy Land on both sides of the political divide. Your missions take you between Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem, which have been stunningly conjured into life to put you into the very heart of the 12th century.

Being possibly the most anticipated title of the year, it would seem impossible for 'Assassin's Creed' to live up to the hype. In actuality it does and it doesn't. Although full of problems and poorly developed concepts, the game is also a revolutionary breakthrough and a must have for all PS3 and XBOX owners.

Because any review of 'Assassin's Creed' must be an exercise in duality, let's start with the positive. In some respects this is one of the finest games ever made. Ubisoft Montreal have totally pushed the limits of gameplay environment, texture and interface. The first thing that will take your breath away will be rearing your horse atop a hill looking out over the expanse of Damascus. It is truly something to behold. Add to that the realization that you can move in every square inch of that space, and it suddenly becomes clear that this game is above and beyond the usual fare. This animation would be nothing if it weren't for the incredible texture added to the playing environment. The sounds of the city and the various locales are perfection.

The way you move around this environment is also truly inspirational. The designers have come up with a puppeteer system where the R1 button controls the severity of an action while the face buttons correspond to head, arms, and feet. This makes jumping across the rooftops of the city and pushing through crowds immensely enjoyable. This style of movement is perfectly intuitive making for some heart-stopping leaps from building to building with Altair clinging desperately to balconies and ledges. This is the final thing that is revolutionized in 'Assassin's Creed': vertical movement. Climbing up the wall of a church or towering minaret requires the use of the left control stick and anything you think is a handhold probably is. You cannot begin to imagine how fun this is until you try it.

When you get to the top of a tower you are rewarded with a panoramic shot of the city. These view points enable you to see the mini-missions that you must accomplish - these missions are what you must do to collect information on your assassination target. The first few times you do this it's great but here is where the game starts to fall short. These missions are limited to three or four types including eavesdropping (sitting on a bench and listening to someone), picking someone's pocket (walking up behind them and holding the face button for hand), or assaulting someone until they tell you information. All of these become increasingly tedious as the game goes on.

The next serious fault is one of mechanics. The game froze far too much to be acceptable with this level of release. I understand that the system is trying to do a lot but these issues should have had more time spent on them during development.

The last criticism I will make is with the storyline. Much more could have been done to keep you interested in the story progression. As it is, the only thing that kept me locked into the game narrative was the beauty of the animation and texture. This weakness becomes especially apparent at the end of the game, where the sudden and abrupt final scene really comes out of nowhere. If the parallel storyline hadn't been kept hidden until the end, the game would have carried much more suspense and excitement.

As it stands 'Assassin's Creed' is merely an excellent game that will stay in your memory forever and has set a new standard for the future of gaming, but which sadly lets gamers down in the area of story and mission structure. It's a 'must own', but just falls short of being the best PS3 title to date.

Anthony Paxton