A truly next-gen game marred by last-gen problems
Hype- that’s the one word which drove the game on top. But being top in sales didn’t come from stellar reviews. The game, which was thought to be an all-new experience in previews, didn’t get as good as reviews as it was supposed to. An all new experience it is, still. There is little doubt that this go anywhere game is truly next-gen, allowing you to do things no other game ever allowed. But the problem stems from this only. The truth is, with this much nextgenness, this game could have been so much more. But what it actually is is a bunch of repetitive missions, clad is different masks.
Discussing good things first, then we will go towards the problems with this one.
The good-
1. 1. The ‘Go anywhere’ system- If this is not next-gen, there can’t be anything. In this game, you are never ever stopped from jumping and grabbing any ledge, window or bar you think can be grabbed. Climb anywhere, go the way you want. This freedom certainly comes handy in chases. When you are being chased by soldiers, it is so much fun to take sudden turn in the next street and then jump on any home and go on roof, out of sight, and hide.
2. 2.Animation, Graphics and the recreation of the era- This one contains one of the best animations you are supposed to see in a game. The movement of our character, Altair, is so fluid and smooth, especially considering the level of interactivity this game allows, that there is no reason why you won’t want to pat Ubisoft Montreal on their back. Animations of all other characters and NPCs are top-notch.
Graphics are another high-point. Although I didn’t much appreciate that this game runs in a cinema scope kind of way, there is no denying that scimitar engine is good. The lightning must be appreciated, although the sudden and frequent alternating between sunlight and shadows because of moving clouds wasn’t as interesting as it sounds. The textures, although bump mapped, are a bit low res, probably because the game was primarily designed for consoles, which have less RAM. The areas are absolutely huge, no denying that. All cities and especially the kingdom are mind-boggling in size. Engine supports Anti-Aliasing which works perfectly fine. At 4xAA, there was very little jaggedness to be found. How good this engine at AA, must be seen when Altair views whole cities from a high-point.
All three cities are recreated realistically and are meticulously detailed. Each city has its own color palette. The reason, why developers did this, is something I didn’t think much about. It looks good and is interesting anyway. Acre is bluish, Damascus is orangey/brown and Jerusalem is yellowish (over bright too, probably because of over HDR). All cities feel living-breathing with mostly realistic reactions from NPCs on our actions.
3. 3. Some parts of the combat system- I say some parts because the combat system truly polarized me. There are some parts where it feels really good and works perfectly fine, then there are some parts where it will feel frustrating. We will talk about the worse parts later.
I loved throwing knives. It was a refreshing concept, especially for a game which contains slashing most of the time. The stealth parts were good enough, although a bit hard, especially when you were going to kill someone who was on high ground than you. Altair kills his foes in many different ways, all brutal, which is fun. There are not many combos and I never actually tapped many different keys to do any special kill, Altair used it to do himself.
The Bad-
1. 1. Some parts of the combat system- There are no combos, so actually you can’t do much else than keep pressing the keys faster and faster. In a condition when you are surrounded by many soldiers, you can’t do anything if one is coming from behind to kill you and you are beating someone in front of you. In theory, there is thing to say that you can lock the one who is coming from behind, but whenever I tried, either I ended up locking someone third guy, or the guy whom I left fighting, beat me.
The tutorial says that the short blade is the best weapon to fend off multiple enemies, but whenever I tried to use it, I died real quick. I preferred to use the sword instead.
2. 2. Stupid, uneven A.I. - Will they notice, will they won’t? They made me confused all the time. Sometimes, when I killed someone, and blended immediately, a soldier who should have seen me immediately, will keep searching for the killer, uttering- ‘come on, show yourself’. And sometimes, when I am blended and just moving in street, a soldier suddenly recognizes me and I have to run for my life then!
Soldiers wait for their turn in a fight, most of the times. It’s a good thing and bad both. It’s good because if they had attacked simultaneously, the combat system would be in need of a total revamp, and must be then made on the lines of PoP series. It’s bad because it its utterly stupid that they wait for their turn. It’s worse because they don’t always wait, they do attack from behind a few times. And then the combat system fails because it is too hard to lock the other one and fight him.
3. 3. The hiccups- On a super powerful system which is my system, I had to face hiccups here and there, especially in cities. They didn’t take away much from the immersion as such, but they were distracting.
4. 4. The menus are irritating and long- It takes a long time to enter the game and to get out of it. PC users can do Alt+F4 as a rescue though.
5. 5. Repetition of NPC dialogues, beggars and jar carriers- It might seem a small thing to mention, but it’s not. NPCs have very few dialogues. Every time I was on roofs, or many times in the cities, I heard this dialogue every twenty seconds- “Thief, you are filth.” And- “You dare steal in my presence! I will have your hand for that.” There are a few more dialogues, but they are not many. This absolutely distracts from the feeling that this is a living, breathing city.
There are jar carriers everywhere. They probably are equal, if not more, in numbers than other NPCs. The tutorial says that hitting jar carriers can easily make you socially unacceptable, but they are so many roaming here and there, and drop their jars even when Altair is only passing near them, it is hard to bother about them, because it’s going to happen anyway.
The Ugly-
1. 1. It’s a technically incomplete, highly unstable game (PC version) - It crashes a lot, take my words for that. I don’t know about the patch, but the first version is highly unstable. It will crash every once in a while, and is really frustrating when you finished a hard mission, or a brutal fight, and you will have to do it again. I almost stopped playing the game once because it crashed so much after a specific mission that I wasn’t able to advance in a game. After killing William, which itself unevenly hard if you go by conventional ways, every time I was returning to The Bureau, it crashed. It happened five times and I gave up, stopped playing the game. When I returned after five days, and replayed, it worked.
2. 2. It’s a lot repetitive- The whole game is the repetition of same mission. Go in a city, climb towers, do two or three side missions, and then finally kill the final target. Go in a different city, do it again. Do this thrice for every city and you have finished Assassin’s creed. It is more frustrating because it is clear that this game could have been so much more given the technology it runs on, but unfortunately it isn’t.
This can be summed just like I did in my title; it runs on a truly next gen technology but falls apart by problems which are present in gaming from eternity. In a time when games like Crysis are reaching new heights in gaming, avoiding most of the pitfalls, Assassin’s creed could have been stellar if it just had avoided those mistakes, just like Crysis did.
7.5/10.
Price- 1299/-
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