Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 36
 Better than expected April 15, 2008
Andrew Cho
12 out of 15 found this review helpful
When I first saw the trailer for this game, it looked like it had potential. But then I started to see all the negative reviews when it came out on PS3 and 360. How it's repetitive and there's not much actual assassinations and you waste time doing other things. So it was pushed from my mind.
But I have to say, this game is really fun. I didn't know this type of game was possible on the PC. The last time I remember having this type of intuitive control and ability to jump and move around anywhere was Mario 64. And this game takes that fluid character control and ups the ante by 1000x and increases the graphics, adds hundreds of people and lets you kill anyone. I don't know what to say, it's just extremely fun to just run around, walk around, climb, jump across roof, fight random civilians and the guards. It's just perfect. Well, closer to perfect than any game I've played yet.
Anyways I had some concerns with people saying you'll need a gamepad for this. I have a PS3 for Blu Ray, not games, but a friend brings over AC sometimes and personally I prefer the keyboard/mouse combo. With a controller you just feel so constricted and you never forget that you're the one guiding the character on screen. With keyboard/mouse it's easier to get past that and move as if you're in the game. But I understand it's preference and if you're a console person you might feel differently.
I don't know of all the improvements made from the console versions but I noticed at least 4 new side-quests. There's one where you stealth kill archers and guards for your fellow assassins, one where you have to race to another informer within a certain amount of time, one where you "escort vip", and one where you need to throw someone into merchant stores. Adds a bit of variety while you stack up enough investigations for the main kill.
I love the fighting in this game. I thought it was a little dull but once you get Counter, oh my god. Insanely fun and engaging combat sequences. I like that Ubisoft put in a lot of variety to what kinds of moves the Counter skill can pull off. It's just satisfying to watch the incredibly cool maneuvers this guy pulls off against 20+ enemies closing in on him as he spins and ducks and slices. One of my favorite has to be the one where he gets down and stabs a foot then charges up and impales a blade into the skull. Such a pretty game.
Graphics are incredible but yeah the specs are pretty high. I'm running it at max settings with 2x anistropic, 4x anti-aliasing, at 1920x1080 resolution with great fps on a 3.2GHz C2D, 2GB DDR2 800, 8800GT 512, system.
I don't usually buy single player games because of the lack of replayability. So unless it's a great experience, I'll stick with my mutliplayer. Bioshock was a huge letdown for me, but AC was a pleasant surprise. Bioshock had an interesting story but AC has the FUN gameplay. Games I usually go for are CoD4, TF2, etc. All PC of course. Consoles are for kids or for street fighter or rock band sorts of games. Assassin's Creed on PS3 was kind of lame but the PC experience is well worth it if you've got a system to run it.
It's not a perfect game. There isn't an option to save so you'll have to sit through long speeches again if you die. There are some little things I might nitpick about. But from the games available on the market, it's definitely one of the best. I'm excited about other games with this engine because the movement and combat are just so damn fun.
The only keys I customized were the weapons(which is pretty much preference) and I made "Q" eaglevision and "E" target. Works great.
I know it's not a game I'll play again and again like CoD4 but it's a 4.5 for a single player. Downfall is the repetitiveness but the gameplay engine is just spectacular.
 Please do not buy this game September 1, 2008
V&A (California, USA)
9 out of 14 found this review helpful
The best games have the power to take you into another world; one that is richer and stranger than your own. It may be fascintating, beautiful, or frightening, but when you enter into it you feel that you are really there.
Building this world often starts with the graphics, and Assassin's Creed cannot be faulted here. The effects are gorgeous, and the textures and details are wonderfully rendered. But if this is to be a properly immersive experience, where you, the player, become part of the world, then the interaction and gameplay become just as important, and it is here that Assassin's Creed fails so abysmally.
The basic character controls are stupidly, pointlessly, clumsy, and making the character do what you want becomes an excercise in keyboard-punching frustration. The tasks that your character has to carry out are infuriatingly hard, not out of any inherent difficulty, but because of the ridiculously obstructive game mechanics.
As well as the simple difficulty in controllng the character, many of the assignments that you have to carry out are deliberately set up to irritate you. When trying to follow a man in order to pick his pocket, beggars will accost you (but not him) and refuse to let you go. (They want money. The game system doesn't let you give them money.) Random deranged lunatics will stand on street corners and block your passage (but never anyone else's).
Many of the little details that seemed so convincing to start with soon become annoying. The street-corner preacher that you walked past in Damascus is also there in Jerusalem, saying the same thing over and over again. The suspicous guards, who are alerted when you walk too quickly, seem like a vivid detail to begin with, but when the game's ludicrous plot forces you to walk past them again, and again, and again, it soon gets tiring.
The character that you control has lots of special moves. He climbs like a cat, and can clamber up to the highest tower in the city, where he can scan the streets below for activity. The first time he does this, it is genuinely breathtaking, as the camera suddenly pans around the assassin, perched on hie eyrie. The tenth, or the twentieth time (becasue you have to do this in order to fill in your map) it become pointless and tedious.
If all of this is beginning tonsound irritating, bear in mind that you will have to do it over and over and over again, as you continually return to one of the three game cities in order to carry out yet another misison that is a bit harder, but basically the same, as the last one.
I genuinely wanted to like this game. I am fascinated by the period, and I loved the idea of mingling in the throng of a crowded Middle Eastern street. But the truth is tht Ubisoft spent a lot of time on designing the scenery, and no time (and even less thought) on designing a real game.
Yes, the game has its scenic moments. But for every time that a dusty flock of pigeons rises into the air as you crawl across the rooftops, there are dozens of stupid, contrived and frustrating exercises that will quickly drag you back out of the game world, and leave you annoyed and angry in front of your keyboard.
Ultimately, a game has to be played, not looked at, and the gameplay is so terribly, terribly, bad that nothing else really matters. It is, as I say, a shame, because I wanted to like the game, but that simply isn't possible.
Please do not buy this game. Please do not buy this game because you think you can handle a few annoyances for the sake of an interesting world. Please do not buy this game becasue the graphics look good and the trailer is spectacular. Please do not buy this game becasue you love the Middle Ages, and you think that any game set there cannot be all bad. I bought this game for precisely those reasons, and I was brutally disappointed.
Please do not buy this game.
Great Game....but high requirements April 12, 2008
John Wayne (NYC, NY)
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
Minimum Requirements:
Operating System: Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) or Windows Vista
Processor: Dual core 2.6 GHz Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 3800+
RAM: 1 GB Windows XP / 2 GB Windows Vista
Video Card: 256 MB DirectX 10.0-compliant video card or DirectX 9.0-compliant card with Shader Model 3.0 or higher (see supported list)
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0 or 10.0-compliant sound card
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0 or 10.0 libraries (included on disc)
DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM dual-layer drive
Hard Drive Space: 8 GB
Peripherals Supported: Keyboard, mouse, optional controller
Ifyou have a computer good enough to run Assassins Creed then I just have three words for you......
"GET THIS GAME"
 OK... May 4, 2008
E. Medina
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
A few reviewers summed up this game very well. I just wanted to nod my head in agreement...
Excellent Graphics, Nice open ended gameplay, Good voice acting. Play control is not too bad (takes a while to get used to).
Boring, repetitive missions and slow story line. Game gets old after a few hours.
 Let Down April 19, 2008
anon
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
Put it this way. Play the game for about an hour and you get the whole thing. Basically you do the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. The coolest thing about this game is climbing buildings and stuff, and that gets very boring after about 20 min. Dang, I had high hopes to. Another thing...the dialog is terrible! Not only does it last FOREVER, you cant skip it! Guess the programmers thought a lot of themselves and their "Cinematic" skills. Stick to the 1's and 0's guys!
Okay sorry...one of the worst games Ive played in a while.
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