Reviews// Assassin's Creed - Xbox 360

If you’ve not been paying much attention over the last 18 months then you might not be aware that Assassin’s Creed is a massive, free-roaming, stealth/action-style genre-buster in which you play a gymnastic, (free running) parkour-skilled assassin called Altair during the time of the Third Crusade. Oh, and there’s a major narrative twist as well (on which more, later).

This is a classically Triple-A (AAA) game supported with a media blitz (yes, we bought into it as well), lots of PR and marketing hype, and an attractive talking head who we’ve all swooned about – a lass called Jade Raymond. Yes, since it was first unveiled many moons ago at E3 in 2006, Assassin’s Creed has been building up expectations in the same way that going to a party in order to definitely get laid does... erm, did.

Ubisoft has consistently presented the game to the media as being up there among the first batch of games that are really pushing new generation console technology. So, is Ass Creed (as we fondly like to refer to it) up there with those other giants that fight for your time and your hard-earned this autumn and winter? Can it stand proud alongside BioShock and Halo 3 this Christmas? Is it merely a stand-in while we wait for Mass Effect ? Is UbiSoft only really good at things like the brilliant Ravin' Rabbids? Read on to find out what SPOnG’s reviewer made of it.

First things first, Altair is a member of the Hashshashin (or Assassins) – no, not a bunch of stoners (well, historically, yes they were a bunch of stoners but that’s more history than we’ve got time for). This lot were a radically ‘political’ group that laid waste to its enemies with extreme prejudice back in the time of the crusades.

SPOILER-ISH NOT REALLY BUT YOU’VE BEEN WARNED
The first thing that you will notice about the game, after you have played through the initial tutorial which bizarrely reveals the Matrix-a-like story twist literally minutes into the ‘experience’, is that it’s a real looker. The graphics, lighting and use of shadow are nothing less than jaw-droppingly beautiful, amongst the best I’ve yet seen on a 360 and the character animations are smoothly, lovingly executed (execute, see…)

The next thing you come to grips with (literally) as you familiarise yourself with the at-first-strange controls is the fact that the hugely expansive three cities in the game are Altair’s massive and amazing playground.

Buildings, walls, rafters and other objects in the surrounding cityscape – things that normal mortals would consider barriers to movement – are merely playground obstacles or minor impediments to Altair.

He smoothly dances, skips, hops and jumps his way across the rooftops of the city. Actually, wait - using your hands and brain and the game's control systems he skips etc and so on... but this is only once you've gone through the incredibly clumsy tutorials (hey, Ubi! It's a training level... it's supposed to be like fun... not homework).

Anyway, this parkour-style element of Assassin’s Creed’s gameplay does not lose its ability to trigger the pleasure centres of the brain throughout the entire experience. DO try this at home though, kids! Just not the real thing…

The game’s setting and storyline is also historically very accurate, for the historians and anal-retentives out there who give a flying one about such things. The extensive cities of Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus have been (so we’re told, we’ve never been there, and especially not there but back in time) accurately recreated.

Get this though: the nine poor saps that Altair has to take out throughout the course of the game (which provides the game’s overarching mission structure) actually died or went missing in ACTUAL history. Who’d’ve thunk it eh? A game that gives you a history lesson as you leap across rooftops while shoving an array of knives into evil soldier’s throats.

Control-wise, it’s a bit niggly and weird at first, but that’s because (like EA’s equally innovative skate.) the developers have done something a little bit clever and new with the control mechanism. Overall, controlling Altair is more like controlling a puppet than traditional third-person action controls; his feet, hands and head are mapped to your controller’s face buttons. Slightly weird, initially, but you soon get used to it.