 |
Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360)
| Overall Customer Rating: |  | | | | Graphics: | (Not Yet Rated) | | Sound: | (Not Yet Rated) | | GamePlay: | (Not Yet Rated) | | Addiction Level: | (Not Yet Rated) |
211 Customer Reviews
RRP: £19.99
Amazon Price: £19.99
You Save: £0 (0%)
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Ubisoft
View other products by Ubisoft
|
|
Editorial: It's easy to see why there was so much fighting amongst the console manufacturers to try and make this game a format exclusive. Where early launch titles may have disappointed this game not only looks like a next generation game but it plays like it too. Taken at face value the story casts you as an Arabic fighter in 1191, out to assassinate the nine Western leaders of the Third Crusade. There is more to the story than that though making it more than simple historical adventure it first seems.Since it's developed by many of the same team behind Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, it's no surprise to find the game using many of the same ideas. With the bold claim that you can climb on or over anything in the game world that sticks out more than two inches, this allows incredible freedom of movement, with a style of acrobatics heavily influenced by Parkour/free running. The game also innovates in terms of combat, with each of the face buttons controlling a different area of the body, rather like a marionette. As such one button controls the feet, one your open hand, one your weapon hand and the other your head. As an assassin stealth plays an important role in the game too, but here it's often a case of hiding in plain sight as you mill around inside large crowds of people. Everyone will react to you realistically though, so if you go around pushing people out of the way, or even killing them, the crowd will react and report you. With stunning graphics and genuinely innovative gameplay this is destined to be one of the most important releases of the year.
HARRISON DENT
|
|
Write a review for Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360) and share your thoughts with others.
View All Amazon Customer Reviews...
"Not quite..." - 17 November 2007
I'm still not sure on assassin's creed...I'm about 3/4s of the way through and things bother me.
Firstly though, graphically this game is amazing, an hour ago i was sat on top of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the brain just stops thinking, its just stunning. Even little things, the horse animation, the sword fighting and Altair's cloak just screams next gen at you. Likewise the control system is innovative and reasonably easy to get to grips with. This leads on to the games best moments. Free Running. Running from your assassinated target you swing through a market stall, run up a wall, swing onto the roof and begin jumping from roof to roof, beam to beam as you outpace your (quite intelligent) pursuers. It can be frantic, it can be graceful, it is always the best bit of the game.
But just like the Spiderman games, where web slinging was the best bit, the missions that aren't big assassinations but involve you on the ground, are the big downer. Save a citizen mission? Means kill the guards around her/him. It gets you useful rewards...but there's about 12 in each section of each city. 12 nearly identical swordfights. Or maybe you want to get more information on your target? How about sitting on a bench and pressing a button? Thats literally the extent of an evesdropping mission, and (excusing the informer missions) thats about the level of many of the other information missions. Contrast that simplicity however, with actually moving through the city at street level. As you progress through the game the streets get nastier and nastier, always under suspicion you end up shuffling through the massive cities to avoid suspicion, unless you take to the roofs which is harder than ever because more vigilent guards start attacking random climbers now...
There are other flaws too, the ridiculous safe spots for losing guards, the complete lack of empathy with your character, the annoying cuts to the futuristic side story and an oddly large number of clipping errors.
Overall? Brilliant free running, incredible graphics, entertaining assassinations...let down by the intervening missions, an alternating difficulty level, and a host of minor niggles.
|
"subofire" - 21 November 2007
This game looks and sounds great, but omg how dull is it. The storyline is slow and boring, and the repetitive missions are tideous to say the least. What a waste of 4O quid, I will be tradeing this for mass effect on the 23rd. Dont bother buying you will only waste 20 hours of your life.
|
"shiney but with little depth..." - 1 December 2007
to be perfectly honest this is probably one of the best looking games ive ever seen - the characters movements are realistic and smooth and the control system is natural and easy to get to grips with fairly quickly and this is alot of fun to play ..... fot the first hour or so then you realise that in gaming terms this is a bit like a supermodel: pretty but a bit shallow.
I had expected or hoped for something to rival GTA in expanse of play and in game missions and options sadly tho this is where the game falls on its arse!
The main story missions are repetitive - kill the archers / sneek in / hack and slash till your objective dies / run like bejesus. The side missions are also repetitive collect flags, free stupid citizens and after a while you just get pissed off as they just get in the way. The between mission cut scenes are simply infuriating and slow the process down to a crawl by trying to explain an underlying plot, just as you are starting to enjoy yourself.
Dont get me wrong - there's fun to be had with assassins creed - sneeking up on someone and taking them out with your hidden blade is very satisfying and the free-running aspect of the characters' abilities is entertaining - but as far as longevity goes this is a short stay im afraid and its annoying because it could have been so much more - the bare bones are there: its as if they neglected content over looks just to get it out pre-christmas. Maybe assassins creed 2 will give us some quality to go along with the quantity, but who knows!
My advice is rent this before purchase - its worth a look but not for more than 2 nights for £2.50!
|
"Putting the 'Ass' in Assassin? Not quite, but almost." - 7 December 2007
Assassin's Creed is an odd one. On the one hand you have this visual feast of a game with a seemingly enormous game world to explore and a riveting storyline pushing you to play on, and on the other you have a limited game that becomes insanely repetitive after the first couple of hours with annoying stealth mechanics, random combat that doesn't seem to factor in skill at all and frustrating AI. It sounds bad, but somehow it managed to be fun in spite of some really ruinous sounding flaws.
Firstly, I hated the 'blending' in the game the most personally. In order to avoid detection in the crowds, you have to move so slow it would take an hour to get from one part of the city to another? That can't be right. It was easier on most occasions to just kill all the guards and run to where I was going, killing guards as they appeared, which seems to render the stupidly stiff and slow stealth part of the gameplay pointless in my eyes. Games don't always need to move at a lightning pace, but give better alternatives than 'walk at a quarter speed to avoid fighting' a bit more often. Blending sucks, and ruins the flow of the game.
Next up, combat. Good lord, is there anything to this? It seemed to be completely random. You basically either attack constantly until your opponent decides not to block anymore, or you counterattack constantly until Altair decides to MAYBE counter with an attack that will kill your attacker(It happens less than you might expect). It feels way too dependent on chance and out of your control and can be very frustrating in scenes where you are ambushed by large groups of enemies(With one scene in particular near the end preceding a boss fight being just terribly frustrating to the point I wondered if it was worth trying to even finish the game).
Lastly, yes, the game is every bit as repetitive as you've heard. You repeat the same handful of tasks constantly throughout the game, to the point you'll often be desperate for the assassination part of the game to actually kick in. The sub quests are so cheap and unrewarding they add nothing to the game either by the way. Collect flags? What do I get out of it?
In spite of this though, it really is quite joyous at times to just run(and free run) around the cities and towns in the game just admiring the gorgeous visuals, and the assassinations in the game are often quite fun, despite the annoying hoops you have to jump through to get to them.
It IS a fun game basically, but only some of the time, the rest it's an exercise in patience and endurance, and no game should feel like that.
Not crap, but a long way from brilliant.
|
"Gobsmacking Graphics; Gameplay is Like a Smack in the Gob" - 3 January 2008
Assassins Creed gets top marks for style. The graphics are astounding and everything about it is just so slick, even down to the loading screen. For the first hour or so of playing the game you'll be perfectly happy just wandering around and basking in how gorgeous everything looks.
However, the gameplay itself is somewhat lacking. Assassins creed bascially consists of 5 or 6 "sub-games" (such as pick-pocketing or flag collecting) that you have to complete again and again.
And again and again.
And again.
It gets very repetetive and strangely doesn't seem to get any harder as the game progresses. These little tasks can be fun enough if you only play the game in short bursts but play for any sustained amount of time and you'll quickly get bored.
I won't be giving anything away by mentioning the twist that the game has as it's revealed in the first scene. Your character is actually in the present day and is experiencing his ancestor's memories through the use of a machine called the Animus. This concept is fair enough, but the present day scenes are just so poorly done. They jarringly pull you out of the action of the 12th century only to make you sit through a long and boring bit of dialogue that is un-skipable. You're then left to wander around a featureless office basically until you walk into your bedroom and click on the bed to go to sleep - why make you do this every time?
The developers have obviously gone to a lot of trouble to keep the game world looking historically acurate which makes it all the more bizarre when you are given tasks such as "I've left 30 flags scattered around the city - go collect them for me in 30 seconds".
All in all the game looks amazing, is moderately fun in small doses but given the game's potential it's ultimately pretty disappointing.
|
"Play it for an hour...you've played everything" - 15 January 2008
This in many ways is a spiritual brother to Bioshock. I say this because both are gorgeous, both do a very good job of creating a unique atmosphere and both spent so much time creating the enironment you end up with an oddly dull game where the core game play repeats endlessly and not in a good way.
After the initial enthusiasm of "oh look I can jump from building to building" or "wow the hand to hand combat is slick", and finally the "the view from the top of the spire is amazing"...um that's about it. It's a very empty, medieval version of GTA.
The 3 cities are quite different in look but not in terms of game play meaning you just keep doing the same thing over and over again everywhere you go.
The modern sections of the plot are dull and you long to be back in the 12th century everytime you're out of it so why have them?
I can't wait for Assasin's Creed 2 which I am sure will remedy a lot of the faults here but in the meantime borrow a copy for an evening but don't buy it.
|
"style over content.." - 18 January 2008
For me, AC was probably the most eagerly anticipated game since I got my 360. It looked like being an amalgamation of some of the finest aspects of various genre games to have gone before, Thief 3, Hitman, etc, but tied together with a unqiue operating system and some superb graphics. So what do you get? Well, to be honest a pretty dull game that just totally fails to engage. It's an incredibly linear experience, crammed full of overly long cut sequences, repetitive missions and very little atmosphere. As if that wasn't bad enough, it's all linked together by an INCREDIBLY irritating and pointless 'regressive memory' theme that stifles the pace and is quite frankly the most worthless idea in video games history. The assassinations lack the freedom, planning and stealth elements of similar games, the 'awareness' meters are unrealistic and in places a bit silly. (I have escaped the guards and am out of sight, but I still have to dive into a haystack...??). The revolutionary aspects of the control system are pretty mundane, it's basically context sensitive, which for the most part just strips away your sense of control. I.E I scaled a wall, grabbed some knobbly bits, pulled myself up a ledge, balanced on a pole, and jumped accross 20 beams all without really doing much except pressing one button. to be honest it's more reminiscent of the old Dragon's Lair games! Stealth kills are near impossible, because the stealth element is so neglected, and so it basically ends up being a run around and hack things game. The graphics, sound music, and acting is fantastic however, and I'm sure those after a more linear experience will probably get a kick out of it, however, I was expecting something very special, and assassin's creed simply isn't. DEFINITELY rent this first!
|
"Assasin's Creed " - 26 January 2008
This game had so much hpye and expectations and heavily let down, similar to the Activision Spiderman series this Ubisoft title is extremely repetaive and is by no means a game to buy, If you are thinking of it then I advise renting it, it's a game you can complete within a few days and a game you won't rush back to playing.
|
"GTA with horses and swords" - 6 February 2008
Here we are at last, a game that truly screams next gen. Having owned my 360 for 6 months or so I was beginning to think all i would ever play would be games that were originally conceived for the last generation of consoles but here we are with an absolute beauty.
Essentially think GTA in 12th Century middle east and you are close to getting an idea of whats expected. Missions, cities and a little combat to get the juices flowing. This is much less Splinter Cell than you may be wanting, but as far as I am concerned that can only be a good thing.
Graphics are all you could have asked for. Presented so beautifully that if this game were a woman she would be Angelina Jolie, its that sexy.
The training system is soooo good that it is far less complicated to play that it might look and this helps with selling the package.
Gameplay has yet to wane, but I can see it getting a bit repetitive after a while. The staying power will undoubtedly be the desire to see more of this stunning world.
Its might not be great, but its the first sign for me that the next gen truly pushes what we can expect from games designers and is a great piece of bragging ware. Oh for a crossbow.
|
"Beautiful, flawed but still fun." - 11 March 2008
I think the key to enjoying this game is not to have read the pre game hype. Many of the people ranting about how let down they felt seem to have raised their expectations too high by reading all the fuss that is generated before a big company like Ubisoft releases anything. Just my humble opinion but I think that rating this game less than 3 stars is pretty unfair. Let me share my thoughts:
The Positives:
This is graphically one of the most beautiful console games I have ever seen. The view is 3rd person - which in my opinion is waaay better than the much over-used 1st person - and the characters movement and animation is smooth and realistic. The controls are well explained to you through the use of a tutorial mission and the missions increase in difficulty as you learn more skills. The stealth aspects of the game are well done and I feel that they are much more realisitc than the hitman titles were. For instance; in hitman, when you were meant to be blending in with a crowd, you could pretty much get away with running up behind your target and just taking about 1 or 2 steps in stealth mode. Not so here. Do that in assasins creed and the guards will have you in a heart beat. There are also many other stealth skills (other than killing) worked into the game such as eaves dropping and pickpocketing. However, as I played the game I found that the most fun was to be had simply "free running" over the rooftops and spires of the city - to me that was a fun game on its own!!!
The Negatives:
As I said in my title this game does have its flaws. Not the least of which is the non-stealthy combat, which esstially consists of smacking the "x" button really fast. Not exactly challenging - but then again, open hack and slashing is not really the point of this game. A further irritation was the part of the game where you are "in the present", so to speak. Although the majority of the game is set in the past, the flashes to the present leave you wandering a lab with essentially nothing to do waiting for a whole bunch of dialogue to play out. Boring. Don't know what possesed them to incorporate this into the game. Finally, the game is very linear, which no-one seemed to care about years ago but having since been spoiled by the likes of Oblivion, Mass effect, GTA 3, Fable etc seems to be a common complaint. I do feel that it should be remembered that this is not an RPG however. Not really fair to expect that it would be.
In summary, I'd say get it. It's beautiful fun. But don't expect a revolutionary game because it isn't.
|
|
| Sponsored Links
|
|
Official Xbox 360 Magazine
|
|
|