Assassin's Creed Comparison and Discussion

Assassin's Creed Discussion and Comparisons

What can be said of Assassin's Creed can fill up volumes.
As one of the definitive titles of next gen console and pc ported games, it certainly lived up to its expectations.
For those of you who played, you might immediately love this game for its beautiful presentation, unique design, interesting characters and involving gameplay. Of course alot can also be said about its negatives.

I am sure to other AC players, the game presented both an unique game play experience and a source of frustration at times.

First of all, the entire game genre confuses me, its not really a rpg in the traditional since, and its too story involved for an adventure game. I cant put any grasp on what to make of its category.

Secondly, this game can be compared to other classics out there and does them better in some areas.

Some games off the top of my head are:

Prince of Persia
Spinter Cell
Mass Effect

Thirdly, this game just wowed me in its graphical presentation. I was able to play the game on max settings in 1280x800 minus shadows on 2 and multi threading on 1 using just a 2.2ghz t7500 and an OCed 8600m gt (in DX9). It looks incredible and made the gameplay way more enjoyable.

My review for this game :

Graphics and Sound: for what the requirements are and what the output is, this game's got it down. People often rave about the atmosphere that bioshock creates and point to it as quintessential for next gen titles. This game has definately done bioshock proud, there are huge city scapes teaming with inhabitants, rooftop canvases that'll make Venice hang in shame. The sun is rendered so well that it'll make you want to stop and stare at it in the middle of a rooftop chase. Lets just say that if 14 century israel looked anything like it did in AC, it would have been an extremely popular place.

Gameplay: - smooth, easy to use controls after a medium learning curve which makes leaping from roof top to roof top, assassination and combat very enjoyable. There is a huge sense of joy in the freedom to explore here. Your basic sandbox, the city can be separated into two lvls, the streets and the rooftops. In the streets you can walk and run but will need to watch your actions very closely since high profile actions such as drawing your sword or 'acting irregular' will set the guards on you. On the rooftop is where freedom resides. No crowds, few guards, and you can basically climb and jump onto anything and everything, saved the mountains in the background. Inadvertently, this creates a fun and internesting synthesis of two very different types of gameplay: stealth on the streets and adventure acrobatics up above.
Combat is not as creative as it could be, you'll still need to learn to time your attacks and blocks and there are different situations to use your four choices of weapon: fist, throwing knife, sword, and hidden dagger. However in most encounters you'll much rather pull out a sword (its crucial importance will be understood in the gameplay) and after that the game turn into hack and slash combat. But the fact that combat should only happen during semi-to crucial moments makes up for it not feeling as fresh.


Game Design: accomplishing tasks will sometimes involve time slowing motion, time lapse and other tricks. Very unique and interesting. The story flows seamlessly as you accomplish major tasks. There arent big lapses in between, and the process of completing minor objectives will let you explore the majority of the world. This integration makes for a very story focused yet go @ your own pace way of playing through. The game doesnt let you customize your characters or give you an inventory at all. There is no task journal and the way the game reminds you of the objectives are by placing markers on your maps. I think this is a very different approach to a character focused rpg/adventure hybrid, but to me it does have its good points. For example it takes the focus away from character management to action management. Getting out of tough situations will not depend on having a +7 mace but rather the method and skill to which you manage your actions.

The mission's you'll have to undertake will prove to be repetitive. Everything you do will revolve around eaves dropping, interrogation, pickpocketing, fighting off guards, completing the assassination and running away successfully. You need to repeat this process 9 times. Its saving grace is that it does get harder as you move later into the game and so you'll have to hone Attair's combat and acrobatic skills and pay more attention to your actions. Completing a hard mission will leave you with a sense of accomplishment. There is however a limit to how difficult the game gets, so once you've completely mastered your movements and actions, you can basically do things in the game in a breeze.

If theres one thing to be learned from playing this game, its that you'll really need to love being an assassins. Other than the short list of people you'll need to assassinate, there are guards who gets in the way that you'll eventually need to kill, annoying bums that block your path that you'll need to stick a knife into, archers on the rooftop that you'll need to sink your throwing knifes in, all of this becomes the focus and your one and only means of progressing through the story, learning both whom your victims are, and higher motives that set your character and authorities above to this path. In the end you'll find out who YOU Attaire was in the past and Your present day counterpart is. The story is tightly intertwined with the action, you're fighting to get to the story and the fighting can be very beautiful if you so let it.


Notice the blur around the character, game play is actually slowed for the duration of that scene

Story: interesting way of telling a middle age crusade tale, lets just put it at that for fear of a spoiler.

Closing comments: for a game that you dont quite know where to place it, Assassin's creed does quite well @ quenching that thirst for exploration, depth, amazement and sheer blood lust that we seem to want in a game. System requirements and pricing should be the only thing that prevents you from checking this title out.

If you're looking for a very open ended game with a variety of tasks and customization options, this game will not be for you.


Things that the game could have done better @. (naturally since i liked the game very much, i have few complaints, but i will be posting other people's comments here)

Points so far
Repetitive gameplay: close to all of your objectives will center around assassination, so if you get bored of being an assassins this game doesn't offer much of anything else. Typical formula for an AC mission: eavesdrop, pickpocket, interrogate, assassinate, run awayy!!

Dumb AI: AIs combat system doesnt make for much of a challenge, combined with the fact that you can escape law very easily which means that even if you can just kill inconvenient guards and fleeing for your life instead of tapping into the stealth aspects of the game, making the game more one dimensional than it should be.

No down loadable Content!!

Anyways just wanted to start this forum for people who played AC to discuss and for people who might be thinking about playing the game to look for answers.
Please share any interesting ideas, such as ideas for an Assassin's creed 2 if its possible? Favorite villain/side character, etc. Discover any story line incongruency, easter eggs or glitches, etc ect. Enjoy.

 

Nice thread, but you might just want to zoom that leading image down... oh, say to 25% of it's current size.

Edit: In my opinion I'd get rid of the numbers as they don't add anything to your review. Saying that the gameplay is eight out of ten doesn't really tell us much. 'Swhy you read reviews and not just glance at the numbers. Just make all the descriptive text - the stuff you put beside the numbers - fit into a nice meaty paragraph or two, and you have a decent sounding opinion.

 

I'm with mikelx

 

never played it for the computer... i agree with everything but the gameplay. Gameplay was so boring to me. Run up this cathedral get the viewpoint. Save one of three citizens, hear the same speech again. Boss fight where extra intelligence really doesn't help that much. Only reason I did every mission was for the Xbox achievments lol

 

(Viewpoint, pickpocket, eavesdrop, kill the guy) x 9 = assassin's creed

 

prince of persia vs assassin's creed comparison anyone?

 

yeh..also add running away to be anonymous again which is pretty fun. I guess its really fun to explore the city for the first time, after the billionth time its boring of course.

 

It is a really great game, it did get kind of repetitive but I didn't mind that ... I have never played it on PC but I own it for 360 and it is the second best game I have played for it (Mass Effect is #1 in my book ) ... games like this though are meant more for a console controller, not really a mouse and keyboard (but I bet plugging one into my computer would be amazing)

 

Maybe I've said this a few times but doesn't running around rooftops, jumping down crouched onto a crossbeam seeing guards ganging up on civilians...then throwing a knife at a guard and then defeating them all, in particular, finishing the last one by pouncing on him with the hidden knife. You then scale the walls before they have time to say thank you...Is that not THE Batman game everyone has been waiting for? I mean turn fighting into hand to hand, throwing knives into Batarangs and add a grappling hook to climing...Does anyone else see the goldmine Ubisoft is sitting on?

 

Yep, ubisoft did it with prince of persia and now they're just reusing the winning formula. BTW is it not a coincidence that Prince of Persia 2 is coming out in 2009.

I just read a scathing review on assassin's creed here

She basically said that Assassin's creed was meant to be this stealth oriented game and it basically fails at that. Shes really funny at describing why it fails although i dont agree with the critique.

Cause overall at least the way I play assassins creed is a mixture of different styles, half the time im switching between stealth and rambo it up combat, the other half im hopping from roof top to roof top George of the Jungle style. It would be a waste to play the entire game using stealth tactics and narrow scoped to expect the game developers to design it with only that in mind.

She does bring up a good point about improving AI to smartly react to your actions. Sometimes I'll jump down from a rooftop and suddenly land next to a guard, and he's like dozing off..
What do you guys think.

 

i steered clear as i thought it would not run on my majorly oced 8600m gs but with you guys with 8600m gts i might gived it a try

 

Lets face it...this game was one of the biggest let downs. Repetitive, rather boring...but hey it sure looked nice!

 

One of the worst ever games on the PC. Doesn't natively support 64 bit OSes. I am running Vista Ultimate 64 bit and this game crashed 11 times in an hour. Uninstalled it and sold it off to my friend. Biggest debacle as it can't even support 64 bit. Then how can they claim it to be next generation.

 

I play the game on XP x64 bit.. so I don't really know what issue your having, the game did crash quite a bit, but there was a timeframe for it, it would crash once every 3 hours, so it wasn't that bad. The game was pretty fun, I didn't really do the missions as yea, they were extremely repetitive, I just stuck to what you HAD to do, then assassinated the guy. And aside from that just ran around and had fun messing with the AI.

I think it was fun, all the way to the end, All of the side missions are quick, and can be beaten in about 20 seconds, or 1 minute or so if it's a race. So they never really got too repetitive to me, I just did them and moved on. It would be nice if there were something like 20-30 different side missions rather than the 3 or 4. Controls for PC though were just SOOOO much better than when I tried it on the xbox360 though, there's so much precision.

 

Assassin's Creed is one of the most monotonous and boring games I have ever played--spanning twenty years of video gaming.

 

Meh.. i'll have to remind you. its Ubisoft, they make the games look good .. Alright but sometimes they forget some elements in thier games..

 

I still think that the sword fights are the best so far compared to any other action RPG? Take the acclaim oblivion for example, its just attack or block. Whats the point of getting godly weapons if you're just gonna kill someone in 1 hit with it. And they're not even fun to use. I just cant think of another game that did this better.

 

Come, thats a huge overstatement.

 

Thanks for telling me how I feel.

I appreciated that very much.

AC is just as atrocious as Ghostbuster and Superman for the N.E.S..

 

I loved Assassin's Creed!!! Played it at my friends house today on pc. The controls for PC are rather awkward needs strong system . I have the 360 version and its way better than the PC version.

 

It has the looks, but seems really repetitive. Mind you I haven't yet played the game, I've just watched my roommate play it a few times. Is there any change of scenery at all; the level design looks great? Games that have the same look throughout the game get really boring.

 

If i am telling you what to feel, and how to feel, and if its working, then i feel as powerful as god himself...

I posted that comment to push you to defend your view so people viewing the thread can actually have something to respond to. I know you and a lot of people are put off by assassin's creed. But plain blurting it out doesn't help with the discussion.

When you said its worse than any game in the past 20 years, I had a distinct image of someone playing frogger on an old mac. AC is way better than frogger, and can you think of anything more repetative than frogger? so thats what i mean by an overstatement.

Its still cool that you hate the game, but comments like that just surprise me.

 

Yeh, the game maintains the same atmosphere throughout. You're stuck in 14th century middle eastern cities. The lay out and design of each city is distinct and different and you can really feel it when walking in the streets but i guess when you're running really fast leaping from roof to roof, it all feels the same after a while.

The thing with designing semi realistic games is that there's only so much you can do for creative atmospheres without stepping totally outside the realm of believability. This game tried things out on the realistic side and i guess thats why its not everyone game.

Which city/cities do everybody prefer.
Jerusalem is my favorite, i think there are fewer hiding spots so its more difficult and fun when trying to escape.

 

I found the game hugely repetitive. You basically go to each and every city, perform the same old missions, kill some dude, and that's it. Again. And again. And again.

Pah. Back to Prince Of Persia, I say.

 

I still cant believe how well they've made the game look considering what little hardware you'll need to run it well. 8600mgt ddr3 OCed will run it mAX settings on 1280x800 looks gorgeous and its running stable @30 fps, I cant believe im getting this much mileage out of the game using only mid range hardware.

Crysis and other 'good looking performance eaters' has a lot to learn from this game