Assassin's Creed (PC) (2008)

The climbing is simple, but fun to watch.

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Having played and loved Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (GCN) (2003), I've wanted to play Assassin's Creed for the longest time - both are developed by Ubisoft Montreal. I recently acquired Assassin's Creed: Revelations (2011) (PC) in a Ubisoft bundle during the Steam Summer Sale and that purchase motivated me to buy Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed II (PC) (2010), when they went on sale.

Three Assasins stand on the platforms. Altair is the left-most.

Starting up the game, one of the first sensations felt is confusion. I was given the sense that I was in a tutorial, and yet not. The protagonist awakens to find he is in a machine and is being forced to use it for some people to view his ancestor's memories.

The creepy doctor.

The character goes back under the machine and the player goes through the tutorial. At this point, I had to remap my gamepad buttons to better match the control schemes. The yellow, blue, red, and green buttons weren't matched up with they're expected keys. The pause button and map button were also mapped to strange keys.

Anyways, the tutorial discusses everything you need to know to play the game and you'll get constant reminders throughout the game. It's possible you will get such reminders until you turn them off in the menu screen.

The game starts with a tutorial.

Once you complete the tutorial, which in-game is for stabilizing with the system, you go into your first memory. For the most part, the game for me so far is quite linear. The levels I've played have a straightforward goal and every command is being spoon-fed to me. As such, I have only scratched the surface and I'm still learning a lot of the commands.

Of course, one of the many things I did as soon as I could was sit down on a bench. Another was hopping into a stacking of hay.

One of the first things I did in the village was sit down.

The combat is definitely fun. Pulling off your attacks or counters at the right time results in cool take-downs, which are rewarding to watch. They remind me of Leon's take-downs in Resident Evil 4 (2005) (GCN). The combat, however, isn't acrobatic like in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Instead, it has a more realistic feel to it.

Altair fighting.

The game has great graphics and part of the reason I kept on playing was for the scenery. Since otherwise, as I alluded to above, the game mechanics are currently straightforward and simple. Jumping across platforms and climbing walls is a simple matter of holding the "high profile" button and then holding/pressing the run/jump button. Of course, such simplicity makes the game fluid and, thanks to the graphics, fun to watch.

Eventually you get to a point in the game where all your gear is stripped from you and you essentially have to start over and slowly earn all your weapons and abilities back. At the same time, you learn how to eavesdrop, pick pocket, and interrogate.

All of Altair's gear has been stripped from him.

Tip: During cutscenes, the screen will occasionally flash nucleotides. These are called "glitches" and if the player presses any button in time, the camera view will change, usually to a close-up view of the person speaking.

Supposedly you can cycle through camera views after successfully pressing a button, but I'm not sure how. It might be because I remapped my right analog to looking instead of the action camera and the action camera is controls the viewpoints. I'll remember to experiment.

The Brotherhood leader.

My precious.

In any case, another great experience in the game, one which I forgot about seeing from trailers, is riding a horse. Released on stronger hardware, the game's graphics far exceed that of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii) (2006), making the horse-riding experience a visual pleasure. With that being said, there's yet to be any battles done on horseback, and so far Twilight Princess gets that in its favor. As I side note, I learned today that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii) (2011) doesn't have Epona. Instead, the player travels around on Link's bird named Loftwing.

Horseback riding.

And for now, last but not least, the Leap of Faith. I've watched the trailers over and over. I've seen it done. It's a little less climatic when I make Altair do it, but still fun.