assassin's creed

Assassin's Creed is a third-person stealth game by Ubisoft, released near the end of 2007. I didn't buy it then of course. Too expensive. I bought the game second-hand from eBay last month and have already finished it a few weeks ago.

altaïr the assassin

The setting at the start of the game is in a building belonging to Abstergo Industries in September 2012, where scientists Warren Vidic and Lucy Stillman are working on a project. By the way, Lucy was modelled after and voiced by Kristen Bell. You'll play Desmond Miles, whose ancestor was Altaïr ibn La-Ahad, a member of the Hashshashin, an Assassin Brotherhood, during the Third Crusade of the Holy Land.

altaïr in action

According to the game, the memories of one's ancestors are hidden inside one's DNA and that's why Desmond, also called Subject 17 to Abstergo, is being held there. The company, which is actually run by the Knights Templar, wants to extract information from Desmond involving his ancestor Altaïr. They can do this using a machine called the Animus, which enables the user to replay the memories of his/her ancestor(s) if (s)he was there him/herself.

So that is actually the premise of the game. You're Desmond who's being held in the machine called the Animus, replaying the memories of his ancestor, Altaïr. Altaïr's objective in the game is to assassinate nine historical figures in the year 1191. According to the game's developers, these assassination targets did die in 1191 but not necessarily murdered. In the game, some historical changes were justified by Warren saying that the historical records were altered by the Knights Templar to deceive anyone studying the past.

hmm.. where's the shopping centre?

Now Altaïr needs to kill these men because according to his leader, Al Mualim, the men are taking advantage of the crusade for their own benefits. Before assassinating them, he needs to gather information of their whereabouts and activities to plan the kill. To do this, you'll need to find informers who'll ask you to help them for information. You'll either have to kill some guards or collect flags within a period of time. Besides that, you'll also need to eavesdrop on some conversations, interrogate some preachers and pickpocket letters or maps. After you collect enough information, you're ready to perform the assassination.

You can also save citizens being harassed by soldiers. After saving them, there'll either be vigilantes in that area who will help you if you are being chased by soldiers or a group of scholars where you can blend yourself into to go past guards. You also need to map the cities that you go to by climbing up tall view points. You can then perform the leap of faith, which is jumping from a very high place and landing in a bunch of hay.

proving he's not afraid (of heights) by performing the leap of faith

Although it gets a bit repetitive, I still enjoyed the game. Its uniqueness is that you can climb up walls and towers and run on rooftops. The movements are quite smooth when you get used to it. If you've played Prince of Persia, then you'll be familiar with some of the moves in Assassin's Creed, since they're produced by the same company and also developed by the same people if I'm not mistaken. Oh and there'll be a new Prince of Persia game which is coming out soon and I'll be looking forward to that.

Okay back to Assassin's Creed. The graphics are beautiful. Of course, most games have really cool and more realistic graphics now that there are the Xbox 360 and PS3. You can really enjoy the view of the cities at the tall tower. Even Dini and Wan Aimran praised the graphics when they saw me play. What a bad host I am, playing video games when there are guests in the house!

take that you scum

The fight moves are okay, but there isn't much variety. You can use a hidden retractable blade to perform assassinations and also a sword or knife in fights. There are combo moves when fighting, which are cool, but sometimes Altaïr and/or his enemies go through walls or a nearby tree or rock when doing these combo moves. But I do like the counter attack moves. They're really neat.

There is something that I quite don't like about the game. Altaïr is a trained assassin, who can climb walls easily and clever at blending in the crowd to get unnoticed, but he can't swim. If he falls into a river or the sea, he'll just drown. Come on la, a well-trained assassin should know how to swim. I can't swim of course but I'm not an assassin am I? Heh.

All in all, it's a good game. The ending is a bit mysterious and I really hope that there'll be a sequence to the game to explain the mystery. And if there is one, I hope that there'll be more combo fight moves and Altaïr/Desmond has learned to swim.