Bad Moon Rising
If you pay any attention to the internet, and I’m sure you’re all more than aware what a risky proposition that is, you’ll find a number of people throwing the word “disappointment” around like it’s the very hottest of hot potatoes. Put an ear to the ground and you’ll hear the rumbling of claims that November was the month that tore the rug of eager anticipation from beneath the feet of gamers and sent them clattering on to the unforgiving floorboards of malcontent and querulousness (pretentious? Moi?). While there were more than a few games contributing to last month’s reputation by failing to live up to popular expectation, there’s one alleged offender that I’ve wanted to write about for some time and that’s “Assassin’s Creed” on the X-Box 360.
Slipping off topic for a moment, I read a couple of days ago (in the wholly reliable Metro newspaper) that Dougray Scott narrowly missed out on the part of James Bond to Daniel Craig, and while Mr. Craig has now cemented himself as the new 007, Dougray has had to settle for playing opposite a bald man in the film adaptation of Hitman. That is disappointment. What we have in the case of Assassin’s Creed is nothing of the sort. It has its flaws, and its frustrations, but the experience of playing it is as far away from disappointment as 47 is from Bond.
By way on an introduction it’s fair to say that Assassin’s Creed is a schizophrenic jaunt that can’t decide if it’s a period piece or a science fiction saga. As a result is sits somewhat jarringly in between the two like the picture Ridley Scott would have made had he decided to shoot Kingdom of Heaven and Blade Runner at the same time, and on the same canister of film. Predominantly set in the Holy Land at the time of the Crusades, the convoluted story shuttles between the perspectives of Altair, a master assassin attempting to bring peace to the troubled region and Desmond, his distant modern-day descendant. While this wouldn’t normally be a complaint in an industry where plots mainly revolve around killing the bad guy and rescuing the princess, it’s the manner in which it’s presented that causes annoyance; being pulled out of your role as a 12th century death dealer and forced into the frame of Desmond, an ineffectual and imprisoned bartender, doesn’t do anything for the flow of the game, especially when it leaves the player jabbing at the X button in the vain hope that Desmond will somehow take out his captors with whatever pointy instrument happens to come to hand.
Complaints about the irrelevant sci-fi backdrop aside, the game itself has a number of problems that strike within the first few hours of play. The first of which is the decision to let you start the game with Altair as an apparent master of all the required assassination techniques, then having him mysteriously and inexplicably forget them all in the space of about ten minutes. I can understand why it was introduced, to provide some sense of character progression, but the fact that a simple action such as stopping yourself being thrown around like a rag-doll (something most non-assassins learned to do while dodging bullies in the primary school playground) takes a good four of five hours to relearn is encroaching on the tedious.
On top of this, the combat and the game’s trademark free-running (which allows you to clamber over buildings and jump across rooftops like a monkey on methamphetamine) are repetitive and feel overly simplistic. You could say that this makes both the combat and movement intuitive, but all that really means is that one button does pretty much everything. For instance, a combination of perilous drops and a blind jumps requiring inch-perfect precision, the sort that would have Jackie Chan looking for an alternative route, can often be overcome simply by running at them with the A button held down.
The game’s mission (and I use the singular here as the nine you are asked to complete are simply clones of the first, presented in different accents) is part detective story, part assassination and almost entirely stealth free. While you may be under the impression that the game is about the poisoned blade in the crowd and the unseen assailant, it more often than not comes down to a steeplechase through the crowded streets as you run your mark down in plain sight of, well, just about everybody. Meanwhile, the detective element of the mission is seemingly there only to give purpose to the viewpoints: high points of the city that can be scaled to reveal the locations of various clues. The viewpoints themselves are really nothing more than places where the engine can show off its impressive draw distance. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s possible to overstate how beautiful the cities look, and the views from these lofty locations are both stunning and vertigo inducing in equal measure. However, you sometimes get the impression that the visuals came first and the game was built around them.
By this point, you’re probably wondering why, with all the criticism I’ve been throwing at it in the previous six hundred words, I’ve decided that this game isn’t a disappointment. The reason is simple: It’s a great deal of fun. For all the holes you can pick in it, and believe me you could pick enough holes in it to make its Jerusalem sandstone look like pumice, it still emanates fun like a radioactive clown. Escaping guards, leaping from minarets and quietly dropping Templars in abandoned back-alleys, all of it is so ridiculously enjoyable that you don’t care that you’re doing it for the umpteenth time. Therein lies the problem, write it out on paper and there are more crosses in the con’s column than the pro’s. There’s no arguing with that, however, such a list is incapable of capturing what drove me to happily sink thirty hours into completing the game (and making an attempt on all of its side quests) or my sadness that, having completed it, I was no longer able to access the game world. The game manages to convey a real sense of tension while dispatching your targets (or fleeing when you’re rumbled) , and anxiety when dangling from a ledges one hundred feet off the ground, and it often succeeds in getting the adrenaline flowing. It’s able to inspire genuine excitement and anticipation, and that counts for a lot.
In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed Assassin’s Creed in spite of its issues, so much so that I would seriously consider recommending it as one of the titles of the year, and while I wished they’d finished this one properly, I can’t say I’m not looking forward to a sequel.
7/10