Formats: Xbox360, PS3
Format Played: Xbox360
Import: N/A

So, Assassins Creed! I have been waiting for this game for so long and Pre Ordered it before actually seeing any game footage whatsoever! The only thing I had see was the trailer and the design of the character made me want this game alone. Assassins Creed arrived on Friday 16th November from play.com in a shiny pointless metal case which was 2x bigger then the contents. This aside I put in the disk to my dodgy X360 and loaded what seemed to be the trailer! What the hell I’ll watch it again before I play the game! I click start! By the gods I am in the future! Have I picked up the right game? You start off as some guy (Desmond) in the future and everything you play is in the past as Desmond’s ancestor Altair and this scientist is using some sort of matrix system to pull the details from him. Once you travel back the first thing you do is some basic training which teaches you to climb walk through crowds and fight. Once you are starting the game and running around you start with all your weapons but do not get too used to them as they are taken away from you as soon as the first mission is over! And you have to start at the bottom and work your way up. The game consists of you Assassinating 9 leaders around a massive city and I mean massive! As soon as you leave your main town and get on your horse you will see how big the kingdom is divided into four cities from the 12th Century: Jerusalem, Damascus, Acre, and Masyaf. Each city is split into 3 sections which are not fully open until later on. You get a poor and rich area and people will act different to you as you walk around. The first thing I must say is the graphics are simply amazing, you can watch people as they go around and do their day to day tasks like carry wood to places. Not everyone will interact with you but the Cities are packed and people will stop and look at you if you do anything out of the ordinary like climb a wall or kill someone. You can assassinate anyone using your hidden blade but you will be punished if it’s an innocent person. There are people you can interact with these are guards, mental patients who will get in your way buy shoving you or punching you (these can be taken care of with a quick punch), Beggers who you can punch or grab and throw (into market stalls will kill them and attract the attention of the guards but its so funny), Thieves who you later will pickpocket for throwing knives and informers who will give you information for help. In each mission you have to find out about your target by walking the city and listening to people. There are 3 out of 6 things you have to do but it’s worth doing them all. These involve - Interrogation speakers up for information - Eavesdropping, on conversations - Pickpocketing - Working for informants It’s the same for all 9 targets which is why people moan about the game getting to much of the same thing but I enjoy everything and walking around the cities is wonderful and fulfilling in itself. The battle system works well and you can either fight with a small knife or with a sword. You can counter the people you fight and some of the kills are graphic and fun to pull off especially taking on more then 5 guards at a time. You can climb anything in the game but you might have to work out a way to get to the top of what you are climbing. There are high places where you can perform a leap of faith with looks fantastic and an easy way of getting away from guards. Ever seen jump London? Well I call this game Jump Jerusalem, because you can free run along the tops of the city buildings, jumping grabbing ledges, climbing and diving. If you choose to run from the guards there are lots of hiding places to find and get away from them and guards will follow you pretty much everywhere. And don’t think that climbing walls will help you as they will throw rocks at you or archers will shoot you down! So if you are going to climb ladders or walls are quick! In each section you can also help out citizens in trouble who in return will lend you help if you are being chased by guards. They will either grab them or hold them up or you will get scrollers who you can pray with and blend into the background. There also high points to climb and 60 Templar Knights dotted around to take on and kill as well as flags to find in each city and in the kingdom itself. There are a few glitches here and there but noting to worry about on the whole, the things I didn’t like were if you land in water you die! And ever now and then you can’t climb things but always seems to happen when I am being chased. The flag chases I could have done without to! On a whole this is my game of the year so far and up there with my favourite games of all time.