When I first heard of Assassin’s Creed, I didn’t pay much attention because unless they’re Metal Gear: Solid, stealth games don’t hold my attention for long. Reading up on the game before X07, though, I quickly changed my tune.
You play a sneaky assassin, sure. But there’s a lot more going on. The game is being developed by the team behind Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. It has a historical setting, Jerusalem in 1191, and the game’s recreation is apparently as historically accurate as you can expect when talking of a city from a thousand years ago. The game’s plot is true-ish to history, as well; it concerns the hashashein sect of Islam, the hash-smoking cult who gave assassins their name. The hashashein operated during the Crusades, but their targets were more likely to be oppressive Islamic authorities than marauding Christians and they had a strict code about what constituted a good killing: it had to be public so as to make an impression, but not from a distance (dagger good, arrow bad) and must not involve the killing of innocents. It’s interesting to consider this in the context of modern-day terrorism.
But on to the game. Assassin’s Creed follows a hashashein member and the various gameplay modes are based on the cult’s murder-related value system. There’s a mode in which you are trying to get close to the target without arousing the suspicion of the guards; then, you often have to chase the target through crowded streets; there is of course the combat mode; and there’s a run-away-and-hide-somewhere mode as well. Or at least that’s how the demo I saw played out.
The control system is unique and seemed like the one thing that could mar an otherwise promising game. Or, it could like totally kick ass. Like Gears of War and its multipurpose ‘A’ button, the controls are context-sensitive. When this works, the game can be much easier to play – I triggered a whole sequence of rooftop leaping and grabbing and flipping simply by holding down a button and pointing in a given direction. You don’t need to carefully time a button press to make a jump. But when it doesn’t work, it can be confusing and frustrating, with your character performing unexpected moves because you happened to be close to a table/wall or whatever. Similarly, when you have different modes of gameplay, it can be tricky simply keeping track of all the different controls for each. That said, only the combat controls seemed substantially different, the other modes were more or less the same. And it should be said that I had only the barest runthrough of the controls, and good in-game tutorials may well overcome any confusion I felt – or rather any confusion I saw the potential for.
And fuggit: controls be damned, this historical game has some mysterious sci-fi elements to it. The rep wasn’t talking about it, but it’s everywhere in the game: highlight graphics to indicate the person you’re targeting are quite obviously digital in nature. There’s an ‘eagle vision’ mode that looks like something out of a Tom Clancy game. And when you finally kill one of your targets, you go into a death confessional mode (they had a fancier catchphrase for it) that takes place in some white-backgrounded nether realm, Matrix-style. Something’s up, and Ubi are transmuting the mystery into hype, like alchemists of publicity. Shit, I’ll buy that for a dollar.
The game has a sandbox aspect to it. When you’re not on a mission, you can stroll around the city as you please. There is some manner of system for rewarding you for finding hard-to-reach places, which I think meant the rooftops. That was an appealing aspect. Like I said, I’m not much for the sneaks, but count me in for the huge leaps from rooftop to rooftop, and the hundred-foot swan dives into bales of hay. This game could be the Crackdown of the dark ages. The Ubisoft guy did point out that the missions were open to different tactics, so you could leap your way to the murderizin’ of some poor plutocrat instead of blending in with the crowds. Distractions work well too, as he demonstrated by throwing a hobo from a rooftop, which preoccupied the guards as our hero slipped past. I guess you’d lose points on the “don’t harm innocents” scale though.
Another thing worth mentioning: cutscenes. The rep claimed the game has none. Cutscene-like things may be triggered and play out, which we witnessed, but you remain in control of the character at all times and can simply walk away. Also, you can press a button to toggle through different angles on a scene while it’s happening. In my eyes, those are still cutscenes, but at least they’re trying out new things.
The rep echoed a lot of the online literature by bragging about the “social stealth” aspect, i.e. getting lost in the crowd. To be honest, I wouldn’t have thought of this at all had he not mentioned it. I think that’s one of those things that’s exciting to developers since hardware limitations didn’t let them do large, smart crowds before, but to the relatively naive player like myself, it’s nothing too thrilling. (Aren’t there lots of crowds in Oblivion too?)
All in all, this is one to keep an eye on.
I don’t know why they got their knickers into such a twist. Anyone could have guessed that the first major foray into a game about flying dragons and aerial dragon combat wasn’t going to be perfect, but damn, those guys are pissed!
I didn’t think it was so completely terrible. In fact, I actually want to continue playing to see where it goes. Sure, I can’t play it with anyone because I look silly jerking and moving the controller around (and the Sixaxis is no cute Wiimote) but it was kinda fun to use the controller to fly a dragon. The story is kinda generic with two warring factions with different belief systems, but you definitely get the sense that your side may not be as good as they claim and there is most likely a traitor in your ruling class but whatever. I think the fact that you get to fly a dragon that shoots streams and balls of fire is cool.
I think “hardcore” gamers hate the Sixaxis. I admit, it sucks that you can’t turn that control scheme option off, that doesn’t really make sense, but why is there such a mad hate on for any new kind of gameplay? It really is kinda interesting to fly by moving the controller about, it’s that simple! I didn’t seem to think tight turns were a problem, but then again I used 180s alot to turn myself around when I needed to. That took a bit of getting used to because you have to jerk the controller up and hold it so that the command goes through properly but I adjusted. This whole camera issue they had in that review, well, I didn’t have any problems with the camera. Maybe I am just not technical about stuff like that but I didn’t have any problems focusing on where I was or what I was doing I just picked where I wanted to go or what I wanted to shoot at and then bam, done.
The whole mission gameplay is kind boring though. It reminds me of like a fighter pilot game with the typical “take care of this cargo ship” or “take out this many of their cannon ships before it’s too late” which is kinda meh. I would have loved like just flying my dragon through a sandbox world trying to discover the conspiracy and running into various bad guys I had to destroy or bases I had to hunt down on my own. This “we’re being attacked here let’s go” stuff is, again, meh. Yet I forgive all of this because I’m not flying a plane with guns and bombs I’m flying a dragon that shoots fire out of its mouth. Have I mentioned that already?
When Ianding on the ground, again I had no problem adjusting to the ground controls or the camera and my favourite thing to do was just run straight into a crowd of soldiers and swing the controller around to take them out with the dragon’s swiping move. Fun times! And as for targeting, again I don’t know what they’re talking about because I targeted whatever dragon I was facing with no problem and then slammed into with no problem. You can go into this flight mode where you line your dragon up with the enemy and then jerk the controller towards it and your dragon crashes into it. I wish there was a rumble pack for that but no biggie.
I need to play more to find out if it’s really that bad. Maybe they are right, maybe it is a horrible, horrible waste of time. I just don’t agree at the moment. I still want to continue with this game and that is huge since there isn’t alot to play on the PS3 for me right now. I want to continue with Folklore when the full game is released and I still have to check out Warhawk (but being multiplayer only is a bit of a letdown for me since I don’t have any friends that actually have a PS3…). For now Lair is fun to just hop into and play through a few chapters (missions).
Gamespot really annihilated the game in their review and though I respect that they should do that and game mechanics and technical specs are very important to alot of people (and the thirst for a fulfilling title on the PS3 is getting worse and worse) I just really think they could have eased up a bit. Seriously, if you like mission based flight games this one is no different you just need to relearn how to fly and get used to a movement based control system. This is only going to get more popular with future titles because Sony is super proud of their Sixaxis baby and want people to love it and the quickest way to get people to love it is to ram it down their throats until they have no other option but to enjoy it (or move to the 360).
After reading Gamespot you just have this hugely negative sense of the game in your mind. You feel like you hate it based on their words alone. That’s the sad thing. In this gamer world alot of people listen to reviews before trying things out for themselves. Being a gamer is all about play and enjoying yourself. Only you can decide what makes you happy in that respect, not someone else’s review. There are loads of games out there that get bad reviews but people still love to play them. You don’t have to play the blockbuster titles and nothing else.
I just think if you have a PS3 try it for yourself before listening to Gamespot. I think Lair goes have some drawbacks but it is a playable game. So try Lair for yourself before you go baaing alot with the rest of them simply because it’s easier to condemn and hate a game than to try something different.