Assassin's Creed for the PC arrives today!

STEALTH, ACTION, AND A SPOT OF SIGHT-SEEING...

Product Assassin’s Creed
Price £24.99
Web assassinscreed.uk.ubi.com
Age rating 16+

Imagine the massively popular adventure-exploration game Tomb Raider spliced with Prince of Persia - and you might just get a hint of what Assassin’s Creed is all about.

Assassin’s Creed is actually set in medieval times, at the time of the Crusades, and your job is simply to assassinate political figures on the side of both the warring Crusades and the Muslims.  There’s a twist of Science Fiction proportions within: but unless you want a headache reading this, it’s best that you find out for yourself.

A head for heights...

To be a successful assassin, you must use stealth, and because of this you spend most of your time aloft buildings to keep hidden from view and to allow you to easily home in on your prey before a kill.

With a simple control system, climbing up these buildings is pretty easy and immensely satisfying. If you’ve ever wanted to do a spot of rock climbing mixed with some Parkour but don’t have the head for heights, then this is ideal escapism; sweaty palms ‘n all.

Your movement in-game is incredibly lifelike, and because Assassin’s Creed makes use of the advanced DirectX10 graphics in Windows Vista, your surroundings compliment this by looking suitably realistic too. Birds hover above, reacting to your presence if you climb to a rooftop; flags blow convincingly in the wind; and the sun makes buildings glow beautifully.

Although the meat of the game is spent doing assassinations, there’s a wide variety of side missions such as collecting flags hidden around cities, or killing Templars; super soldiers who are incredibly hard to kill.

These side missions are good fun, and they certainly pad-out the game, but never are you given an indication of what you’re actually achieving by doing them, and because they’re somewhat gruelling, you’ll probably give up before you find out.

A few hours in...

Parts of the game are impressive, like when you’re doing your best to evade capture post-assassination, leaping from building to building, or just sneaking up behind someone who’s been troubling you and planting a knife in the back of their neck.

But despite these brief moments of exhilaration, Assassin’s Creed has some pretty hideous flaws that prevent it from being really good. For starters, climbing buildings and killing people - as fun as it is in the beginning - soon becomes incredibly repetitive, and after a few hours of play, it starts to wear thin.

There’s not really that much stealth involved in the gameplay either. Most of the time, you’ll find yourself in a situation surrounded by a bunch of soldiers where you’ll have to resort to pulling out your sword and frantically hacking them all to death. Thief did the stealth act well - Assassin’s Creed doesn’t do it quite so well.

It’s a shame really, because these nuances aside, Assassin’s Creed pretty much delivers what it promises. It’s Tomb Raider-style action is incredibly enjoyable and it looks the part, but once the initial honeymoon is over, you’ll probably never open the box again.

Our verdict

Buy it if...
You want to explore the entirety of medieval cities as an elite assassin

Don’t buy it if...
You don’t want to shout about your killing - it’s more hack ‘n slash than stealth

The bottom line
Excellent fun for a few hours, but some pretty obvious flaws hold this back from being a great game

3.5/5