Stab into the past. Assassin's Creed

Name:  Assassin's Creed

Developer: Ubisoft

Year: 2007

Platform: Xbox360, Playstation 3, Pc.

Genre: Action Adventure

My year started real busy... and also really broke. So no new game for me yet. Instead, a collegue and a friend of mine who attended my new years party brought me a nice package I could borrow. Assassin's Creed 1,2 and Brotherhood. Since I was also kind of a Prince of Persia fan I thought I would like this, thus I started with 1.

Assassin's Creed is a game that takes place in 2 timelines. The first one you get to know about is the timeline of Desmond. This guy is part of some assassin's family and has been captured by a research facility. It seems our main character has dna which has the memories of his ancestors who were all Assassin's. One of his ancestors apparently has something they need and you need to play trough all the memories of your ancestor to find what they need. In order to acces that memory they use machine called the Animus.

Once you go into the Animus you play trough a specific memory in order to learn what happened during your ancestor's time and to get closer to the memory our doctors need. Once you control your ancestor, called Altair, you are an assassin with all it's skills and weaponry. With those tools you need to assassinate several people, in order of the Brotherhood. This Brotherhood says they do this in the name of peace. However, as you progress the game you discover a dark secret.

Once you are logged in into the animus you can see a few things on the screen. On the bottom left you see a small square with some symbols, these correspond to directions on the D-Pad. Up selects the Hidden Blade, a small weapon used for stealth assassinations. Right selects the sword, your strongest weapon during combat. Down selects fists if you need to beat someone up but not kill them yet. Left selects the short blade, a small weapon which is quick in combat but not quite as strong. Also, if you are not in combat, you can thrown small throwing knives to end a life from a distance. 

Next to this you also see a bar at the top right. This is your synchronization bar and shows how well Desmond is in synch with Altair. If he takes too much damage you lose your synchro and thus need to start from the last (auto) savepoint. Your health goes up if you do more missions and side missions. In short, it is just your health bar.

Finally left from the synchro bar you can see the Abstergo logo. When it is white, you are anonymous and can practically do whatever you want. However, the logo changes colour in different situations. When you are being chased or noticed by the guards, it is red. When Hiding it is blue and so on. 

Finally the bottom right displays the minimap where you can see all missions and sidemissions.

Graphic wise I think this is a great game. It takes place in the middle east and thus you don't see lot's of colours in this game. However, every person/ building/ environment has been made in great detail, almost showing no flaws in designs.

This game doesn't have any music. Instead ou mostly hear the murmering of every citizen of the 4 places you visit. At first it is interesting what every citizen has to say but it gets real repetitive after a while. Almost everyone has the same line and after 2 or 3 hours in game you know every line of what a citizen is going to say.

Overall this game is a nice way to spend your time. But if you are a completionist like me you are going to have a hard time. Not because it becomes impossibly hard to do all side missions but because everything is exactly the same. Only your normal missions include something new or important to the storyline. Next to that, there is no real reward in doing all side missions except for some lousy achievements on the Xbox version.

And last but not least, although it isn't hard to complete all side missions, you are annoyed to death by every drunk /beggar that walk around town that seem to only target their annoyance to you instead of every other frigging citizen. It just really ruins the overall feeling of this game

Fun Facts: Assassin's Creed...

... has some similarities with Prince of Persia, which isn't strange since it is made by the same team.

... takes place around 2010 and 1190 respectively.

... has main characters who are based on real people from around that time. Only a couple of people 

    are imaginary.

... has some hints about the apocaliptic year 2012. It seems the Templars will do something to us in 

    that year.

... beggar's should DIE!