Thursday, May 14, 2009

Ginsu built to last.

So...Before I get into anything else, Assassin's Creed, finished it recently. This game, all its other merits and drawbacks aside, is something like a metallica/tool song, or a gunslinger novel, or a lord of the rings movie. It takes an interesting idea or concept and reuses it over and over and fucking over again until it's no longer interesting or fun and then proceeds to beat the ever loving shit out of the mangled corpse of the original idea.

Long story short, Assassin's Creed is repetitive as fuck. Think: Math assignment repetitive and you wont even know the half of it.

The game is built on fun game play and interesting mechanics. The control is fluid for the most part, and assassinating people and fleeing from guards is genuinely tense and satisfying, it's all the other menial tasks you have to do to work up to the meat of the game play that is the problem.

Oh and don't even get me started on the flag collecting achievement. Seriously....100 hidden flags in each zone? COME THE FUCK ON GUYS. It's like the devil's version of Easter!

Genuine stealth+action game cliche tropes aside, how the hell can this man scale impossible heights and disable 12 armed guards in a single fight and yet he can't even swim? I realize he's wearing half a crusades era cutlery set in his gear, but if that's the issue how the hell is he able to stay concealed from the local guards?

After all the repetitive crap, the actual assassinations are such a small part of the game that they might as well have called it something else entirely.

Also the story is...questionable at best. You know something is going to be up when the game has a "made by a team of various religious backgrounds and beliefs" disclaimer before the title cinematic.

SPOILERS: You meet a lot of people of various religious backgrounds and beliefs, and then you stab them to death.

Hal