Assassin's Creed is, for such a highly anticipated title, rather disappointing. That's not to say that, technically, the game is a masterpiece - it's just not particularly fun. With large, varied cities - all intricately detailed - the graphics and animation are first rate, even though it's clear that all the talented animators were put to work on Altair's in-game motions, leaving the lesser skilled animators to produce the cutscenes. Faces do look ugly and there's some silly clipping that could easily have been avoided.
Outside of the cutscenes, however, the animations are excellent and easily make the game's fun bits all the more aesthetically pleasing. These fun bits come in the form of freerunning across ancient cities and, even while the rest of the game has become dull and tiresome, you'll still garner some pleasure from outrunning pursuing guards and diving headfirst into a roof-garden to conceal yourself.
The game does become boring despite this, however, as it is essentially three times as long as it needs to be. After the tutorial level Altair is disgraced as an Assassin and his abilities and weapons are removed until he tracks down and kills nine high-ranking officials from the three different cities. These nine assassinations all require you to do the same thing - pickpocket, perform killings for informers or beat up people who might have some useful information. In order to find these around the cities you will need to climb tall buildings to expand your map. Sounds fun? It is, up until the 15th task which feels very similar to the last five. It's then that you notice that you've only performed three of the nine assassinations and you pray that the game gets more interesting at some point soon; it doesn't.
There's another "side" to Assassin's Creed which is technically a spoiler, so we won't go into too much depth other than to say that the parts of the game that take place in the "alternate setting" are great. We really enjoyed them, even though there's very little to do. There's potential for more, here, but then you run the risk of creating a dramatically different game. Speaking of drama, the story is told quite poorly through dull, over talky cutscenes. While some of them work well (spying on a conversation between your target and his minions from the roof, for example) others could have done with being made a touch more exciting - even a simple camera change or dramatic chord of music would have been nice. As if is, however, the story feels as if it's being whispered to you from a nearby alleyway. You're not entirely sure it's meant for your ears, and you're not sure you could decipher it even if it was.
Having said that, however, the last chapter of the game really picks up and you finally feel as if you're involved with the story - and that the game actually has characters. The very final ending is interesting enough to keep us intrigued in the series, but is ultimately flawed because it's a bit of an anticlimax - and that's before you actually have to quit the game because it doesn't have the courtesy of ending for you.
Ultimately, Assassin's Creed is a technical marvel with regards to its large, traversable cities. It just has more than its fair share of shortcomings. There are plenty of better titles worthy of your Christmas money this year.
PS3 Fanboy Score: 7.0
