Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent, always remain discreet by hiding in plain sight, and never compromise the brotherhood. These are the rules the order of Assassin's live by. Their creed if you will. (Get the title yet?) They seek peace in the Holy Land by eliminating war bringers, merchants of death, and other people you wouldn’t like to meet in a dark alley. Assassin’s Creed takes us on a journey to the Third Crusade where you have to settle the fighting between the Crusaders and Saracen and take down the Knights Templar. One guy in a robe fighting thousands of soldiers in chainmail? I’m sure everything will go fine...

You start the game off as a barkeeper named Desmond. You have been kidnapped by a company called Abstergo Industries because of your ancestry of Assassins, and your former association with the current day brotherhood. You are hooked up to a machine called the Animus, which is able to read memories stored in your DNA. The ancestor Abstergo is looking for was named Altaïr, and was the greatest Assassin in the Holy Land during the Third Crusade. He studies under Al Mualim, and after disgracing himself by breaking the Creed and losing the Templar’s Treasure, he is stripped of his rank and must regain it by killing nine evil men. As you work through the game, you start to realize that maybe what you’re doing isn’t right. Do these men truly deserve to die?

Assassin’s Creed is divided into what are called “Memory Blocks”. In each block, there are set objectives you must accomplish before you can assassinate your target. This includes six investigations, and then a set number of towers you must climb to survey the area and a number of citizens being wrongfully arrested by the guards. All you really need to complete the block is three investigations and the assassination, but if you’re working towards the 100% completion, I’d suggest getting them all done at the same time. This does get repetitive very fast, but at least the assassinations mix it up a little.

The world Assassin’s Creed is set in is simply amazing. It truly depicts the war torn land during the Crusades. Everyone is on edge, people are yelling propaganda in the streets, and there are guards everywhere. Whether it be Jerusalem, Acre, Damascus, or Masyaf, they all recreate the look and feel of a true medieval city. The graphics are nothing to shake a stick at either. Picture Crysis, except 1,000 years earlier. That’s what this game looks like. I’m not saying these graphics are equal to Crysis, but they’re damn-near close. So much attention was put into textures and character models, it makes this game a must have for those attentive to graphic detail. However, just like any other game, developers need to start putting more polygons in the heads of models to make them look more circular. I think that’s what ruins every game for people: wonderful textures but sloppy head modeling. Here’s a comparison of real-life Masyaf to the game’s version:

Personally, I like the game's castle better. Real life sucks.

Combat is amazing in Assassin’s Creed. As you level up through the memory blocks, you get new abilities and increased damage. You start the game being able to just click the mouse over and over until people die, but as you progress, fighting gets harder and harder, even with your increased health. You have to parry, counter, dodge, and grab people just to have a hope of surviving. You have four weapons at your disposal in addition to your fists. Each have their own advantage depending on what you’re trying to do: a short sword, a long sword, throwing knives, and my favorite, the badass hidden blade. You can either sneak up behind someone and discreetly kill them, or run up behind them, jump on their back and stab the blade through their throat. My personal favorite is number two.

I SAID GIVE ME YOUR LUNCH MONEY!

The rest of the controls are easy to understand. Regular controls give you the ability to stealth attack, gently push through crowds, or blend in like a scholar. When holding in right click, you access high profile controls like high profile assassination (the awesomeness described above), tackle, or sprinting. The final control you have access to no matter what is Eagle Vision. When your health or “synchronization bar” is full, you gain access to this ability. You are able to view the world for what it truly is. You see those with poor intentions, allies, or even targets of an assassination. It’s a nice ability to have when trying to avoid guards. Instead of looking carefully, you just look for those who glow red. Wait, no X-Ray Vision? Oh well, I’ll just wait for the sequel.

Overall, Assassin’s Creed is an overall great game if you can get over the repetitiveness. The ability to free roam and kill whomever you want in different ways definitely helped me get over it. The addition of an immersive story and graphically pleasing world also adds to the excitement.

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