E3: Assassin's Creed (Disappoints)

Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, and to be released worldwide on November 9th, 2007, Assassin's Creed has been on the lips of every RPG gamer since Sony lost it as an exclusive. More after the jump.


Coming off the back of winning several awards at E3 2006 including,

The game takes place during the Third Crusade, in the year 1191. Players take on the role of Altair, a member of the Hashshashin sect, whose objective is to slay the nine historical figures who propagated the Crusades. The game is based in three locations; Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus.

Producers of the game have stated the environment will be completely interactive;

"If it sticks out more than 2 inches, it's interactive"

(Interview with Jade Raymond)

Though quite what that means, is anyone's guess. As my girlfriend said, it sounds like Jade Raymond is talking about that dildo she keeps in her sock drawer.



Next-gen.biz viewed the trailer at E3, and had this to say about it:

First to tick us off are the hordes of cloned water-jug-on-head women idly milling around at the start. Seriously, in some shots you can see six or seven of exactly the same person.

Then there's the much-lauded crowd-pushy-system. The collisions look anything but smoothly animated, more like robots bumping into one another than people. Or, by contrast, sometimes there's too much reaction, with the otherwise graceful Altair windmilling his arms like a seven-year-old on an icy playground.

Later, a man pushed from a roof hangs in mid-air - while erstwhile producer and narrator Jade Raymond makes a sort of squeaky, strangled 'Ooops!' noise. While we're on that, what is it with guards facing the wrong way in these games?



Okay, that's the bile done with. On second viewing, if you ignore the irksome bug and oddly clunky collisions, there's actually good reasons to be positive here. Altair's acrobatics look satisfyingly fluid and easy to perform. And the climbing, well, we love the go-anywhere climbing stuff.

We're also pleased to see a gigantic draw distance, and probably the best visuals of any game so far seen at this year's E3. There's also some one-hit-kill combat to enjoy. It reminds us of the counter-attacks in Pirates of the Caribbean, only done properly and with far more variety in killing moves.

It is a bit worrying that the guards seem to take turns to attack - even when they have you surrounded - though quirks like this can be ironed out in the later stages of development. But Assassin's Creed needs plenty of other tweaking too if it's to avoid becoming a great big let down. Fingers crossed.





Images courtesy of IGN