Done: Assassin’s Creed

Yep, finished that one the other day. A mostly good game, very impressive in certain respects but lacking in others.

The playing mechanics is mostly really good. Smooth fighting, flowing roof-jumping, and so on, although sometimes the character did unintended things I could have sworn I didn’t do (or did when I tried not to) on the control, but probably did (or didn’t). The setting, a few medieval cities, is fantastic. These cities are, I’m told (and it certainly seems like it), fairly historically accurate (as are other aspects like the the clothes people wear), they look great, they feel alive, and they’re a lot of fun to be in, like really big labyrinths. As for the liveliness, it’s right up there with GTA 4.

The bad? Many mention the repetitiveness, and it’s true, it’s somewhat repetitive, although maybe that can be mitigated by just playing a little less each session. Keep a few other games around to play in parallel.

Worse than the repetitiveness is the story, which I found it somewhat hard to follow (until I did some googling at least), and even when I did follow it didn’t really have any emotional punch for me. The story itself may have been decent (or at the very least cleaver and complex for a game) but it’s told in a way I found difficult and/or unengaging. Maybe they were just trying to cram too many elements into too little story-time. Different factions, different time lines, lots of characters (giving conflicting information), etc. The main character even had a character arc, but there was almost no time to show it (all in all a few minutes perhaps, a part of a conversation here and there). It’s hard even at movie length to have a good character arc, the best ones are in TV shows (and books) where they have many hours of screen time to make it believable and real, and emotionally comprehensible. It’s not enough in a story to intellectually understand something; you have to feel it, and that means you can’t rush things.

In some games I wouldn’t even care about the story or storytelling lacking, but this game has such a rich setting and such interesting historical ties, which makes it a good candidate for an ace storytelling.

But it’s still a good, partly very impressive, game. No doubt. That’s why I’m so excited about the sequel, which I have in my possession (the complete edition, even). Eventually I’ll get part 3, Brotherhood, too. Multiplayer in these awesome city-labyrinths sounds like a great idea.