Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.

by Jamison DeLorenzo

Part of the massive drama that surrounds these columns, including the built-in in drama of wondering when the next article might actually arrive, involves waiting several paragraphs before even seeing the beginnings of what the whole point of the article really is. Part of the joy for me is figuring out ways to delay it as long as possible. It pains me to say that, as I did devote any time to putting together a massive segway, this installment is going to be the first of two installments involving my Thanksgiving Week Gaming Marathon. It was never intended to be an incredibly interesting week, but the mere fact of being able to save all of my vacation this year for multiple gaming marathons is nothing short of scheduling genius. Peeking at gaming release schedules months in advance does have its payoffs, and with a plethora of high budget video games being released recently I had time to sit down for over 7 days of straight gaming with two games that I pegged a long time ago as the potentially most intriguing for the year.

This week I feel that it would be time well spent to discuss Assassin’s Creed, a project that was a huge undertaking for Ubisoft. I cannot speak to being a big fan of theirs, but with of their talk about research and ideas they were throwing into the game this game felt like a good idea to invest a decent piece of time into. They also still have major credits left over from Sands of Time despite the pathetic milking of the franchise soon after its impressive success. I’m not sure exactly how pathetic this was, but unwanted images of Tom Green popped into my head when analyzing the unfortunate progression of Prince of Persia.

It is import to confess up front that taking control of an assassin was a primal urge that I could not resist. This entirely could have been some resonant effect of impatiently waiting for GTA IV’s release. I never spent a lot of time with Metal Gear or Splinter Cell either (with no real good reason unless you are willing to consider laziness or a disturbing urge not to bow before all the major titles), so convincing myself that playing a stealthy assassin felt like a fresh idea.

Right away it was easy to see the eerily similar style of gameplay to Sands of Time (yes, there was a sinister reason behind mentioning this game earlier). It may sound that way, but this is far from being a bad thing. Those of us who were introduced to the sport of free-running with the latest James Bond movie quickly picked up on the vision that the developers had with the overly crowded streets and building layout which can only be described as “busy.” After spending only a few minutes exploring the city streets of Jerusalem the controls made a lot of sense. Once you see how the buildings are laid out running from one end of a city to another entirely on rooftops quickly turned into the most interesting challenge in the game.

It did pain me a lot to write the last sentence. The premise behind the game was fantastic. The adaptive controls (the 4 main buttons being mapped to head, left hand, right hand, and legs) proved to be quite intuitive and were close to perfect. The character animations were as close to flawless for every element of the game (casually moving through crowded streets, slinging your way through shops and corridors on the streets, running and jumping between rooftops, and climbing all of architecturally convenient buildings). Once you see the dynamic of how the assassination missions are carried out the gameplay, unfortunately, becomes incredibly monotonous. Eavesdropping on conversations, pickpocketing carriers, and beating up informants are all very entertaining. Even saving civilians from corrupt guards is a lot of fun. After a couple runs they merely become boring. Thankfully they’re wholly unnecessary.

What’s depressing is that once you see how to do one of these missions, seeing how to approach and eliminate a target becomes far too simple. The information the people give out is also mind-numbingly obvious. You’re told to wait for an event to happen to strike, but the only way to ever get the main target to appear is to trigger the event. You’re always told about the large number of guards, but you’re always on the lookout for them anyway. Luckily you only need to endure all of this advice if you want to unlock every last thing in the game.

The rest of the game becomes a laborious task just to move the story. You cease caring about the gameplay and your only drive is to see the overall story of the game to its end. As always, there’s some horrid corruption going on with a company and its guards and your job is to eliminate the top officials to bring about some form of justice. The only reason this story is made interesting is because the main character of the game is really someone in the present who is being interrogated to find some buried treasure that one of his ancestors, the assassin you play for most of the game, has hidden.

It probably sounds like I dislike this game intensely, but in reality this is a refreshing game. Exploring the landscape does provide you with breathtaking experience. Climbing up high to various perches really shows off the detail that went into designing the different villages and cities that were put together. Riding on horseback around the world is a lot of fun as you can decide to be a pleasant individual or go bowling for peasants and guards.

It is easy to see the attention to detail that went into designing a world that could be explored for hours on end. It is depressing that this is easily lost as the game unfolds. Still, at the end of the day if you enjoy games where the goal is to largely remain unnoticed and murder lots of people at your discretion then this game will deliver a pleasing experience. I spent two days exploring this game and do not regret it in the slightest. As the replay value for this game is not that high, I would say that this is a game that is definitely worth renting and plowing through.

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