Assassin's Creed (2007)

In the past, I have played through two Assassin's Creed games. Assassin's Creed II & IV, respectively. But I decided that I was going to play through the original trilogy as well as come back to the Ezio games.

But as for the original, I'd have to say that the game was enjoyable. The early parts were a bit repetitive, and I don't care much for the overworld (called the kingdom) because of its emptiness and the fact that it can be a bit annoying to navigate.

The combat is fun, but it definitely improves in later titles. The story was quite enjoyable, and it really builds up as you get through the memories, and the game itself is fun. The completionist angle also has a lot to do, though it may become repetitive as well.

This game is a solid start to the series, and anyone who has not played the original style Assassin's Creed games should really give them a go, especially given how cheap they are to acquire.

I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure

Game number 50 was Assassin’s Creed. As a reward for myself in getting through 50 games on the Road to 360 challenge, I decided that my next games will be all the AC releases on the 360. That is AC 1 through Rogue. Assassin’s Creed is probably one of the most famous series throughout the 2010’s and is about a secret society of Assassin’s and their feud against the Templars.

Assassin’s Creed one is where everything started off with the series and has two protagonists/storylines. The main storyline focuses on Altair, an Assassin during the 3rd Crusade (1191). Altair is established as a veteran of the Assassin’s order at the beginning of the game; however, in the tutorial mission, he is shown to go against the creed that the Assassin’s stand for. Because of his dishonorable actions, which led to the death of one of his comrades, he is stripped of his rank and forced to act as a new initiate of the order. In order to regain his honor and status, Altair had to kill 9 of the leaders of the Templars (the rivals to the Assassin’s and also the people who are responsible for the crusades).

While the story mainly focuses on Altair, his story is actually framed in the past and the modern day counterpart to Altair is Desmond Miles. Desmond is an Assassin in the modern era and he is imprisoned by a corporation called Abstergo. During his imprisonment, he is forced to enter into a machine called the Animus and relive his ancestor’s memories so that Abstergo may gain information on the whereabouts of an ancient artifact. These memories that he is reliving are the life of Altair and about 98% of our gameplay takes place inside the Animus.

One of the great things about AC 1’s story is how morally gray it is. Most of the other AC games are very clear about the Assassin’s being good guys who help people out and the Templars being sociopaths that are extremely bad. In AC 1, there are many points where the player is forced to confront the villians they were sent out to assassinate and these confrontations lead both the player and Altair to question the morality of killing these people. Don’t get me wrong. Most of the targets here are bad people… but the things that they are doing aren’t necessarily terrible. It is more a matter of perspective.

One of the main draws of the AC games is that each game focuses on a different historical setting and it is exciting to be able to explore the cities/environments of different time periods and cultures. You get to explore the real cities of Damascus, Jerusalem, Acre, and Masyaf. This is extremely fun and interesting. I have never been to Syria nor Israel, but I am able to get a general understanding of the climate, landscape, historical architecture, and culture from Assassin’s Creed. I’m not saying that the game is 100% accurate, but it gives a general picture of what life was like there for people who know little to nothing about the middle east.

Probably the most famous thing from the AC series is the parkour system. You can climb up every building in the cities and the tallest buildings have these things called viewpoints. By synchronizing with a viewpoint, the player is able to view objectives on the map in an area around said viewpoint. There is never a point where getting to the top of a viewpoint and looking out over the entire city loses its luster. My main problem with AC1’s parkour system is that it doesn’t seem to be fully developed yet. It is much slower than even the parkour of its direct sequel AC2 and doesn’t handle nearly as well as some of the games to come. That being said, it is still fun to climb around each of the cities here.

Combat in AC1 is extremely easy. Just counterattack! The counterattack in this game is OP. You essentially just have to wait until an enemy attacks you and then you instantly counter and kill them. Only the biggest/scariest brutes are immune to the mighty power of Altair’s counter attack. I wish combat was more in depth and 10x more difficult. The combat here isn’t bad, but it is below average in an action/adventure game.

Stealth is also never a necessity in AC1. You can complete almost any quest without the use of stealth. One of the best things in the AC games is sneaking around the groups of enemies and taking them out 1 at a time. You never need to do that here. Just walk up to your target and assassinate them, then counter attack the enemies who come at you. Big disappointment.

I made the fatal error of going for 100% on this game. Please, for the love of god, do not do this to yourself! Going for all the extra quests and freeing the people in the city was great! I would definitely recommend doing that! But there is literally no reason to go for all the flags. I think I extended my gametime by 2x or 3x just because of my hunt for flags. I considered doing this for all the AC games and its not happening. Starting with AC 2, I am just doing an any% run (which is what the RoadTo360 challenge has called for anyway).

Overall, Assassin’s Creed 1 is a good game that is mainly just overshadowed by some of the amazing games in the series that were to come. When talking to my friends about this game, most people don’t really remember much. They remember the final battle (which is pretty awesome) and the long horse rides between Masyaf and the other cities. The story here is much better than I expected it to be and the order of Assassins never again feels as official as it does here. The gameplay is fun, but there is no stealth and the combat is entirely too easy. If you plan on playing the AC games then you should definitely not skip AC 1 and people who are fans of adventure games need to come play this… however, it is definitely not the best AC game and some of its features are pretty dated. (6/10)

I spent 19 hours, 34 minutes, and 39 seconds playing Assassin’s Creed.

I have spent a total of 516 hours and 26 minutes on the Road to 360 challenge so far.

Next game: Assassin’s Creed 2

My first playthrough of an Assassin's Creed game was in 2023. Imagine that.

It was very entertaining. Sadly I played the old Steam version so apart from the story there was not that much incentive to keep playing or replay it after that (crazy what traceable achievements do for your psyche, huh?).

Apart from that: great experience. The story is very good if a little predictable. The scenarios are great, the historical accuracy is phenomenal, the mechanics are a bit clunky but nothing distracting. It gets a little just a little repetitive the last two hours or so but personally I liked the missions so much that I did not mind.

I have a loooooot to catch up with this franchise, and I will try to take those games in order as much as possible, but I am really looking forward to it.

I would like to start by saying 2 things: First, that english is not my first language so sorry about that, and secondly that this game has to be viewed in context given the year that came out and the original idea that Ubisoft had in their minds. Nowadays the entire AC Saga has come waaaay too far and waaaay too ramified.

I understand how this game can be bad for some people by today's standards: the gameplay is extremely repetitive, the missions tend to be boring and the story is going to unfold to it's full capacity in AC 2, Brotherhood and Revelations. It doesn't help that Altair's character is completely mysterious to all of us, we just execute people without any questions until we start to feel something fishy is going on with our Mentor Al Mualim. The most interesting parts for me at least were outside the Animus: the little clues that Desmond Miles starts to get; the conversations with Lucy and Vidic; the emails; the bleeding effect already appearing on Desmond... the whole conspiracy unravels very slowly but it's really effective.

I said all this because I believe this game was a pioneer, maybe not in the platforming genre of course, but in the amazing way to tell an ancient story using modern day tools. In this case we have the Animus: a machine built with the purpose of reliving genetic memories of Desmond's ancestor. The cities are beautifully recreated to the point where you have to stop for a minute and see how amazing Acre or Jerusalem must have been (quick reminder that this game is 16 years old and looks fantastic for its time). Also, there are no offensive stereotypes, the team behind the project was really well informed.

All and all I think everybody should play AC 1 just to see where it all begun, with all its flaws still is a masterpiece of its time. And don't worry, you're gonna see more of Altair a few games later, I promise you won't regret it.

Assassin's Creed is a great layer of foundation on the core values and aspects that would define a multi-release series franchise. The parkour (free running), the tailing, the assassination missions, the stealth; all of these are fundamental plot and gameplay devices that take you through the 12th-century holy land. The story is a mix of a modern and a retelling of ancestors' memories through a sci-fi machine that makes the main protagonist (Desmond) relive his ancestor (Altair) memories. The plot is an interesting one, it entices you with mystery from the beginning.

But there are many drawbacks to this game. First of all the story never stops being a mystery. As true as everything is there isn´t enough evidence in the modern world story to corroborate that the templars are the bad people, aside from one email about a single failed experiment that Abstergo is trying to cover up, this e-mail is found in Vic's laptop. Something that isn't always available through the game.

A second downside is a historical story, repetitive in its mechanics, and slower in its development; the only notable aspect of this story is the redeemability of Altair, going from an arrogant unbearable assassin to a humble master assassin who deeply respects his creed.

Gameplay wise it is still the game with the foundations yet some of these can become dull after a while, the combat is like a very bitter soft cheese, you might like the initial texture but the taste comes back to attack you and push you away. The combat gets more fun the more thought you pour into it, it isn't a simple counter-attack kill, or mash attack button, there are nuances to it; the only flaw I find is the limited amount of variation, there are only two weapons for combat. both work similarly with the short blade having the possibility of throwing knives provided you are far away. There is also a limited amount of combat scenarios which after 3 hours of combat gameplay becomes repetitive. The free running of this game is a hidden gem, it has really good mechanics and once you know how to navigate through the city it works, unfortunately, it does require either learning how to enjoy the free running by using a youtube tutorial or through trial and error as the game never implemented any in-game tutorial to explain all the mechanics that exist in free running. For a more detailed analysis of this aspect, you can look at the first part of [[White Light's video]] (

The game presents itself with a set of about 4-5 different types of missions leading up to assassination missions which is the big moment ones, these leading-up sections are repetitive at best, allowing you to complete about six of them at every assassination lead-up, and having nine assassinations planned out it turns into a chore to complete the same type of missions. The game was surely not made for completionists but the Assassin's Creed DNA is very much of a completionist series as it constantly provides you with an intelligible UI on how much percentage and what tasks you have left to do, thus this first iteration of the series is the worst to complete and the only one I have never attempted.

Overall it is an ok game if you are going for the story of Altair's purposes, and even that is not as revelling and engaging as the story you get from Revelations or even Bloodlines (the PSP spin-off). I would not recommend playing this game, and alternatively either watch a youtube video on the story of this game, or you could even read the book.

The good:

• The story that got me hooked on the AC franchise
• Altair is an amazing character, so well build
• Graphics are very good for their time
• The cities are all unique and different with subtle things that bring more to the environment

The not-so-good:

• The whole fight system is horrible
• The controls can be very flaky
• You can get in very weird positions and angles during fights or when in Desmond's point of view which makes navigation very difficult

I played with an open mind, remembering it can't be possible to compete with games from today but instead enjoy the story. And now... onto AC2.

Alright I had bought this from a friend many years ago, but after the third memory I got bored and never finished it, but I decided to finally finish it and Assassin's Creed is a good game. I have a lot of things I didn't like, but also there are some really good things about it.

Starting with the positives the story is actually fairly interesting. It doesn't get interesting quite fast, but if you do give it the time it needs, it gets really interesting really fast. Altair is a really nicely written main character and I really liked his arc. I think that his arc is the best thing about this movie. It is what drives the plot and what keeps it interesting, but I also really did love the idea of starting to doubt the things you have been grown to believe to and starting doubting your own actions. Also the effects are fine. For their time they are really good. The three cities feel like real cities, even if the design for all three is really similar.

Now as for negatives, my biggest negative is the controls. It is really tough to correctly use the controls. I would run and bump into others or I would be running and it would just start crawling a wall and that got kinda tiring. The fighting is fine, but there ain't many points where you actually had to be stealth (which is kind of the premise) and the times you had, you could just skip.

Now the voice acting is quite good, but I think that they could have done better with the cut scenes. There ain't actually real cut scenes, as in the most you could actually interact by using the camera and that was kinda boring as you felt like you were playing, but couldn't play. Also in the Bureau scenes or whenever you'd kill someone, where there would be long dialogues the camera was really steady and it was kinda boring.

As for the difficulty it ain't a hard game. Some parts/missions were harder than others and as the game would go, the battles would get harder. What actually was the hard thing was the control, as I said above too. Especially in the stealth missions, I just couldn't really play and as for a mission where you had to parkour and follow a certain route, it would be so damn difficult, because of the controls. Near the end I got more used to it, but still it was difficult. Oh also the missions got really receptive after like two of them, because they all are pretty much the same. Go to a city's Bureau, then whether eavesdrop or pickpocket or interrogate or go to an informer and then back to the Bureau, then the assassination, then back to the Bureau and end. And because of that routine it got kinda tiring.

Nevertheless it was fun and it has a nice story, but it still has certain negatives.

The worst game I've played; I usually put a fair bit of research into games before I play them, this time I didn't do enough. Put 4.5 hours in before I quit.

The gameplay, combat and parkour, were clunky, the graphics aren't great but also not terrible, but the visuals are bad, everything is drab and feels boring. All the quests are repetitive as well. Story seemed like it might be interesting, but it was too slowly doled out. I ended reading a plot summary.