Assassin's Creed (2007)

Assassin's Creed follows modern day Desmond Miles who has the genes of his ancestor Altair. He somehow dies and travels back in time and must learn to be an assassin all over again. There is something like an apple that does something. This game follows two groups. The awesome assassins and the terrific templars who fight over this apple. Will Desmond through Altair do some hard core parkour to synchronize with this apple and save the world, or will the Templars take the apple and eat it for themselves.

This games marks the beginning of my journey to 100% all of the Assassin's Creed games. Boy was I glad to get this one out of the way first because collecting all the hidden flags in a dull landscape was rough. But it was so much fun to do my first leap of faith. Running away from guards and doing air assassinations were always so fun. People say this game is like an Xbox tech demo and they are not wrong. This game feels like it is in gray scale. There is an interesting story here but it definitely gets lost at times. I also always felt so annoyed when I couldn't go to places yet or I would be pulled out of the animus. Overall cool concept but gets boring very quickly. Also Altair is not the coolest person ever.

I've played this game back in late 2015, so apologies for not remembering too much of the fine details. Due to that, I'll make the review shorter than usual.

Assassin's Creed did a few things very well when it released. Graphically, it was rather impressive for its time, and the world Ubisoft created for this game is massive, in many respects beautiful and feels alive. It's worth questioning whether the large size of Jerusalem, Damascus and Acre are to the game's detriment rather than to its benefit. Because coupled with the mission design, it's a whole lot of back and forth, back and forth and back and forth that can quickly become annoying.

While the successors of this game, especially starting around Unity, went batshit crazy with the repetitive busy work that filled up the map with icons, Assassin's Creed 1 did it as well. It simply was the first one to do it, but climbing dozens, if not over a hundred viewpoints, collecting hundreds of flags and doing the same side missions dozens of times over was enjoyable at first, if even that, but won't be fun for long if you've had any experience with a game that has used this Ubi-formula since.

Combat in this game is rather basic even compared to its immediate sequels but stealthily assassinating unknowing enemies is always fun and that's the case here as well. Couple that with the ability to climb, which was fun but unrefined in this iteration, and it's no wonder why people were enamored with the core gameplay loop at least.

In the main plot, you have to assassinate 9 main targets, which pretty much all follow the same routine. Get target from bureau, unlock viewpoint, investigate target by eavesdropping on or pickpocketing someone, get back to bureau with findings, get to target, kill target, listen to targets final speech, run away and back to bureau and report success. Each mission has about 15 minutes of talking from your bureau contact, Altair and the target but if filler was accounted for, Ubi could have shrunk that time down to way less to limit the amount of time that gameplay is interrupted.

It's a formula that is refined in later entries, so my suggestion would be to not push through if you're bored early on because it doesn't really get that much better. Instead, if the core gameplay loop is enjoyable enough in itself to you, I'd suggest moving on to AC 2. The story itself has some moments but won't be worth the reward if gameplay itself isn't fun. Next to the Assassins vs Templars plot in Altairs story, there is also the Abstergo vs Desmond story, Desmond being a regular guy in modern times whose relation to Altair and hidden memories are used to display these memories via a machine that is called the Animus. I found the premise of the dual story to be pretty unique, and while Ubisoft was unfortunately not creative enough to do more with it here, it doesn't do that much wrong either. Agian, I just don't think it's worth the reward if the journey to the story crescendo is ultimately unenjoyable to you.

So overall, I think this is a game worth trying to get a taste of gaming history but I wouldn't be surprised if beyond the world that was created for this game and the climbing gameplay, there is much here to keep most new players invested for the entirety of the playthrough.

This was my introduction to the Assassin's creed world. After coming off the Prince Of Persia Series, I loved and hated portions of A.C. The variety of weapons, dives off of great heights and general vibe of the game is great but play can be a bit clunky. (Missed dives, stuck facing walls etc.) It is a great game if you want to take your time and immerse. Listen to the saddle shift and hooves thud as you ride your horse between towns, the leather of your outfit creak while you run, your weapons jingle as you scale buildings. Their are a thousand great details but as it is an older game it can be super finicky.

The immersion is great, full plot and story line. I don't like the obligatory super long cut scenes but that is a personal preference.

However, the game is quite glitchy and you often see characters walking into walls and such. The controls can be a bit blocky too. I has issues in the practice ring where no matter what I did it would not practice two of the techniques. Their are also not step by step instructions for everything so you may get stuck in an area of gain a skill and never use it for anything. In this vein, when you get to the end of memory block 6 and memory block seven (as your ramping up to beat the game) it gets SUPER combat heavy and their were many a multiple death when I actually found myself curing out loud for the first time in the game.

Overall worth and play and I look forward to scoping out newer versions.

The first Assassin's Creed may have once been an interesting game, but for the modern gamer, it holds very few positive traits. The story has some interesting moments of conspiracy but ultimately is bogged down by contrived pointless characters, pseudo-philosophical dialogue, and endless hours of filler. The gameplay is about as boring as it comes, with each mission simply being a rehash of the previous. You can't even say that the new areas make the missions unique because the areas all still feel the same. Finally, the open world is tedious to get through, as it is hollow and empty of any interesting discoveries. If anything, Assassin's Creed did serve as an impactful game when it was released, and it should be noted for that. But in our time now, it would be better off watching the cinematic-cut on youtube instead (or even better, reading a quick summary of events).

2.25/5.00

Full Review: https://watchreadgame.com/assassins-creed-1-review/

TL;DR: Hard to recommend but worth looking at if you are willing to slog through highly repetitive gameplay for a decent story.

Pros:

• Story: Story is decently written and has a fun twist at the end. Dialogue in particular can be quite good especially the Templar monologues at the end of each contract. Not excellent but still fun. Altair isn't a great character but he isn't terrible either and I can see why some people seem to really enjoy him as a Protagonist. He has a decent character Arc and, while I would not call him a complex character, he Certainly embodies an interesting side of the Assassin Order that is rarely explored in later games.
• Setting: The historical setting the Game establishes is quiet interesting and I enjoyed the little details scattered throughout especially the details on buildings throughout the game world.

Neutral:

• Music: No Music really stood out to me while playing as either being excellent or poor.
• Graphics: Graphics are surprisingly alright considering the game's age but the edges are beginning to fray at this point. Though the approach to Jerusalem manages to still look pretty amazing.

Cons:

• Gameplay: The biggest issue this game has is its gameplay. Gameplay is HIGHLY repetitive and by the end of the game one grows extraordinarily tired with the formula of "do miscellaneous quests then fight a big bad then go back to doing miscellaneous quests" and the game never really deviates from this formula. The ending quest is better in this regard (though not by much) but overall gameplay is highly repetitive. The parkour system feels fine but the combat system also feels a little hard to control at times.
• Glitches: This game has many... odd glitches on PC. most notably constant stuttering when connected to wi-fi (I'm still not sure why the game did this). Luckily I did not have any major crashes but still the game was temperamental to say the least.

Conclusion:

This is a hard game to recommend. It is only worth playing if you are interested in the game's story and are willing to slog through some pretty poor gameplay to experience a fairly decent (but hardly mindblowing) plot.