I thought I'd start posting info on any new releases that I buy, especially if I think they are worth buying. Todays is a bargain in my opinion, though as I mention below, if your willing to wait for several months you'd get the game for at least half price or more:
The PC version of Assassin’s Creed was finally released today amidst much hype (over here in the UK at least). It’s been out for some time already for the console fraternity, but seeing it on the PC today was mind blowing. I actually cancelled my order at one point because the game got quite a blasting from many console gamers, who said it was too repetitive and didn’t live up to expectations. However, after watching several trailers, I decided to go ahead with the purchase anyway; and I’m really glad I did. The interface is intuitive; meaning the controls are easy. There are fewer than the normal numbers of key bindings you get with this sort of game. It’s basically a third person role playing (though it’s not an rpg) equivalent of a shooter though as there were no guns in 1191AD, which is when this game is set, your weapons are restricted to throwing knives, swords, hidden blades and fists. The beauty of this game is the sheer realism of it compared to pretty much every game I’ve bought or seen recently apart from Crysis and Call of Duty 4. The following are some screen captures I took of the game, most are of the intro, and a few of the game start which actually starts in the near future as opposed to where the main game is set:
http://s109.photobucket.com/albums/n61/Whiterabbit_01/gaotd/forums/?albumview=slideshow
The following is a review written by an anonymous person. It covers what that person thought was the bad and good points. I agree to a certain extent with the bad points, but apart from making the game a little more prescriptive than it could have been and maybe a little easier, there are far more good points:
Good Points: I'm an ASSASSIN, okay very cool point is you're an assassin, and with been an assassin you have assassin weapons and assassin moves, assassin assassin assassin. You get the following weapons Sword, Throwing Daggers, Short Scimitar looking knife, and concealable blade (very cool) And your assassin moves allow you to run and jump and take flight through crowds
Bad Points: The twist of the story or should I say back story as I don't think twists are at the beginning was not needed and pretty much detracted from the overall game play, The worst of this part is the fact it is so much slower than the rest.
General comments: It's fair to say Assassins creed was ever so slightly hyped and with massive hype normally leads to disappointment; this I'm afraid was the case with the above-mentioned title. The game was sold as the journey of a disgraced assassin trying to win back honor by taking out a range of targets, Thief meets Hit man based in a pre medieval Grand theft auto free roaming style setting had pretty much everybody salivating at just the thought, unfortunately this was not to be. Don't get me wrong this game is good but the fact with a little more effort this game could have been great. Okay starting with the bad points, 1) Every great move is only a button away; This has to be one of the worse things of this game. All the fantastic moves you saw in the trailers are pulled off by holding R1 and X. This includes climbing, balancing, Leap of faith, and jumping building to building, All your combat is pulled off in a similar fashion but in this case you press L1 and Square or if you want to kill someone in a almost cut scene type of way then R1 and square will pretty much cover it, 2) Character types, If the above is the worst then 3 and 4 are the most irritating, There are a few basic character types which takes away from the fact everyone looks different, This may sound strange so please let me explain myself, Firstly you have civilians which are everyone except the following, Thieves who you pickpocket knives from who are burly characters who are large compared to everyone else, Crazies who are stripped to their waists and will hit you if you get to close, Really annoying wailing women who cling to your character asking for money, Guards who are everywhere and I mean everywhere, Archers who are just dagger bait, Vigilantes who are normally dressed in black, And clergy who are very confidently placed. 3) The background dialogue, This vexes as in the case when you save a civilian from bully's you only get one of a couple of dialogues (around 2 for male civilians and 2 for females) This is made worse by the amount that need saving as you get the same dialogue spoken by the same people which cheapens the experience, same goes for the wailing women who all say exactly the same thing. 4) Haven't I already done this before, This game is super repetitive and you will find the majority of your gaming time been built up of Meeting up with the master assassin Leaving and meeting up with the assassin trainer to learn how to use a new skill Leaving and heading through the nearby village to get to your horse Riding your horse to a strange gate which acts as a cross road and allows you to decide which city to explore Following the path to the city Getting into the city by either blending in with the clergy, climbing around them or fighting or running through them, Visiting the local assassins bureau and getting your target and city location Climbing highest points to update your map and find tasks to complete which they're are 4 types, Informant, pick pocketing, interrogation, or eves dropping Picking 3 of the available tasks and completing them Going back to the assassin's bureau and getting the okay for the hit Taking out guards and archers to aide in your escape Watch a small clip showing how evil your target is Kill your target Watch a small clip showing how you may be mistaken in thinking your target is evil Running back to the bureau making sure you lose the guards before you get there Getting the all clear and then meeting back up with the master assassin Rinse and Repeat 5) Where are all the Archers, The thing that makes this game feel most hollow is that when you kill say an Archer nobody cares and nothing is done, In a game like Hit man it would result in a full blown fire fight and normally results in you dying, in this game, somebody scream and then a guard says something like who did this, and then if your not hanging around nothing seems to happen, The threat level increases but unless its on red it doesn't really change anything.. Also the true lack of stealth in this game loses the assassin edge a little, everything ends up with a full blown fight which makes you think your missing the point of an assassin game somewhat. Okay then, well that's a lot of negativity but its not all bad as a lot of the above things are very small but have been added because a little bit more time could have rectified them quite quickly Positives 1) As far as the eye can see, The graphics and draw distances in this game are amazing, the detail really shows the power of the next generation of consoles, Sometimes its just nice to stand around or scale a tower and just admire how beautiful this game really is, 2) Excuse me coming through, The streets in this game are crowded full of people who react and move realistically as you pass, You can carefully push them aside or you can barge into them and send them flying the choice is completely yours, Also if they have a pulse they can die which can be useful at times depending on whether you need to create a distraction or are just fed up with getting punched by a crazy. The one thing this amount of on screen characters creates is a sense of realism and also a sense of size, Jumping from rooftop to rooftop you can still see people going about their daily lives, 3) I'm telling you I saw it move, Each city is alive with personality, each has its own design and its own style which adds nice depth to the game, The cities are the game really with most of the enjoyment coming from checking out the areas whether its from the ground or from rooftops. The design of the city means that most buildings are climbable as well as platforms and small walls. This gives complete freedom as your never ever run out of different ways to go. 4) Things to do, there are plenty of other things to do in the game, such as collect flags, collect flags in succession in a given time period, and killing templar knights as well as protecting civilians and scaling all towers, This gives the game slightly more playing time, which so far makes this one of the longer games on the PS3 5) I'm frozen in time. You might think that a glitch, which freezes the game, should be added to the negative but I don’t, this is because all you have to do is hook your PS3 up to the net and download the patch which does fix this problem, So as its no longer a problem it's a positive and to make it a bigger positive I would just like to say that this game doesn't seem to lose frame rate no matter how much action is on the screen, So all in all a good game that missed out at greatness by a cats whisker
reference Review Centre http://www.reviewcentre.com/reviews121942.html 10th April 08
Personally I don’t regret buying this game at all. Maybe I should have waited for six months as undoubtedly, this game will drop in price as new games come on the market. As for now its still quite a good bargain at approximately $50, which is $20 less than most newly released games. A lot of the reviews that abound tend to be slightly negative, but these are actually based on the console version of the game. The PC version has had four extra months of work done on it and has had extra missions added such as Archer assassination, rooftop race challenge, merchant stand destruction challenge and the escort challenge. Also the AI has been tweaked a little in the PC version following complaints that at times it was a little weak.
The minimum system requirement to run this game is a Pentium D 2.4GHz or a AMD X2 Athlon 3800+, equipped with a Shader Model 3.0 card (ATi X1300 and better, NVidia 6600 and better). But ideally a dual core 2.2GHz processor or above and an NVidia 8600GS graphics card wold really bring this game to life. The graphics support both DX9 and DX10. The city ‘scapes are beautiful and I’ve already found that I’m wandering around admiring the view as opposed to playing the game lol.
I didn’t need to bother taking my own screen shots as I could have just Googled Assassin’s Creed and got the following:
http://search.msn.co.uk/images/results.aspx?q=Assassin%27s+Creed+&go=&form=QBIR
It would be nice to see what others who buy this game think of it. i'll post a short review of what I think once I've worked my way through a few of the cities. I did looki to see if there was a demo available, but as yet there isn't one (I think) At least none of the usual game download sites such as Gamers Hell, fileplanet, filecloud and filefront didn't have one.