Nerdtales

From Jerusalem to the rental shop

Today I had a decision to make. Do I want to keep Assassin’s Creed for another couple of days or did I have enough of it and want to bring it back to the rental shop? To be honest it was a question rather easy to answer. After the endeavours in Acre the next mission was to kill a slave-trader in Jerusalem. As in the first two missions I had to ride to the city, get in somehow and do the steps to fulfill the tasks. The problem was that it was all the same again for the third time, with two exceptions. The first one was the boss fight, in which I had to chase the victim throughout the city. The second one being that the mission played in the upper class part of the town. Problem was, that this wasn’t really noticeable because there were still the beggars around every corner that would annoy you with the same 3 sentences over and over again.

The game suffers from two big problems. Very loose storytelling and repetitiveness. I was one third into the game but still had not the slightest idea what the story was about. Assassin’s Creed is basically a sandbox game and as such has to rely on tight storytelling to keep the player motivated. The game fails here miserably. And by god the repetitions make it even worse. When you’ve heard the same sentence over and over and over again, you feel the urge to punch someone in the face. Not to mention the identical mission structure in every city. And yeah, the game is far to easy.

Technically Assassin’s Creed is quite an achievement. There is no doubt about that. It has some of the most beautiful graphics on any system to date. Altair and the people of the holy land are perfectly animated. Although the movement of Altair has many possibilities, the controls are very intuitive and easy to learn. Unfortunately it is a little too dumbed down as the fights are way too easy.

So yes, this game is a rental. But the technical perfection in Assassin’s Creed let’s me hope that the next game will be as good as the hype suggests.