Assassin's Creed
A spiritual sequel to the Prince of Persia games of the last generation of consoles, Creed has a familiar feel but replaces the linearity with an open world, wall running and time control powers with an awesome free-running system, the fantasy setting with a science fiction one, and the mediocre combat with slightly different mediocre combat. Many have complained about the repetitive mission structure, and they're justified in doing so. There are only about half a dozen types of activities you can do than make up the bulk of the game, leaving the actual assassinating a little too infrequent. But it's not that big of a deal. I wish they could have fleshed out the whole investigating idea, and made it feel more like you were planning a highly delicate operation instead of just repeating some simple tasks before getting to go after your target, but I can't blame them too much when it's so fun just to play around in the world. If you don't like picking pockets and doing all the other assassin's chores, you only have to do some of it. If something's frustrating, you usually can ignore it and still move on with the game. Personally, I did every investigation, rescued every citizen, and climbed every vantage point. The game rewards you for doing so, giving you tips and maps that make the job a little easier and extra means to escape pursuers. I didn't collect all the flags though, because that would be tiresome and completely pointless, as all they unlock is achievements in the 360 version.
Other problems people have is with the AI and combat that's all too easy once you learn the counter-kill. I agree that it's pretty ridiculous that you can get away with killing guards right in front of each other if you just pose like a monk while doing it, but once they do start chasing you, I was pretty impressed with how they kept up. Getting away from guards is about as fun a chase as there is in video games. Altair can climb and jump and do anything a human could conceivably do, and it's a unique sort of fun to use your awesome yet believable abilities to evade soldiers who can chase you almost anywhere. It is pretty lame how enemies only attack one at a time, but while it's too easy, I did have fun toying with enemies before dispatching them in a number of satisfying ways. The open space between cities was also a bit of fun to ride around in on a horse, and definitely gave off a Shadow of the Colossus vibe with the look of the environment. It's not really a spoiler to say that this game doesn't take place during the crusades, since it's revealed you're in a simulation during the near future right at the beginning. There are two plot threads, the crusade one which wraps up by game's end, and the future one that does a good job of stringing you along with little bits of information before leaving you hanging for the obvious sequel. It will be interesting to see where they go with that, I imagine it will take place at a different point in history, with perhaps the third game finally being all in the modern day. The voice acting is a bit repetitive, but otherwise the game sounds good, and looks good too. The look is very nice, and technically the world is very impressive, except for some pop up when outdoors and an inconsistent frame rate. What's odd is that it doesn't slow down, but speed up in a couple unique situations. It's not a big deal, just strange. Assassin's Creed isn't the completely amazing game it looked like it could have been from the trailers, but they definitely built a very promising foundation for the future.
