Assassin's Creed - The Repetitive Future of Gaming

There are few previews that rarely get me excited these days. Normally I can see right through the hype to the shortcomings that will go along with the ambition of trying to change gaming forever. Assassin's Creed was one of the few games that had me checking previews frequently and analyzing every detail that was made available. Even despite the hype that this game received, and even despite the mediocre scores that some people feel that it deserves because of the redundant missions, I feel that Assassin's Creed is the future of gaming in a number of ways. If you're looking for straight up review complete with a star rating you're in the wrong place. I'm here to discuss the implications that Assassin's Creed has made about the next big step in video games no to give a "buy it or don't" report.

To get this out of the way right off: NO, Assassin's Creed is not the perfect game. There were a few elements of the game that bothered me, and some that downright frustrated me. The overworld area was pointless, and the stealth aspects were entirely overblown. Now that you know the game is weird in some ways I can tell you why it's still one of the most important games out right now.

Assassin's Creed succeeds in two major ways. The first way that this game succeeds is by re-imagining the standard method of using a controller. This game has you holding buttons down with the occasional press as opposed to constant tapping that we are all used to. The second reason that this game is so important is the interpolarity of asthetics and function. The game provides a very real looking world with very real looking surfaces and buildings, while giving you a "if it looks like you can climb it you probably can" feel. Together, these two deviations from what is expected make the game very worthwhile.

As stated, this game controls differently than you might expect. The controls are more like that of a racing game than that of a platformer. Timed button pressing has long been the standard method for determining what would happen in th game world. Changing this to a "high profile" vs "low profile" scheme, which has you holding down a button to decide which mode you are in, allows the gamer to spend more time looking at the screen to map out running paths. Without this change you would get so caught up pressing buttons that the whole free running aspect would get lost. Freeing the gamer up from pressing buttons the experience is drastically altered, creating a faster game with a world you can spend more time appreciating and less time fighting with.

The other big reason why this game is so amazing is because of the ability to interact with it. Don't get this wrong, you can't destroy everything you see, you can't alter the terrain, you can't use anything you see as a weapon; but what you can do is climb on just about every surface that looks remotely climbable. The one thing that I would like have to have been able to do, to make the freedom feel complete, would be the ability to climb on the rock surfaces and cliffs. For some reason you can climb every building but not on any of the natural environment. Even so, the game just feels so much more real because the laws of logic are closer to being the ruler of this domain. The game feels like it less about what paths are built in and more like a world that if you want to do something you can. It feels like logic rules your actions, not what skills you learned during the short tutorial that is at the beginning of the game.

The slight change in controlling the lead and the big change in the environmental interactivity make Assassin's Creed an important title. If you have it and you're sick of the game because it is just too repetitive then you should try out a method I worked out to make the game fun throughout: play just one mission a day. It takes an hour or two to do an assassination depending on how in depth you get about it, and when you break it up each day it actually makes the game a lot of fun. At any rate, enjoy climbing around on stuff and don't forget to jump off a few towers for a kick.

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