Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut Review

8.0

Format PC

Developer Ubisoft

Publisher Ubisoft

Genre Action

35 Comments

There are times when Assassin's Creed feels like the future of videogames. It plays with heavy ideas and spectacular technology. It flits between questions on the nature of reality, and slapstick ragdoll animations of medieval goons plummeting to their death.

Yet there are also times when it feels like a huffing anachronism: a failure where the writing overrides play, and the rigorous structure overrides the player's instinct to explore and experiment. A game in which the high concept actively prevents you from grasping the fun. For its unparalleled highs, Assassin's deserves praise and more: it deserves to be played.

For the times when it falls flat on its face, Assassin's should be pointed and laughed at. And perhaps poked with a stick.

The high concept, then: you are Altair, an assassin stalking medieval Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus, knocking off high-profile leaders from both Richard the Lionheart's and Saladin's Middle Eastern campaigns. Each target must first be traced, enquiries made, and witnesses interrogated, before the hit takes place.

Some will be quietly knocked off: a slip of a dagger into an exposed back. Some will be messily slaughtered, after thrilling chases through cramped streets. Success comes from the willingness to adapt, and to utilise your surroundings. Altair is exceptionally nimble, able to clamber over the skyline, race up vertical walls, and blend into milling crowds.

But the high concept doesn't end there. You are also Desmond, in the near future, a direct descendent of Altair, reliving memories embedded in your genome through virtual reality and a sophisticated dentist's chair called the Animus. In the future, Desmond has been kidnapped by modern Templars, who believe somewhere in his DNA lies the location of a mystical blah blah blah OMG spoilerz etc.

One question has to be asked before we get to the meat of the game: why this tension between historical caper and science-fiction mystery? The first answer: to better create relevance. This is a brave game that offers perspective on today's hot-button issues: fanaticism, control, faith and nihilism.

In the game's version of the Holy Land, Christian, Muslim and agnostic are equally flawed, equally corrupt, equally stubborn, and equally liable. Assassin's asserts its relevance by providing a direct link from the events of yesterday, to the troubles of tomorrow. Brave, but flawed.

There is an issue with all the moralising: it's played out as a series of lectures from the recently deceased. As they lie dying, they'll chat with Altair about the causes of the conflict and the nature of reality like pretentious sixth-formers. Way to ruin the moment: the high of the kill followed by dreary philosophy.

There's another reason for the science-fiction. It provides the designers with a get-out clause for some ill-considered game restrictions. Not allowed to enter the old town of Jerusalem? Use the 'MEMORY NOT AVAILABLE' blue screen. Need a reason for Altair to climb the steeples and churches? How about the need to 'synchronise' your memories with those of your ancestors? Naughty player going round stabbing civilians in the throat?

Tell them that behaviour not consistent with their ancestor destabilises their connection to the Animus. This over-elaborate fiction is a solution to an unnecessary problem.

Once you're through the science and into the medieval simulation, Assassin's Creed can feel like a game without peer. It's a remarkable joining of technology and art. The cities go on and on, each distinct, each becoming familiar as you play. The draw distance feels infinite; you're able to pick out landmarks from miles away. Steeples tempt you to climb them. Markets draw you in with their thriving crowds.

Those crowds are your hiding places. Assassin's Creed is the first game I've played to explore the idea of social stealth: using people to mask your approach. It partly succeeds. The success: gently pressing into the throng - pushing beggars aside, joining in the crush - is a rare and novel thrill.

The problem: these crowds aren't actually used for hiding from your kills. Most of your targets are safe behind locked gates or indoors; they'll only appear once you've investigated their routine. These investigations take up far more play-time than the kills; so they had better be interesting.

Hmmpf. There are nine targets in Assassin's Creed (although some late-game shenanigans extend that number), and each requires investigation by the ludicrous Assassin's Bureau before you're given permission to strike. The problem: every investigation is basically the same.

Enemies of the target talking loudly on street corners can be eavesdropped upon. Servants or workers can be followed and pick-pocketed. Allies can be followed to a secluded alley and bullied until they cough up information. (The PC version offers a few, very minor, extra missions over the 360 and PS3 releases. Those who have already tried Assassin's on the consoles - don't feel obliged to buy this.)

What sounds like variety, isn't. Every mission follows the same formula. Scout the city, climbing lookout points to spot sources of information. Get information. Report what you've learned to the Assassin's Bureau, and strike. This is fine the first few times. By the fifth or six, the formula is stale. By the ninth, rotten.

Open world games shouldn't be like this. The joy of an open world is in the chance for players to explore at their own pace. To go where they want, when they want, how they want. The giant hulking walls that prevent you from accessing portions of the cities are one failing. Worse is the absolute absence of player-decision in the planning stages. Assassin's Creed doesn't ask you to track your target. It asks you to follow blips on a sat-nav until something eventually happens.

Yet there is joy here. The cities are beyond beautiful. They're incredible. There are moments - whether you're in a back-alley, pale smog hanging a foot off the floor, or riding the rooftops at full sprint - when the sense of place is extraordinary.

More than any other open-world game, it asks you to sit back and enjoy the sights. Jerusalem isn't like Vice City or San Andreas, to be bombed through on a moped. It is a place to savour. Or to sprint through.

The real thrill of Assassin's Creed is in its many chases. There are predictable chases, such as after having killed the Lord of the Manor, and unpredictable chases where knocking over a jar-carrier alerts an already suspicious guard.

There are rooftop chases, where you'll finally escape by diving into a secluded garden, or street-level chases, where you can dive through stalls, bash through the crowds, and lose the pursuit by making sharp turns and then sitting quietly on a park bench, or blending into crowds of chanting monks.

There are even reverse chases - where your target escapes, and flees, you on his tail, guards on your tail. This is Benny Hill style madness, and glorious for it. Seriously. Grab the mp3 of the Benny Hill theme and play it while on the run. It's funny. All that's missing are the buxom wenches. Expansion pack, please.

You're aided by a smart control system that automates some of the finer details of movement. Rather than spotting a route up a wall - as in most platform games - you can usually point Altair at the problem and he'll find his own hand-holds. Instead of blindly trying to judge when to press the jump button as you leave a ledge, you don't. Altair has two modes of movement: high and low-profile.

In low profile, you can blend, languidly surfing the crowds. In high-profile, you'll start running and sprinting. In low profile, you'll have to get close to assassinate - driving a hidden blade into an exposed back and walking away from the still vertical corpse. In high profile, swords are drawn, and violence is committed without worry. Choosing between the two is a matter of pressing Space.

There is another way of ending a chase: to Errol Flynn your way out. Sword fighting in Assassin's Creed is as nuanced as free-running. Once trained, you can block, counter, dodge, grab and swing freely.

Timing your moves is the real challenge - particularly against the highly trained Templar Knights you face. Arrogantly swinging your sword will see your swipes repelled. Instead, if outnumbered, it's better to wait for the opponents to swing - you'll counter with brutal efficiency. It encourages subtle tactics: better to place your back to a wall, then lunge at a target. If he dodges, he'll swing back - opening himself up to an instant counter.

Assassin's Creed is at its best when you're flipping between all the options within a minute, from fleeing to combat, from stealth to violence. It fails when it defines your approach.

The final hours of the game prove my point. The targets taken down, the inevitable plot twist having occurred, the game abandons the freedom of the cities and turns into a two-hour combat gauntlet.

Stealth and free-running are jettisoned: all that is left is a constant barrage of swordfights. It's a disaster, a betrayal of everything the player has learnt so far. It abandons even the slim veneer of choice that the very best games offer us, turning into Double Dragon in a monk's robe.

It's a failure of confidence and of art; a damning end to what could have been the game of the year. I said that Assassin's Creed deserves to be played, and I believe it. Somewhere within this idea is an extraordinary game waiting to happen. A sequel is all but inevitable.

That sequel can avoid the pratfalls of the first by trusting players with the full scope of its cities from minute one, by offering a wider choice of who to kill and how to investigate. And by thinking of a good ending. Until then, do play it.

Tim Edwards