Assassin’s Creed is the next-gen game developed by Ubisoft Montreal that will redefine the action genre. While other games claim to be next-gen with impressive graphics and physics, Assassin’s Creed merges technology, game design, theme, and emotions into a world where you instigate chaos and become a vulnerable, yet powerful, agent of change.

The setting is 1191 AD. The Third Crusade is tearing the Holy Land apart. You, Altair, intend to stop the hostilities by suppressing both sides of the conflict.

You are an Assassin, a warrior shrouded in secrecy and feared for your ruthlessness. Your actions can throw your immediate environment into chaos, and your existence will shape events during this pivotal moment in history.

Key Features
Be an Assassin
Master the skills, tactics, and weapons of history’s deadliest and most secretive clan of warriors. Plan your attacks, strike without mercy, and fight your way to escape.

Realistic and responsive environments
Experience a living, breathing world in which all your actions have consequences.  Crowds react to your moves and will either help or hinder you on your quests.

Action with a new dimension – total freedom
Eliminate your targets wherever, whenever, and however. Stalk your prey through richly detailed, historically accurate, open-ended environments. Scale buildings, mount horses, blend in with crowds. Do whatever it takes to achieve your objectives.

Relive the epic times of the Crusades
Assassin’s Creed immerses you in the realistic and historical Holy Land of the 12th century, featuring life-like graphics, ambience, and the subtle, yet detailed nuances of a living world.

Intense action rooted in reality
Experience heavy action blended with fluid and precise animations. Use a wide range of medieval weapons, and face your enemies in realistic swordfight duels.

Next-gen gameplay
The proprietary engine developed from the ground up for the next-gen console allows organic game design featuring open gameplay, intuitive control scheme, realistic interaction with environment, and a fluid, yet sharp, combat mechanic.

Ask anyone right now which game they are most looking forward to playing and you can be assured that 9 in 10 people will have "Assassins Creed" in their top 3. Gaming Heaven was recently invited to the launch party in London for both Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions, and we walked away from the briefing with some lovely high quality game images as well as an 8 minute "gameplay" video. Also be sure to check out the dude in the costume below greeting the press, poor guy !

Firstly, if you want to check out the 8 minute video, head over here to watch it, be aware we scaled it down from a 500 meg video, however it is still 50 megabytes so if you are on a slower line you may wish to avoid this page!

Here are a selection of screen shots from various levels of the game. The first batch are from the "Acre" stage.

Another wonderful level entitled "Jerusalem". Hand to hand combat is well executed and the array of animations are of the highest quality we have seen in a game, to date. The character you control "Altair" is proficient in combat, but like any good assassin, hit and run tactics prove the most effective. Especially as quite often there are whole armies surrounding the people you are meant to be eliminating !

Lastly, the "Kingdom" level, which we played briefly. This game really is extremely impressive both in terms of image quality and the sheer amount of control you have over the main character, he can scale almost any surface.

Hopefully by now you are excited as we are to get our hands on a copy of this game, and from what we have seen it runs exceptionally well on both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3!