[Mousey]

I'm putting together a portfolio of my reviews/writing in case i need to re-apply for Journalism at college should i fail to obtain 4 "A* to C" GCSEs.
Could you tell me what you think of this Assassin's Creed review i'm working on?

Story

Assassin's Creed is set partly in Modern Day America, but mostly in the Medieval Holy Lands. The transition between them is frankly genius, Imprisoned by a group of rogue scientists from the Abstergo industry, Desmond is made to play out the memories of his Ancestor using a machine known as the Animus.Whilst playing out these memories, the Animus gives Desmond full control of Altair as he begins his mission to assassinate 9 historical figures propigating the Crusades in order to restore peace to the holy lands.

Assassin's Creed has one of the best stories i've seen in a game for a long time, the way everything ties together so well just makes the game so much more immersive and i applaud Ubisoft for their dedication to the story.

The first memory Desmond experiences while playing out the memories of Altair is to retrieve a mysterious artifact from the ruins of Solomon's temple with Malik and his brother Kaddar, However the artifact is also sought after by the Knight's Templarunknown to Altair and his accompanying assassins.We open to a cinematic of Altair driving a blade through the throat of an innocent victim, which is then revealed to us as a breach of the first rule of the Assassin's Creed, this plays a vital role in a key story point shortly afterwards.Altair attempts to engage Robert IV De Sablé, Grand master of the knight's templar in combat rather than using stealth and cunning to gain entry to the temple. Altair's overconfidence soon becomes his downfall and he is easily overpowered by Robert and thrown from the temple, Rocks then collapse over the entrance leaving Malik and Kaddar inside to fight off Robert and numerous other members of the knight's templar.

Defeated and humiliated, Altair returns to the base of operations for the Assassin's Creed and confesses his defeat to the leader of the Creed. Shortly afterwards Malik returns to the base, mutilated and enraged by the loss of his brother he hands over the artifact Altair was supposed to retrieve and explains how Altair's cocky attitude got Kaddar killed and also brings to light Altair's breach of all 3 orders of the creed. Altair is then demoted to an uninititate and stripped of his privileges and equipment, he must then fulfil menial tasks to regain his rank and equipment, piece by piece.

Gameplay
The gameplay style of Assassin's Creed could be descibred as a sandbox style experience. Upon arriving at a city, Altair must locate and enter the Assassin's Buerau and learn who is his target. He must then scower the city for informants and perform the tasks they ask to gain information which will help him kill his target. At this point, i must outline a criticism i have with the tasks necessary to gain the information. There are only 3 tasks, and these are the same tasks in every city for every information which makes the gameplay become repetitive, the Director's Cut edition of the game added 2 extra methods which are quite fun (Assassinating Guards through the city and Destroying Market Stalls) but it is still a fairly limited experience. This lack of variety was what made me spend most of my time messing about on the rooftops assassinating guards i happened to come across.

However, the addition of free-running or Parkour (See my other blog) makes the experience somewhat unique. I was at first skeptical about how the controls would allow the player to smoothly mix sword fighting, assassination and freerunning. But i was proved wrong, by using 3 seperate "Profiles" the user can Fight, Blend or Freerun in any situation. Low Profile is the default and allows the player to run or walk through the city, gently pushing citizens to the side in order to not cause a ruckus and doesn't attract much attention from guards. High Profile is enabled by holding down Shift and allows the player to run through the city barging people out of the way and punching those that won't move such as beggers and leppers. By holding another button whilst in high profile mode, Altair will simply sprint, this is where freerunning is enabled and as soon as an obstacle such as a wall or a jump is encountered Altair will automatically climb or jump wherever the user wants him to go.

Whilst not sounding particularly exhilarating in words, it adds a whole new dimension to the gameplay and becomes immensely addicting once you get the hang of it.


Aesthetics
The game engine allows a powerful computer (or indeed a console) to scale the environment beautifully. There were a few moments in the game after climbing the highest buildings in the cities that were literally stunning, you could see the entire city below you and the occasional guard on a rooftop somewhere below.My current gaming rig has an Intel core 2 duo processor (Detailed specs below), 2GB of High end gaming ram and a 256mb Radeon HD3850. Even at 1280x1024, with high detail on the shadows and anti aliasing (Smoothing to anyone scratching their heads on that one) the game looks absolutely amazing and runs beautifully.

Cheers guys