I thought that if I 1k'd Assassin's Creed, if I cast it from my list of gaming chores and healed the 300 point scar it represented on my gamercard I'd feel better, accomplished... clean. But all I feel is dirty. My gaming soul caked with the mud I had to trudge through to satisfy that game. But it was an entry fee I forced myself to pay in order to play Bionic Commando, and pay I did, the unshrinkwrapped Bionic Commando case staring me back in the face. Taunting me. Haunting me. So its done now, and I never have to play Assassin's Creed again. But because I had to play Assassin's Creed again, I'm going to talk about Assassin's Creed again.
You see its not so much that Assassin's Creed is a shitty game (like Silent Hill Homecoming) or that its just a bad idea (like Too Human) or even that its unfinished and glitchy (like Alone in the Dark), no Assassin's Creed is actually a marvelous game that just happens to be so full of itself, so mired in its own arrogance that you can never enjoy any part of it. You keep saying to yourself; "X would be so much better if I didn't have to Y" or "Why do I have to Y when all I want to do is Z?" Its as though the game was pieced together by a number of individually talented people who never knew each other existed, so when you put all their talent together it just interfered with itself.
Nowhere is this as prevalent as it is with the story, or rather, the heavy handedness of it. The basic premise is stupid, but just good enough for a game. Unfortunately, you can't skip it. You can't skip any of it. Even if you've already seen a part. Even if you've already seen ALL the parts. You're forced to sit through every agonizing conversation (and most of it is just that, conversation) when all you want to do is stab people. But then they jump out of the real story to the meta story in the future, which you are also forced to sit through without skipping, and here you are even robbed of satisfying gameplay to mix it up. In the future you just akwardly walk from the same two rooms and listen to the same 3 people talk before you finally get to do the stabbing. You do this over and over again for no reason. The plot certainly isn't good enough to warrant it. You're the victim, they're the bad guys. If all you're doing is setting up for the sequel, why not save it for the sequel?! I'M STILL TRYING TO PLAY THIS GODDAMNED GAME. And why are the play mechanics so awful in the modern day parts anyways? Just how late was this bullshit tacked on? How come Altair can navigate all manner of buildings and people and junk with a single button but Desmond gets stuck on the edge of bed's and tables, and can't talk to people or grab items unless he's perfectly lined with them without having to back up 10 yards and then trying again? A couple of menus and a picture slideshow would accomplish just as much in a fraction of the time!
Then there's the game itself. Is it stealth? Is it action? It seems kind of clear at the beginning, but by the games' end, the notion is lost. Its as though they created a character so effective at stealth and killing that it was possible to simply play through the game and never once see the engaged combat engine they had so expertly crafted, so they enacted a bunch of senseless limitations to deter you from stealthing too much. Don't ever run or climb ladders or ride a horse or stand around on rooftops, these things will alert the guards. Learn to tolerate the mercenaries, madmen, and beggar women who interfere with your affairs alone or they will alert the guards. Don't plan and execute your murders with assassin's precision and then escape totally unnoticed, this will alert the guards. In the beginning, this is perfectly fine. Pick pocket some maps, stab a guy in the back, kill a few guards, hide in the shadows until the coast is clear. Cool. But by the 4th or 5th kill, this has all become very repetitive and very difficult what with more and more lepers shoving you into the block breaking, counter attacking legions of guards. You will be (inexplicably) stripped of the ability to escape wrath by simply running away and hiding long enough, forced instead to find a hay or another hiding spot which will be conveniently placed next to another guard cache. Should you persevere through all of this, the entire final act of the game allows no stealth at all. A non-stop sword fight through waves of the same guards and goons you've been killing with the same tactics throughout the entire game.
And that's just the main game. An achievement whore/hunter's plight is far worse. Even if you were a good little murderer and did all your killing the way you were supposed to and stole enough knives and climbed all the buildings and found enough ways to kill guards and threw enough beggar women out of the way, you will be forced to endure not one, not two, but FIVE (if you combine the masayef flags and templars into one) meaningless scavenger hunts of 100 items a piece over the games various maps for the final 200 or so points. Every game nowadays has some sort of sound or visual cue or even reward to encourage you to indulge the sadistic scavenger hunt du jour, but Assassin's Creed just did it to say they did it, and then did it 4 more times over because it hates you. Not only are these objects hard to find, plot irrelevant and have no bearing on the gameplay, but because Assassin's Creed is either a game about sneaking around and stabbing people and not dicking around the tallest buildings and darkest alleyways looking for flags, you will draw no end of attention from the guards in your pursuit of the damned things. Many times you will be forced quite literally into a crowd of enemies to collect one, then forced to either fight them all off or run away before proceeding to the next, either choice adding tedium to an already tedious process. Eventually I resigned myself to operate my search with a cache of 10 or 20 guards in tow, eventually allowing them to eventually kill me so I could make use of the respawn teleport. And woe betide you if you miss an achievement the first time through. Punishment ranges from having to repeat an entire memory block (and all the cinema conversations and investigations their in) for most, to having to repeat the ENTIRE game for a select few. And Assassin's Creed doesn't give a shit if you want to keep your existing save to dick around if you start a new one, oh no. You are allowed only one save, and only one set of progress and NOTHING carries over.
Ironically, PS3 and PC players probably get a lot more fun out of Assassin's Creed because without achievements and g, there is no reason to endure any more than the very bare minimum of Assassin's Creed, and that's actually a pretty functional experience. The investigations are still repetitious as hell and the story still sucks, but you get to stab a whole lot of people along the way and you never have to collect a single flag or perform an optional mission because there's no reward on those platforms. But if you're a 360 player and you have that cursed gamerscore addiction but not the iron will to simply take game design abuse on the chin, Assassin's Creed will rake you over the coals again and again.
