Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360)
Assassin’s Creed is not a game about playing as a hooded assassin hunting down targets in the Holy Land during the Third Crusade. It is actually a game where you play as a guy who is playing as a hooded assassin hunting down targets in the Holy Land during the Third Crusade. At first this layer of removal might seem a little unusual and unnecessary, especially since most of this action game does take place in its historical setting, but Assassin’s Creed manages to use this strange contextualization as an interesting tool, not only adding some extra intrigue to its plot, but helping to justify some common video game design elements with an in-universe explanation.
The person you are technically in control of in Assassin’s Creed is a man in the modern day named Desmond Miles who finds himself kidnapped by the powerful Abstergo corporation. Abstergo Industries desires a mysterious ancient artifact whose historical footprint disappeared in the 12th century, but they have a special device called the Animus that allows a person to embody their ancestors and experience their memories. Desmond is forced to go along with this search if he wants to survive, and while the sections of the story where you play as Desmond are often short and lacking in much to do, they do add some extra flavor as you’re left curious about what the artifact’s purpose is and how the modern plot may unfold once the truth comes out. Admittedly, Desmond’s story does not go as far as you might hope considering the time spent on it, electing to leave things open for sequels in what would end up becoming Ubisoft’s premiere franchise, but the Desmond sections are small enough they don’t drag things down and the Animus can be a clever way of boxing in the adventure in the past some. There will be times where you can’t head to an area because it’s not part of the ancestor’s experiences, if you die it’s just seen as an issue syncing up with the past to justify the revival, and sometimes the Animus glitching can add some extra cinematic flair to a scene so you’re not just locked to the perspective of one person.
The story that more heavily carries the gameplay though involves Altair, a member of a brotherhood of assassins who aim to subtly influence society and politics by taking out people who act cruelly or selfishly. While this brotherhood follows a strict creed to avoid exposing their order or killing those who do not deserve it, Altair lets himself become careless in trying to acquire the artifact Abstergo would become so interested in centuries later before the Templars do. For breaking the creed, Altair is demoted despite being one of the brotherhood’s most gifted assassins, having to start from the bottom and prove himself to his master by assassinating nine important targets across the cities of Damascus, Acre, and Jerusalem. Assassin’s Creed does utilize its historical setting well in parts and a bit weakly in others, sometimes choosing to lean more towards what we expect to see or adjusting the past a little to make this narrative more effective. Already the game does add a new historical mystery to the mix with the ways the Templars and Assassins are pulling at strings behind the scenes, but other elements like making the Dome of the Rock golden feel like they bend history to avoid disappointing people who expect to see them as they know them regardless of factual truth.
The three major cities do feel distinct from each other though, the player heading between them and unlocking new districts to explore as they work their way through the target list. Admittedly, the game leans incredibly heavily on greys, browns, and tans in its environmental design, a settlement often having a good degree of its architecture and streets blend together into a space with few standout areas thanks to the dull tones. You can find some special areas like the docks of Acre or your assassin target may be found in some unique space like a palace you get to explore a bit, but mostly you’ll either be walking through narrow streets or making navigation easier for yourself by leaping across rooftops. A place like Acre can stand out a bit thanks to the heavy Templar occupation making for a more oppressive grey location compared to the livelier travel hub of Damascus, and the player is generally free to explore any district they’ve had an approve hit take place in. The Animus will literally make large walls to block you off from other spaces with its reasonable excuse of Altair not having been there during that time, but otherwise you will be given free rein to approach your work for the brotherhood however you feel suits you.
When you begin an assassination job, the first thing you’ll need to do is gain some information on your target. Around the area will be a range of little tasks you can undertake to learn helpful details, Altair able to eavesdrop, pickpocket helpful documents, interrogate underlings, or even get other assassins to give him details after completing a bit of work for them. When you first begin doing these, it might feel like you’re building up a useful amount of information to help with the assassination job, but when it comes time to kill, you’ll unfortunately learn a lot of this work didn’t really matter. You do need to do some to unlock the assassination, but the info you acquire like useful routes to the target or details about their behavior don’t really pay off. When it’s time to do your job, you first approach where the target is, usually somewhere out in the open where they can first engage in some unquestionably cruel act to make it clear they’re an acceptable target for the upcoming murder. After that scene that shows off how bad they are, you then want to get in close and take them out, and sometimes you don’t even need to be stealthy about it. So long as you can reach them and landing a killing blow, you can ignore all the guards and danger nearby to rush in an execute your foe, after which the Animus will teleport you and the dying villain to a white space so you can talk for a while and learn about the darker forces at work a bit more. At least afterwards you will be on the run and have to escape the guards that chase you, but with all the build up it can feel like these moments don’t even incentivize paying attention to the information or trying too hard to be sneaky in how you approach these crucial kills.
Luckily, while the assassinations are meant to be a tentpole moment, there are gameplay fundamentals present throughout that can still carry the day. While you don’t necessarily need to be stealthy for those big kills, generally it is a good idea to avoid angering guards and there are many cases where your other work can be immediately undermined if you act too brazenly. You won’t be able to pickpocket or interrogate people if you’re openly aggressive or suspicious. An indicator in the top left tells you how suspicious people nearby are of you and managing it is key to slipping through more heavily defended areas. Altair can try to take back channels or go over rooftops to avoid detection, climbing a fairly useful tool all through the adventure as parkour allows you to gain an edge against pursuers. Hiding spots let you shake the guards if you can make your way to them without being seen, but even before then there are ways to avoid conflict like walking alongside a group of hooded scholars to blend in. Admittedly, you can game this system a bit. Holding A to blend in is meant to slow you down so you walk around imitating a scholar, but there are times you can just occasionally tap it to reset suspicion if you want to slip through an area quickly. It’s not a perfect trick and some actions will always trigger an armed response if done in view of a guard, but you can stand and fight if escape seems difficult or the goal could still be completed even after a combat encounter.
Altair’s main weapon in Assassin’s Creed is a concealed wristblade that will instantly kill anyone you can sneak up on but is poor in combat. Instead you’ll want to use a proper sword if you do decide to stand and fight, and the action there feels a bit rough but in a reasonable way. You’re meant to be a professional assassin who doesn’t just carve his way through every problem, so the combat tries to find a middle point between being manageable when necessary but best avoided. To get a good sword combo going you need to time your slashes to a rhythm based on when your blade hits a foe’s guard, and as the game goes on you will get new attack options to help speed up any fighting with things like guard breaks. A counter is great for taking out regular enemies instantly, but stronger guards are more capable foes who will often counter you, can survive counters themselves, and punish sloppy swordsmanship. Fighting is required in a few spots but it’s often a poor way to shake pursuers, and if it wasn’t for the optional citizen rescue missions where you step in to protect harassed people the fighting would probably not get too old. People who want to do the fairly manageable side objectives like helping citizens or climbing to get some impressive city views might find things slow down or get a bit repetitive, but they also add some more substance to the action and the cities you explore.
Funnily enough, despite the information gathering not paying off much in the actual assassination, the tasks leading up to the assassination can sometimes be better than the big kills. Your fellow assassins in particular give you fairly good tests of your parkour abilities and whether or not you can take down a target without being spotted, although throwing knives do make the latter one a bit easier. They still are perhaps the game at its best though since they test the main gameplay without having outs like combat and hiding, even if retrying such missions can be a drag since you can’t skip dialogue in a game that decided not to even subtitle its voice acting ever.
THE VERDICT: When the ideas of Assassin’s Creed are given room to work, the systems can be quite enjoyable, fleeing sometimes an exciting hectic affair and kills when you do have to be sneaky rewarding to execute. Climbing is a versatile tool that makes navigating the historical cities more enjoyable, and when you do find yourself in a fight, the combat is manageable despite becoming annoying and repetitive if overly emphasized. The game’s structure can drop the ball when it comes to things like the main assassinations but have quality side missions, and the intrigue of a plot in this historical setting make the world more interesting to explore on top of having some satisfying parkour and the wristblade kills that remain thrilling to pull off throughout.
And so, I give Assassin’s Creed for Xbox 360…
A GOOD rating. If you’re a bit more willing to ignore some of the plainer side content like helping citizens, Assassin’s Creed can run at a better pace and get you to its better executed moments more often. Some assassination targets do have interesting gimmicks like one who blends in with all his men so you can actually use that information you collected for a change to help track him specifically, but other times it does feel like the game wants you to think you’re doing clever stealthy work even though you can rush in and kill your target without much worry. It can at times feel like Assassin’s Creed is setting you up for something closer to what is seen in the Hitman series where stealth and knowledge are more heavily prioritized, but it doesn’t completely abandon such ideas even though its most crucial moments don’t make the best use of them. Getting to certain areas in the cities, shaking pursuing guards, and the better information gathering tasks give you the space needed to pull off satisfying escapes or expert kills. Being just the first in what would become a long-running series though means Ubisoft has had a lot of time to reconsider elements of this first game to better lean into or away from ideas found here and better hone in on the desired experience, but usually when things aren’t the best in this initial entry it’s more to favor the player. The assassinations aren’t too difficult to avoid frustrating you if something small goes wrong, and the combat isn’t too punishing so you won’t be exasperated any time you do get cornered. With more meaningful and involved activities and more of the assassinations with creative complications, this game could have been a superb start to a series despite the sometimes dull visual presentation that was admittedly common for games made at the time.
The first Assassin’s Creed feels like that space Ubisoft needed to play in to help them understand what works and what about its concept people would like. So many ideas have greater potential than what it seen here, but at the same time you’re not just left hoping they’ll be improved later. You can find enough in the action to make Altair’s assassin work enjoyable, a fundamental like movement incredibly well done so that it can benefit even the simpler tasks. The successes of this first entry aren’t things you need to scrounge to find, and while you also can’t help but notice some shortcomings, Assassin’s Creed finds a pretty effective middle ground most of the time in letting you feel like an awesome assassin but not one that needs to realistically be overly subtle or smart to survive.