Assassin's Creed Review Part 1

Introduction

            Good day readers! It sure has been a while since I ever touched Word (yes I use word for these blog posts) for anything but my assignments. But now that everything is done and dusted, and my holiday mood is just about to pick up (if not for those pesky exam papers), I figured I push out a new, long review out there! And what better way to do so than to do a review on the main installments of... the Assassin’s Creed series.

Humble Beginnings…

            It was 2007, the state of the gaming industry started to unfold substantially with iconic games of the decade such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Resident Evil 4 and the first Bioshock just to name a few. With so many shooters developed and garnering major success, the market soon became over-saturated with many shooters due to their success; many websites create cheap knockoffs of many favorite games such as Counter-Strike, further adding to this saturation.

One of the better games of its series... #neverforget

            It was about time, then, that a company would emerge among the pile of shooter games and take the reins to forge a brand new experience for the player: one of stealth and one of action-adventure, and thus Assassin’s Creed was born.

The game that started it all

            Created by Ubisoft Montreal, the first Assassin’s Creed has the player start off as Desmond Miles, a bartender kidnapped by Abstergo Industries, and is forced to interface with the Animus, reliving the pasts of his ancestor, known as Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad (try saying that fast five times), who is part of an Assassin Brotherhood sworn to take down their enemies, the Templars, who exist as fictional characters the player is tasked to kill within the story, and thus the player begins his journey from there, scaling rooftops and performing air assassinations along the way, escaping by diving into haystacks and sitting on benches, the choices offered here are limitless compared to the linearity of the aforementioned games, and thus is why Assassin’s Creed, the first one and its sequels, are so successful.

Whatchu lookin' at, brah

            The sequels of the game improves upon gameplay mechanics, combat smoothness, expands the number of options available to the player and improves the graphics and its fidelity, from Assassin’s Creed II all the way to the soon-to-be-released Assassin’s Creed: Unity with significantly (from gameplay videos anyway) improved graphics and improved fluidity in movements.

If I saw this in real-life and I was a Templar, I'd shit my pants.

L-Italy (literally) the best game

            Assassin’s Creed II was once again created by the same company, Ubisoft Montreal, and focuses on Desmond Miles once again, but now he relives the past of a different ancestor of the same Assassin Brotherhood, nearly 400 years after Altair’s story which took place on 1191.

Notice he has two blades now, ha.

Set in the beautiful city of Italy during the Renaissance, the player controls Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who is fueled by anger from witnessing most of his family members being hanged right in front of him after being betrayed by a man who claimed he would help rid their guilt. His father, before his death, led Ezio to a secret chamber, inside containing the Assassin’s robes and their iconic weapon: the Hidden Blade, taken from the previous game. Equipping these on, Ezio sets off on his journey to find out who are the men responsible for his family members’ deaths, but reveals even more as he goes along.

Executions are M18, so here's some concept art.

Assassin’s Creed II met with resounding success, garnering widespread critical acclaim, named Best Adventure Game in the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards, and IGN named it as the Action Game of the Year for Xbox 360 and Xbox 360 Game of the Year. Game Informer also named it as Xbox 360 Game of the Year. It also received Game of the Year from GamePro, Eurogamer and The New York Times, hindered only by its DRM-related criticism, but I am lazy to explain what DRM is, the important thing here is: AC2 was great.

Para-sailing in a game during 2009 is a REALLY big deal, trust me. 

Ezio’s story doesn’t end in Assassin’s Creed II, however, and continues on in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood...

Welcome to... da hood (applause)

and Revelations.

That's a castle, what a... REVELATION (HA!)

Continued in the next part...

Conclusion of Part 1

            Two great games for its time, two great games that expanded the genre of action-adventure and revolutionized the idea of stealth set in an open-world context, Assassin’s Creed does it not just well, but phenomenally so, with the first two games of the series being all-time classics, selling a combined total of 17 MILLION game copies as of February 10, 2010… 2010! (Fun fact: a million has 6 zeroes)

            It would be an understatement to call these two games a good game, but of course, a past accomplishment is in the past, and the sequels that follow these two games are not something to belittle either… but that’ll be for another day!

            Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed Part 1 of my little “spin-off” series of reviewing entire game series, Part 2 will be released shortly and not next Sunday so stay tuned! (holidays r awesome)