360

Last night, this was just about the best game ever… for the most part.

It was the best game ever when I was exploring cities, fighting guards to save citizens (or just for fun), galloping over the countryside knocking guards left and right, running over rooftops to assassinate a guard before he knew I was there and posing like Batman on top of tall buildings.

It was a bit rubbish when I was actually playing the main game. The missions you use to gain intel aren’t very interesting. They’re very short, but just not very fun. There are three types, one of which involves, er, finding a bench to sit on. Yes. That really makes me feel like an assassin. Picking pockets and roughing people up to gain information are more interesting, but not as fun as rooftop escapes or counter-filled fights against six guards at once.

I only did one real story assassination in the four hours I played, but that was just a fairly standard fight bookended with annoying cut scenes. It’s not Hitman, by any means. In Hitman fights against multiple opponents generally mean death and stealth is the way to go. In Assassin’s Creed stealth is the far more difficult option, with combat against multiple opponents being reasonably easy (so far) and more of a way to show off than anything else.

It’s as if they’ve got the world right, the controls right and the combat right, but then tacked on a main game unworthy of all the rest. Combat is really superb now I can counter, the cities are wonderful and the simplified running and jumping controls that sounded so rubbish from previews actually work superbly. There’s enough control to make it feel like you’re doing everything, but it’s automated enough to stop you from constantly falling over, cursing and dying. Sometimes things go wrong and you end up throwing yourself off a building when you meant to jump up a wall or leap a gap, but it doesn’t happen very often and given the nature of the game they’ve done a really great job there.

I’m not sure if the fun will last, but right now it feels a lot like a GTA game to me. That sense of freedom, coupled with the annoyance of having to do annoying story missions to open up new areas to play. (I’ve never liked the story missions in GTA games. Ever.) The other comparison that springs to mind is with Crackdown and I think Assassin’s Creed would probably have been better structured in a similar way, with all the targets open and available from the beginning.

Oh, and it crashed on me last night. I was in an enemy camp out in the kingdom and I’d just slaughtered a load of enemies with my amazing sword skills. The last one fell, I started to walk towards my horse and my 360 froze up completely. Grrr.

In ugvm, Zomoniac wrote, “Simultaneously the best and worst game I’ve played in a long time.”

After an hour and half spent with it last night I’m tempted to agree.

Sometimes it feels like the best thing ever, but then it goes and fails a mission for unclear reasons, has rules for guard behaviour I’ve not even begun to work out yet and takes you out of the action for another huge cut scene just when you’re getting into things.

And it looks absolutely incredible… except when the screen’s tearing itself in half and shadows are glitching all over the place.

I really can’t tell whether it’s any good yet or not.