TITLE : Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed is a fluid experience in which every individual element seamlessly works in harmony with the others, as the foundation of the entire gameplay experience lies in the fluid and intuitive control scheme. From walking around on the street to free running on the roof tops, the controls make it easy to manipulate Altair during his quests and that's a good thing as the game would have suffered dramatically had the developers not gotten such a firm handle on the controls.

The game's story is also a strong point and while I won't ruin any of the surprises, I will say that Assassin's Creed does a great job of weaving a deep and enjoyable narrative.

Needle in a haystack

The size of the game world is also immense but thankfully, it rarely feels overwhelming. After completing the tutorial level, which will take you a couple of hours, you are given a horse and sent out to the Kingdom; this area serves as the central hub that connects the three main cities of Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. As you cross the land in pursuit of your assassination targets, you quickly get a sense of just how big the game world is.

Luckily there are tall towers placed around the world that you can scale, and when you reach the top, you can hit the Y button to swing the camera out; this gives you a sweeping view of the vista which reveals more of the map and helps make things feel manageable. You will also find the locations of informants who help lead you to your targets.

Speaking of which, the main assassination quests themselves are repetitive in that you have to follow the same sequence of actions over and over again but what keeps these elements from getting stale is the life-like A.I.

It's Alive!

For the most part, non-playable characters that populate game worlds act and behave in a very artificial way but every onscreen person in Assassin's Creed has a presence and gives off a sense that they are unique individuals; this in turn helps flesh out the game's expansive world. As you move through the city streets you will be approached by beggars who will grovel and plead for money, merchants who proudly display their wares, menacing guards, and every other kind of citizen you would expect in the game's (mostly) ancient setting.

But you'll really notice the intelligent A.I. when you're out on the hunt for your next assassination target. Say you're roaming around on the rooftops, tailing your mark. You run into a guard who engages you in a scuffle. You dispatch him but his body falls to the crowded street below. As you'd expect, the citizenry will break out in a commotion and begin screaming, causing any nearby guard to come running.