Assassin’s Creed: Is There a Game Here?
At first, I wasn’t planning on getting Assassin’s Creed because the reviews were all over the place. Gabe from Penny-Arcade made a good point about what the reviewers had to say. Basically, he made the point that reviews have to review games. They look at games differently than a normal gamer. Also, AC was a game so large, that during this time of so many ‘AAA’ titles, there was just no way of absorbing the game that AC was. And he said that game was good. I went ahead and bought it, and while my first impressions were what I thought, they only got better.
Then they got worse.
IGN’s recent podcast made mention of what Gabe had said - which the way they delivered it was unnecessary, but he was defending himself. Then Gabe made another post. But this is what I have come to realize. And as Adam Blue of BlueGamer, I feel this opinion is very valid.
Assassin’s Creed is not much of a game. You only have a few simple game play types. Save a citizen, pick-pocket, find flags, eves-drop, interrogate, and assassinate. Each one of this is very simple, and takes no time at all. The fighting is as simple as pressing ‘x’, then the right-trigger at the correct time. Tonight, I realized I’m bored of this. The game features TONS of these same things. Over and over. And over and over. I want to see the ending by playing through, but it was be grueling. The game is huge, has great graphics, but has no real ‘game’. It does nothing new, it does nothing inventive, and it contains what developers should not do.
Gabe made a point about their relationship with Ubi-Soft. He said they will only advertise games that they thought were good enough to be worth the space.
So, while he made good points about reviewers reviewing games and the bias that can come from that, Assassin’s Creed is very mediocre. I would actually think that Gabe would feel the same way. But, with all the games to play right now, it’s possible to put only enough time in the game to think you dig it, but for the reviewer they had to finish it which made the problem with the game apparent - there is not much of a game here.
