Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed is a open world, historical fiction, action-adventure, stealth game that is about a person called Desmond Miles reliving the memories of his ancestors by using a machine called the "Animus". Although he seems to be the main character, you spend more time playing as Altiar, a assassin during the third crusade.  I wont spoil anything for those who have not played it but I will say that the game has a unique storyline that has a couple plot twist and would probably get a pretty high score if I were rating it. Oh wait... I am. Overall, in the story line department I would give it a 8 out of 10, although they may need to work on the part where we are supposed to love the character. It may just be me, but when going through the game it felt as though both Altiar and Desmond didn't really care. Every now and then a glimpse of emotion showed through. But mainly he just seemed to be lacking something that we could relate to. Especially Altiar, although I guess he is supposed to be a cold-blooded assassin.
      Lets move on to the gameplay, which is extremely good in my opinion. Throughout the game you have the option to be stealthy, or you can run through the streets kicking every guard you see in the shin. The stealth mechanics are good, although I don't quite get why going slightly slower than normal with your hands together in front of you helps you to be undetected. Considering you still have about 20 throwing knives strapped all over you, a sword dangling from your hip, and a large (but very effective) knife on your back. The combat mechanics are pretty good too, although it seems that the most effective thing to do is to just wait for them to attack so you can counter. There is a small lack of weapon customization, considering you only have what they give you and you cannot buy your own gear, but to be honest, I'm not sure if that's good or bad. It gets rid of any clutter you might have gotten and lets you stop worrying about money and focus on whether you want to sneak around people or just put your sword through them.
      The enemy AI is pretty well rounded all things considered. When attacking you in groups they make a neat little circle so that they wont kill each other and it wont be like a line to the whack-a-guard convention. also, while you can simply attack most of the enemies with a flurry of blows and walk away unscathed, some of them get smart and decide to counter attack you. Which is when you get into a staring contest waiting for someone to attack so the respective party can counter. I have to admit that I was thrown off guard when a enemy grabbed me for the first time and threw me to the side  making Altiar do a ugly face-plant into the nearest wall. As you progress you get abilities to counter such things, such as counter grab, which was extremely useful considering every other guard wanted to play "Who can toss the assassin farther".
      When trying to be sneaky and avoid confrontation you can use the "hidden blade", which ranks pretty high on the cool scale. It has a uncanny ability to kill guards silently, even when in the middle of a crowd. So after killing some poor random guard who was in your way you can just keep walking while people behind you call the guards and mutter to themselves how such a thing could have happened. Not to mention that the hidden blade is a one hit kill. There is one disadvantage though, you can only counter with the hidden blade in combat. This means that you cannot block or attack with it, and learning how to counter with it takes a lot of practice and attention to timing. The missions are a bit drawn out and repetitive. Every single time you want to assassinate someone you have to gather information by doing menial little chores, going through cut-scenes you can't skip and generally messing around. After you do all that you can finally assassinate the target, which is extremely fulfilling, even though after it you know you have to do the entire process all over again.     
     On to the next order of business, the freedom of climbing along rooftops and parkouring all over peoples houses like someone who just got out of the mental ward. This part of the game keeps it fast paced and makes it feel like a true open world game. You can use climbing to get to objectives in different ways, to be more sneaky (because we always need more sneaking), to get away from those annoying beggars, and to run away from guards. While we are on that subject, lets talk about how the guards detect you and begin chasing you. Assassin's Creed gives the guards a means of detecting you, Which comes in the form of having different levels of alertness depending on the situation. For example, when a person dies, and the guards see the body they will be on the lookout for any suspicious activity, mainly you running along the street knocking citizens over and laughing. Also, after a assassination on a high-priority target every single guard in the city will be on the lookout for you. Once they detect you because you staid in their sight for too long they will begin chasing you, and the only way to lose them on foot is to get out of their line of site and hide. You can hide in haystacks, on benches, in rooftop gardens, and with monks. 
     All in all I would have to say Assassin's Creed is a good game. Its not the best game in the entire world but it has good combat, good stealth, good AIs, all wrapped up in a good story with decent characters. Sure, it needs a few tweaks here and there, but When it comes to games, this is one of the better ones.

(You can get a great view of the beautiful scenery from the top of a tower)