Assassin's Creed

Ubisoft's latest is more than the sum of its parts.

	Version PS3, Xbox 360	Developer Ubisoft Montreal	Publisher Ubisoft	Genre Action

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The game has also been designed to eliminate the frustration that could so easily have overwhelmed this project were it in the hands of a less talented team. This can be seen in the health and auto-save systems, which together ensure that you'll seldom die (for the first three-quarters of the game at least), and when you do it's easy to get right up again.

As an assassin, being inconspicuous is a way of life. This plays in to the investigations you need to carry out before you can finally target your mark. These investigations take the form of pick-pocketing, interrogation, timed item hunts and, my favourite, stealthy assassinations.

Well, sort of stealthy. AI is an area of the game that is not particularly well designed. In one mission I was asked to assassinate three targets, but I kept on being discovered after the first or second one. After about an hour, out of sheer frustration, I went on a rampage, killing nearly 30 guards, leaving a massive pile of bodies around me. But once my stealth gauge had been reset, all the mission-integral characters went back to their starting positions and for the most part carried on as if all was well around them.

Part of what made that rampage so fun was that the combat system is so refined. The game starts off with you fully powered but, using a popular storytelling twist, you're soon stripped of it all and set the task of reclaiming everything again as you play through the game. It's an interesting if overplayed mechanic that works well here. The combat becomes more rewarding the further you progress, with each successful assassination earning not only another nugget of story but also some of your skills back. I found the offensive combat somewhat lacking but the defensive and, especially, counterattack moves are perfect. You won't really get into large scale encounters - unless you provoke them, that is - during the beginning of the game but as you make your way towards the end, effective use of your full repertoire becomes essential.

Much like the elements of the combat, when considered individually, there's much about Assassin's Creed that is flawed. But taken as a whole, there's an ambitiousness in the approach to storytelling and the graceful use of motion and combat that comes together as one of the better games out this year. There are certain things I don't like, including the sequel teasing and the frequent freeze-ups I experienced with my pre-release PS3 version, but the entire package is so engrossing and compelling that I had no problems overlooking them. If you're willing to look past some of the more repetitive elements of the game, you'll find a fun action game offering plenty of new ideas and that could just be the start of something amazing.

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