Assassin’s Creed started off with a punch – it sent our computers reeling. Not in the same way as Crysis or The Witcher 2 did, perhaps, but the punch was felt nevertheless. It also was somewhat mind-boggling in the way that it gave us a strong sense of freedom. Run, jump, climb, fight, escape, explore. Rinse and repeat.
Of course, the (first) game got its name for a reason: we played an assassin. And he broke the creed. I’m not quite sure why the name stuck to the whole series (it could have been Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Journey, Assassin’s Revenge, Assassin’s Revelations, etc), because the sequels have few ties to the creed idea, but it’s not a bad name.
The first game struck me as quite brillant. This was because I was exploring some beautiful, old, real-world cities and towns during an era that I enjoyed. I jumped roof-to-roof in Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus, hiding from annoyed guards and being, simultaneously, a gentleman and a nuisance. The second game got me dunked in rivers a lot (who decided that jumping from roof to roof in Venice was a good idea?) but was a lot of fun anyhow. And it introduced an entirely new concept to the game series – a likeable character! This game was sequelled brilliantly in Rome, and then Constantinople, with the same character. Ezio Auditore, a young nobleman with a romantic heart and a dangerous sword. But then the series took several turns for the worse in Assassin’s Creed III. Navigating slanted roofs was tricky, but running from tree branch to tree branch and across trunks laid out in perfect lines was more sigh-worthy than fun. The game also forced you to endure unforgiving mini-games. But worst of all, the character was hopeless. Why would anyone want to assist the survival – and success – of an aggressive, angry bully? Especially after having played three consecutive games from the perspective of a hopeless romantic! Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag was a fresh breeze after that. The game series goes on, but (other than Shadow of Mordor, which was made by a different developer but feels like exactly the same game) I haven’t invested in further titles. (Update – Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag is a combination of Sid Meier’s Pirates (curious, but I already played 50+ hours of that game and got mostly over it) and semi-functional button combinations (“block” and “use” don’t belong together). But sea travel is quite pretty.)
The gameplay in Assassin’s Creed is fresh and fluid at first, but after a few hours it begins to feel the same. We walk around, we surprise some guards, we run up a wall, we hide, we rinse and repeat. Doesn’t matter which city we do it in. Doesn’t matter what people around us are wearing. We find some more variety when Ubisoft added mini-games and (semi-)dynamic events such as jumping challenges, tower defense games, or random pickpockets, but these did little to enhance the experience. Assassin’s Creed (to its credit) added ship combat, which – while amusing and new – was more challenging than it should have been for scripted gameplay. But there were also terrible additions, such as a static battlefield command mini-game (with a horrifying interface).
The main underlying story behind the Assassin’s Creed gameplay is one jumbo conspiracy theory. That’s kind of cool. Mostly. We’ve watched enough conspiracy theory movies to know that it’s fun to watch all kinds of events and historical facts turn into big clues left by conspirators and their opposition. If only we saw more of it, though. Assassin’s Creed wavers between giving us several historical stories and one modern story, and tries to tie them all together. Apart from some minor connections, the ties seem to be somewhat unnecessary (until Desmond starts seeing assassin memories without using the animus). In some ways I wish it would just make up its mind and give us more modern story or more historical story. At least that way we would get to do and see more in the modern setting (which we see and learn very little of) or encounter less interruptions in the ancient setting.
Nevertheless, the first five PC titles in the Assassin’s Creed series are worth the time.
Pros
- Smooth combat control
- Freedom of movement
- Historical locations and people
- Interesting conspiracy ideas
- Gorgeous musical scores
- Beautiful scenery
- (early titles) Good optimization for PC
- Ezio
Cons
- Repetitive combat
- Repetitive scenarios
- Too little story
- (newer titles) Annoying scripted mini-games
- (newer titles) Poor optimization for PC
- Connor
Disclaimer: I have not played every single Assassin’s Creed game that exists. There’s an awful lot of handheld console versions (and when I tried one it almost completely failed to convince me that it was in any way related to the smooth-and-playable PC games).
The Soulshard Chronicles 
Well this is just strange, in two weeks you’ve managed to hit on the two biggest things in my life at the moment. Story structure and Assassin’s Creed.
AC was the first game that got me into violent video games (for better or worse, I don’t know). I have played every single one except the first one and Rogue (which in all fairness is just Black Flag all over again).
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who really liked Revelations, a lot of people seemed to hate that one for some reason. I thought Constantinople was a nice change after European cities and following Ezio as an older assassin was a neat idea.
I’m curious though, what did you make of Haytham? I felt he was the only good thing (apart from the amazing music) about III.
I did give in and play Unity recently and I didn’t feel it was as bad as everyone said. Like you, I felt that AC should either focus more on the historical setting or give more on the modern. Unity does cut out pretty much all the modern setting and it doesn’t delve into the bamboozling world of “Those Who Came Before” at all – which is definitely a strength. The rest of the storyline is pretty bland, which suits Arno, who is even more boring than the plot. And Elise was tedious in the extreme, though I might be biased because she had a truly awful British accent.
If you do ever play Unity, I’d love to know what you make of it…
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Assassin’s Creed Unity is curious to me, but I’m waiting out the apparent storm of bugs and hoping for a price drop. The setting looks better than Assassin’s Creed III; I don’t know anything about character(s) though. Is the gameplay the same old same old?
Revelations was something of a mix for me. Tower defense really isn’t my favorite minigame, but it was amusing. I was mixed between happy and sad about Ezio’s character, too, because rather than being the same romantic, he was quite bitter in Revelations. Understandable, perhaps, but I wish he had retained some more of his original state. That said, Revelations was still part of the wonderful trio that encompassed Ezio’s life, and I really liked Ezio’s story as a whole. He was a fantastic role model for the assassins’ order. I also really liked the teaser/trailer video for Revelations (set to the song Iron by Woodkid). It portrayed the resolved-and-melancholy tone for the game very well.
Haytham was quite interesting, I agree. Not sure that that was a good thing in a game where the only assassin was cruel and unlikeable, though, because it left a clearly bad taste in my mouth for killing my targets, and made me feel somewhat bitter about the assassins in general. (So much for the creed, and so much for them being the good guys, and so much for Desmond, etc.) I can’t remember the music from AC III – was it that great? I mostly remember and enjoy Ezio’s music, and wonderfully, my Jeremy Soule Pandora station keeps throwing those songs at me.
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Sadly yes, Unity’s gameplay is pretty much standard Assassin’s Creed. Thankfully there’s a lot less tailing people and the missions are made more interesting by the fact that the combat has been made significantly harder and stealth is now a viable option. They also tried to add random options within the missions, although they’re not really varied enough to make a significant difference to how the mission plays out.
I’m sure you know that the controls have had a major reboot – with parkour down as well as up and FINALLY an option to duck down behind cover.
This is both good and bad. The parkour is better managed and it’s wonderful to finally be able to go down at the touch of the button instead of launching yourself off buildings and hoping you don’t die like in previous games. I felt Ezio’s control scheme with jog, run and jump buttons were so much better than the single run+parkour button in later games. Unity harps back to the earlier games and gives you slightly more control again. However, I do find it can be very clunky and at times it feels like controlling a tank rather than an agile human being.
The cover system isn’t perfect, but at least you can duck behind doorways, look round corners and plan your move – which makes sneaking around indoors quite a bit of fun.
The biggest change is combat. And it’s the change I like best. In games 3 + 4 in particular I did find myself countering and then mashing the kill button until everyone was dead. Not exactly stimulating. But with Unity, the guards aren’t as stupid and they’ve eliminated the kill streak option, which makes fighting actually….challenging. At the beginning of the game when you don’t have many skills and your weapons are crap, 3 guards can easily overpower you.
Revolutionary Paris is a very cool location for an AC game, I think they could have played on it a lot more and the story could have revolved more around the actual revolution but the overall look of Unity was well done. And I enjoyed just wandering around all the different districts. (of which there are many)
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