Product Description

Assassin's Creed is set in 1191 AD, when the Third Crusade was tearing the Holy Land apart. Shrouded in secrecy and feared for their ruthlessness, the Assassins intend to stop the hostilities by suppressing both sides of the conflict. Players, assuming the role of the main character Altair, will have the power to throw their immediate environment into chaos and to shape events during this pivotal moment in history.

Assassin's Creed merges technology, game design, theme, and emotions into a world where you instigate chaos and become a vulnerable, yet powerful, agent of change.

Be an Assassin: Master the skills, tactics, and weapons of history's deadliest and most secretive clan of warriors. Plan your attacks, strike without mercy, and fight your way to escape.
Realistic and Responsive Environments: Crowds react to your moves and will either help or hinder you on your quests.
Action with a New Dimension - Total Freedom: Eliminate your targets wherever, whenever, and however. Stalk your prey through richly detailed, historically accurate, open-ended environments. Scale buildings, mount horses, blend in with crowds. Do whatever it takes to achieve your objectives.
Relive the Epic Times of the Crusades: Assassin's Creed immerses you in the realistic and historical Holy Land of the 12th century, featuring life-like graphics, ambience, and the subtle, yet detailed nuances of a living world.
Intense Action Rooted in Reality: Experience heavy action blended with fluid and precise animations. Use a wide range of medieval weapons, and face your enemies in realistic swordfight duels.
Next-Gen Gameplay: The proprietary engine developed from the ground up for the next-gen console allows organic game design featuring open gameplay, intuitive control scheme, realistic interaction with environment, and a fluid, yet sharp, combat mechanic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #670 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: UBI Soft
• Released on: 2008-04-11
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Platform: Windows XP

Amazon.co.uk Preview
It’s easy to see why there was so much fighting amongst the console manufacturers to try and make this game a format exclusive. Where early launch titles may have disappointed this game not only looks like a next generation game but it plays like it too. Taken at face value the story casts you as an Arabic fighter in 1191, out to assassinate the nine Western leaders of the Third Crusade. There is more to the story than that though making it more than simple historical adventure it first seems.

Since it’s developed by many of the same team behind Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, it’s no surprise to find the game using many of the same ideas. With the bold claim that you can climb on or over anything in the game world that sticks out more than two inches, this allows incredible freedom of movement, with a style of acrobatics heavily influenced by Parkour/free running. The game also innovates in terms of combat, with each of the face buttons controlling a different area of the body, rather like a marionette. As such one button controls the feet, one your open hand, one your weapon hand and the other your head.

As an assassin stealth plays an important role in the game too, but here it’s often a case of hiding in plain sight as you mill around inside large crowds of people. Everyone will react to you realistically though, so if you go around pushing people out of the way, or even killing them, the crowd will react and report you. With stunning graphics and genuinely innovative gameplay this is destined to be one of the most important releases of the year.
HARRISON DENT

Manufacturer's Description:
Assassin's Creed is set in 1191 AD, when the Third Crusade was tearing the Holy Land apart. Shrouded in secrecy and feared for their ruthlessness, the Assassins intend to stop the hostilities by suppressing both sides of the conflict. Players, assuming the role of the main character Altair, will have the power to throw their immediate environment into chaos and to shape events during this pivotal moment in history.

Our story follows a disgraced master Assassin (ALTAIR) who embarks on an epic quest to restore his status within the Assassin Order. After failing to assassinate the Templar Leader (ROBERT DE SABLE) and recover the legendary Templar Treasure, Altair is demoted to Uninitiated (the lowest rank in the Assassin order).

SINAN, Leader of the Assassins, offers our hero an opportunity to redeem himself. Altair must venture out into the Holy Land and assassinate men said to be exacerbating and exploiting the hostilities created by the Third Crusade. In doing so, he will stabilize the region, allowing Sinan to usher in an age of peace.

When our game begins, Richard the Lionheart has just recaptured the port city of Acre from occupying Saracens. With a base of operations established, the Crusaders prepare to march south. Their true target is JERUSALEM – which they intend to recapture in the name of the Church. However, SALADIN, leader of the Saracen Army, currently rules Jerusalem. Stinging from his army’s defeat at Acre, he will now allow Richard to humiliate him again. The Saracens are massing at the ruins of Fortress Arsuf, intending to ambush the Crusaders and prevent them from reaching Jerusalem.

These war maneuvers have left the rest of the Holy Land wide open. While Richard and Saladin battle one another, the men left to govern in their stead have begun taking advantage of their newfound positions of power. Exploiting, manipulation, and provocation rule the day. It is into this chaotic mess our hero now finds himself thrust. He is ordered to assassinate those most active in their exploitation.

And so Altair begins his missions.

Along the way, however, he will begin to discover that his targets are bound by more than just a shared interest in personal gain. They seem to share membership in a secret society – a group all too familiar to the Assassins. And they are not simply looking for profit. The true goal, and how they plan to achieve it are secrets to be discovered during the course of our story.

Customer Reviews

Good but not brilliant
Ok first off i've played the pc version and with DX10 and its stunning....no arguments there!!Its partly being sold as a stealth game but it's really not.As you go up through the levels more skills and equipment become avaliable to you which makes killing your enemies even easier than it was in the first place.That being said means the game actually gets easier the the further you get into it.
The cut scenes are a pain in the rear,they can be long and there is no way to skip them,making a second play through of the game a bit of a chore.
Now the up side,visually gorgeous and once you get the hang of the fighting controls it's really fun.
If they ever did a sequal to this they need to turn it into a proper stealth assassination game.Also the character is just crying out for a bow and arrow weapon and would really put a good twist on things.
On the whole it's a good game but i'd wait for the price of to come down before you run out and buy it.

the best and worst
Once upon a time a crack team of developers spent 50 years researching in the middle east before perfecting a believable world with cool animation, sound and the best level design ever.

Suddenly the production manager realised he hadn't bothered to commision a story!?! The game was due for release in one week! How had that been forgotten when 6 generations of families had died slaving on the graphic stuff?! Quickly he scribbled some psuedo Dan Brown conspiracy rubbish on the back of a napkin and thought of 9 unimaginative missions to send the protagonist on, hoping no one would notice cos the art was so slick...

I am disappointed because....
I am going to give this PC version of Assassins Creed a negative review, for the simple reason, that it promises so much and delivers so little. For months now I have been watching videos of Assassins Creed, I don't have a games console so I have had to wait on the PC version being released.

Once I finally got my hands on a copy, my first impressions were awesome game, I am lucky enough to have been able to play it on DX10 and the game does look stunning, the attention to detail and the atmosphere within the game is truly awesome, you really do feel that you are there. The first three or four levels are just mind blowing, the way your character moves, jumps from building to building, the little tests and trials that need to be completed in order to move onto your assassination target are all interesting and great fun to say the least.

But for me at some point after all of this the game just became more and more annoying, irritating even. As the game progresses it naturally gets harder, however rather than the assassinations becoming more complex and difficult to complete, what you find instead is simply more obstacles in your way, more guards to kill in order to get to your target, more annoying beggars and drunks blowing your cover. Each assassination involves killing more and more guards before you can get to your target.

I haven't competed the game yet, I am on my ninth assassination, I have had to kill over two hundred guards just to reach my target, now I find myself faced with ten or twelve elite crusaders, this is trial by combat and extremely poor game play.

There are memory blocks, which are invisible walls which you cannot pass through, now picture this. I have to kill these crusaders in order to get to my target, I do not decide which assailant to attack first the computer locks onto my targets for me, I have a certain amount of special moves to aid me, but the computer will all to often unlock my current advisory in order to lock onto the next before I have had time to finish him off so to speak, often as I am fighting one opponent I will back him up behind the memory block, which I can not pass through only to find that in the heat of the battle I am unable to unlock from him in order to defend myself from the other ten crusaders all intent on hacking me to bits from behind, as I take damage my life force is dropping, I find it harder to fight, the controls become more sluggish and unresponsive, and I become weaker.

At this point in time the game is nothing more than a hack and slash mini movie, I feel like Rambo, all I have been doing for the past two days is hack and slash my way through this game, there is no skill involved, no unexpected twists, no stealthy attacks and for me the word assassin describes a clever, cunning, manipulative killer, who strikes without ever being noticed, instead I have just walked onto a battlefield and surrounded my self with crusader knights. All I am doing now is trying to stay alive by seeing how fast I can hit those keys and push that mouse about.

I am disappointed because there are so many other ways this game could have gone, the graphics and level of detail are astounding, yet the game play and story line has been sacrificed and with each new level I have just been trying to get to the next new target just for the sake of completing the quests. I am bored and feed up.