Assassin's Creed

Or should it be called Jade Raymond's Assassin's Creed... Anyway, I had just completed the game, or so it appears... I hate cliff-hangers, I really do, especially in a game. You play as an assassin named Altair, assigned to kill nine historical figures in three cities; Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem in 1191. The animation of Altair is excellent, you can see him smoothly grab a ledge or window and pull himself up with some effort. The cities look quite good and realistic, except, all of them look pretty much alike with little variety to differ them other than just a colour filter. The most annoying "feature" in this game is however, the beggers and drunks, there are one or both of them every SECOND corner, sometimes more, and they harrass you ALL THE FREAKING TIME! So much that you would want to kill every single one you see, but... there's a penalty for doing it! For god sakes, do they really have to put that many of them in the game!? While the story is decent, the plot twist is quite good other than the non-existing ending. The major flaw of this game is that it's very very repetitive, beyond the point of infinite repetition and rep... you get the idea. To carry out an assassination, you first must gather intelligence on your target, there are a few ways of doing them; you beat them out of a dude, you steal them from a dude, or you sit on a bench and listening in some dudes talking, the whole game is rinse and repeat with no variation what-so-ever. While the sound effects and original scores are above par, the voice acting is stonic and emotionless, just like watching a dub anime. The one-button combat mechanic actually works, most of the time, requiring some precise timing to attack or counter-attack. This is a fairly well presented game, but the major downfall is the lack of variety in many aspects and the inconclusive and somewhat confusing ending.