Assassin's Creed

I was beginning to think that the Ubisoft juggernaut could not faulter. They have produced some high quality games and created massive worldwide franchises. Although, you may be mistaken for thinking that they have a tendency to slap Tom Clancy's name on just about any product and getting it to sell in high volumes. Assassin's Creed was shaping up to be another one of these massive releases set to blow the world away with its high quality graphics and immersive gameplay. However, upon the game's release there were a host of luke warm reviews for the game. The Creed was going to feature a product made by the "best of the best" at Ubisoft. They were taking their best developers from their worldwide studios and giving them Assassin's Creed as their pet project. A way of saying, "Look at what we can do."

How could it have possibly gone wrong? Maybe Ubisoft just couldn't influence the media with expensive press junkets in the same way as other developers. There has been a tendency from many games journalists to hype up game releases just as much as the marketing machines behind the games. So, why have they decided to suddenly develop a conscience with this game?

Assassin's Creed is one of the best looking games of the year. The graphics take on a "hyper real" quality. The washed out whites on-screen appear to be indicative of the harsh sun associated with the arid middle east. The three cities have relatively unique architecture and design for each. Even though one reviewer did criticise the "pop up" in game on the 360 most of the reviews have been universally happy with the visual design and graphical quality. It seems that it is in the gameplay area that the game has fallen down. The game is extremely repetitive. After you have completed the first assassination then pretty much the following eight are exactly the same. The submissions are the same. I can't believe that over the years of development time one of Ubisoft's top notch developers didn't find this to be somewhat boring. Another problem that they faced was that the big "twist" in the story which occurs in the first couple of minutes of the game. Unfortunately even some lonely punter on Wikipedia revealed this twist months before the game was even released. Sad to think that Wikipedia got something like that right.

However, as I have read through reader reviews and spoken to my own customers who have purchased the game I get the opinion that they don't agree with the reviews. They love playing Assassin's Creed. They aren't overly concerned about the repetitive nature of the gameplay but are immersed in Damascus, Jerusalem and Acre. Some of those people that I have spoken to have taken the time to walk around the streets and listen to the dialogue and watch the NPCs react and interact with each other. I have asked them whether they found the gameplay to be repetitive and while a couple have said yes they have not felt that this detracted from the general gameplay.

Assassin's Creed actually got me thinking about old argument about whether gaming was an art form. As far as I am concerned art is not about the aesthetic beauty of the product, but the way the work makes us look at ourselves, our life and the world that we live in. Sometimes art has the ability to change our view of the world and this is what makes it art. For once I thought that maybe a game had the ability to make us think about ourselves and our place. But I also think that we, as a society, become consumed with things of beauty to the point where we idolize them. Maybe Assassin's Creed was just another example of this. Something so beautiful that we tend to lose our objective opinion on its purpose and function. Look at models as an example. What do they do? Not much really. But they are so beautiful that we don't really care that they have no function. Maybe Assassin's Creed is the same as this ...