You know how some books are so bad that you just stop reading them? Sometimes though, a book is bad but you muscle through it because you want to see what happens to the characters, or because you like some parts of the writer's style. Assassin's Creed falls into the second category. It is, without a doubt, the worst game I have ever played all the way through.

Now because Assassin's Creed reviews usually fall into the extreme, and comments on those reviews are equally extreme, I want to describe exactly how I played the game:

I played the first half of the game in standard definition, on a 42" TV, sitting 9 feet from the TV in a relatively bright room. During this time I completed all the objectives except for the flag gathering, which is dumb I think.
I played the second half of the game on a 100" HD projector, in a dark room. Yes, I know, you're jealous. Try to focus. During the second half of the game, I ALSO completed all objectives except for flag gathering, but I was much less focused on exploration, because I was getting sick of it at this point.

So I'd like to begin complaining about Assassin's Creed right off the bat, but first I will describe what I DID like about it. The story is great. It's campy and overdone (evil secret organizations bent on world domination got old in the 1700s, 1890s, 1960s, and 1990s), but it's still great up until the ending. Many reviewers don't like that it's a story-within-a-story, but I think that adds an interesting twist to it, and at least they attempt to explain why an assassin in Israel in the 1400s has a RADAR. However, the story just sort of stops at the end, you don't actually "win" or anything like that. In fact, the only way to stop playing once you've "beaten" the game is to simply turn off the console. You can watch the credits, but it's more of a free-form exploration thing, you never get a "return to menu (y/n)" screen or anything. Aside from the ending, however, the story is great. Mildly historically accurate, interesting, and good motivation for your character and your character's character are given. All good things.

The graphics and sound are also fantastic. Someone walking by while I played it actually thought I was watching a documentary on the middle east for a second. Convincing crowd, compelling architecture, and excellent character animations made for an immersive experience. This experience was heightened by the fact that you can choose to either blend perfectly into the crowd, or choose to sprint toward the nearest wall at any moment and scale up to the rooftops. Simply put: running around wasting time was the best part of the game.

Now for the bad news. Running around wasting time is the best part of this game. That means that "actually playing the game the way it was meant to be played" is NOT the best part. I'll tackle the complaints in categories, so I don't get carried away.

ENVIRONMENT/FREE RUN
As I said before, free running is the best part of the game. Why, then, would it also be in the complaints section? Well if you played the game for more than 20 minutes, you would have come up against the magical walls that cannot be climbed. They look like regular walls, but when you're fleeing the guards and you run at them, Altair just slams face first into the wall and stops dead. That's it. Can't climb, and you die.

Also a problem is the fact that Altair doesn't quite jump in the direction you pushed. For the most part, this is done so that your character doesn't plummet to his death. For instance, when you're running toward a lattice of beams, Altair nicely hops the short distances between the beams, instead of taking a running leap over the first 3. However, there are times when you are aiming for a particular beam, and Altair simply leaps out to his left and into the water, or into a group of enemies. (Side note, why does a super-hero assassin raised on the coast not know how to swim even a little?)

Not only will Altair jump in unpredictable ways, but no less than 5 times during the game he got stuck up on a tree or a cart or a particularly fat citizen and I had to quit the game. That's just bad design right there. Under no circumstances should a free-run open-world game have areas where your character can get permanently stuck.

COMBAT/ENEMIES
Once you decide to actually play the game and fight some bad guys, you realize a number of things. First of all, the combat system was originally based on the first Prince of Persia, which would have been awesome. Unfortunately, they made it frat-boy-friendly and combat now consists of *wait for attack* *counter attack* *wait for attack*. Yes, there are other ways to fight, including such crazy things as grabbing enemies, throwing them to the ground, and slamming the hidden blade into their throats, but when the easy parrying mini-game is faster and more efficient, there's no incentive to do the fancy moves unless you're getting bored.

Also, the AI on the guards is a little...off. You can stab one of them right in front of his buddy, and buddy won't even bat an eye. However, if you're in an informer mission and you so much as stroll within 30 feet of a guard, your cover is blown. Also, if you're ever in the guard's shoes, and you're trying to find an assassin, and 5 guys in white robes walk past you chanting, maybe the one with two swords and 15 knives isn't actually a priest. Think on that.

TRAVEL
I would like to point out, at this point, that as soon as you climb all the view point towers in the Kingdom, you are given the option to simply warp from one city to another. Many reviewers have complained about the travel time between cities, so I thought I'd throw that out there.

That being said, travel time is STILL too long. Every time you get a mission, you have to walk down the mountain from your base to the front of your starting city, steal a horse from the stables, [ride through the kingdom], sneak into the city, then walk/free run to your destination. It takes forever. And don't EVER try to turn off the console right after completing an assassination, the game won't give you the option of warping back to Masayaf, so you'll have to walk all the way BACK too, which takes longer since on the way out of Masayaf you can just jump off the cliff to the city gates.

CITIZENS
There are four kinds of citizens:
Thugs: These guys are always willing to dish out random fisticuffs. They're annoying because you're not allowed to kill them, but you can pickpocket them to recover your throwing knives (though these characters never actually USE the knives they have in their belt pouches). Overall, they serve their purpose and are written well.
Normal citizens: These people provide color and moving obstacles during chases. Good overall.
Beggar Women: Terrible, horrible, screeching bitches that get in your way and beg for money. I don't care if you're poor and sick and hungry! LEAVE ME ALONE! If you encounter one during an informer mission, your cover is BLOWN. You can't actually get past a beggar woman while in "blend" mode, and exiting "blend" mode will usually break your cover. However, there is a hidden achievement that can be accomplished by grabbing them (RT+B) and throwing them into walls. VERY satisfying, and it doesn't even trigger the guards unless they're right there. Don't throw them into the water though, that's murder and the game will de-synch you.
Retards/Lepers: No one is clear on what these guys are, but they're naked men in badly wrapped loincloths that PUNCH YOU AND ONLY YOU. You can stand there watching them for an hour, and hundreds of citizens will wander by without Captain Mumbly giving them a second glance, but when you get within 15 feet they turn into Cassius Clay. Plus, you can't kill them, and THEM punching YOU breaks your cover. There's one assassination that takes place on an execution platform that is "guarded" by these creatures. It's almost impossible to complete without having ALL the information for that mission.

BOSS FIGHTS/ASSASSINATIONS
The assassinations are pretty cool. Once you have enough data on your target, you get the feather (cultural thing, read up on it somewhere else) and go to the assassination area. Once in the area, you lose your movement bonuses and your HUD, and enter a sort of pseudo-cutscene. You can still walk around and approach the target, but you can't kill anyone, and usually you are barred from breaching a perimeter around him. Once the cutscene ends, you are free to kill him however you like. You're SUPPOSED to sneak up behind him and stab him with the hidden blade, but I have to be honest: I was only able to accomplish this 3 of the 9 times. And since there's no saving in this game (the game saves automatically every time you do anything) you can't keep loading until you get it right. You have to just go with the flow. On the first try. That seems a little silly to me.

So if you assassinate the target correctly, you stab him in the throat and then listen to him soliloquize for the entirety of his 15 minute last breath. When you leave the cutscene, the guards have noticed you, and you have to fight your way back to the assassin's bureau. If you don't assassinate the target correctly, when you do finally kill him you get the same 15 minute cutscene, during which apparently the guards stand back in deference to the storyline. Once out, they try to kill you again.

MENU/DISPLAY
As mentioned before, there's no saving or loading in this game, which I think is terrible. You can never actually "fail" (because games have become impossible to lose at, but that's feed for another article). This leads to hilariously impossible missions, however. For instance, some informer missions have you attempting to assassinate between 2 and 6 specific soldiers within a time limit. If you get caught while sneaking up to the first guy, your cover is blown. Once the guards lose sight of you, you can attempt the mission again. However, TWO NEW TARGETS ARE SPAWNED. You can see what the problem is, I'm sure. If you continually fail to assassinate the first target, you end up with dozens of identical targets, only two of which actually will allow you to complete the mission. The solution is to go do something else until the game cycles the citizens in that area out of memory.

When I moved from the small SD TV to the enormous HD TV mentioned before, I came to realize that there were actual ICONS on the radar. I could sort of differentiate between "people mission" icons (rescue citizen, groups of scholars, and groups of vigilantes), "viewpoint" icons, and "sub-mission" icons (pick pockets, eavesdrop, informer). Once I moved to the big screen I realized that EACH sub mission and group of people had a unique icon. Specifically, the icon for "save citizen" is a small square with 4 dots at the corners, while "vigilantes" is a small square with triangles at the corners. Unless you're on HD, you can't tell. Now, this is a failing of HD gaming in general, but an effort should have been made to ensure the game could be played on a "normal" TV.

MISSIONS
Informer missions are frustrating (see the mention in COMBAT/ENEMIES and MENU/DISPLAY).
Pickpocket missions are either 2 second affairs or impossible.
Eavesdropping missions only exist to add to the story, so I guess they're ok. I wish you had to actually follow people around the city as they chatted though, that would have made them more cool.
Save citizen missions are my favorite. Ripping into some evil guards is satisfying.
Climbing the view points is rewarding, challenging, beautiful and fun. That's probably why they're the only sub-mission you absolutely have to do.

SUMMARY
All in all, as I said before, Assassin's Creed is the worst game I've ever beaten. That means it's also a better gaming experience than all the games I never bothered to beat, which is why it gets a MEH rating. While playing it, I would scream and curse and vow to never play it again, then I would PLAY IT AGAIN. Now that I've beaten it, the only reason I would ever pick it up again is to attempt to get perfect assassinations on all 9 targets.