Is Assassins Creed Like, Good Actually?

ASSASSINS CREED (2007) SPOILERS

I am 22 years old, born in 2003. I wasn't much of a gamer until my teen years, and a lot of the 7th console generation was me playing Kingdom Hearts and watching my brother play some of the worst games I have ever seen in my life. Since then, I have become obsessed with this generation of video games and everything surrounding it, my Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 being some of my most prized possessions I use on the daily. 

Which takes us to the current topic, Assassins Creed. A video game series that, I have been told, is kind of awful. Or at best, mediocre. Maybe its just the people I hang out with, maybe its just general opinion, I honestly have no idea. But what I do know is when I first got my Xbox 360, I got a certain game with it. Assassins Creed, from 2007. Which then the next game i beat was rune factory 5 (AMAZING game btw)

Well okay the game i beat after THAT was assassins creed 2. Then assassins creed brotherhood. Then assassins creed revelations. I do not know what happened but I cannot get enough of them. They have terrible vsync, insane bugs, crashing, and also are maybe some of the best video games I've ever played? And 3 is becoming maybe my favorite video game of all time? How did this even happen??? The only way to find out, my friends, is the beginning, with...

Assassins Creed (2007)

So I have described Assassins Creed as having some of my favorite video games of all time. Assassins Creed is not one of them. Not awful, mind you. Just.. Not one of my favorite video games. It is also one i have a lot to say about though, and one I'm still unable to stop thinking about. So please, indulge me in a long, bloated mental breakdown as I try to explain why.

I will give the game one thing, its still maybe my favorite looking Assassins Creed game. It has a really dull color palate through what seems to be a filter, and through the yellows and whites it gives a genuinely extremely interesting vibe. It feels really sharp, really realistic atmosphere that I thing still looks better than its sequels? Not that they look bad, just.. A little more cartoony. But in general I absolutely love the visuals of Assassins Creed.

The problem is there's just, nothing to do. Do the objectives, get the flags, rescue the townsfolk from being bullied by the Templar guards (DIRTY THEIF ILL HAVE YOUR HAND FOR THAT!), synchronize until you get bored and do more objectives. And those objectives are limited to 4 gameplay styles from what i remember. Pickpocketing, "interrogation" (beating people up,) and finally eavesdrop. Races come in later, and are way more fun, but let's first focus on these 3 major gameplay types

Pickpocketing: This is pretty much just a 10 second mission type where you hold a button when they aren't looking. Almost no variety, stays extremely easy, and by far the worst mission types.

Interrogation: Slightly more fun, you trail behind someone until they're secluded, and just beat the absolute crap out of them until they pony up the information. Great stuff all around, good job team. A bit too short but in its simplicity its pretty great.

Eavesdrop: quite literally the easiest mission type, it involves sitting on a bench and listening to a conversation. It is almost impossible to fail, its fun and makes you feel like you're gathering intel, but its also basically worthless.

In the beginning of the game, this is basically all you do other than the assassin events. The majority of the gameplay is these 3 mission types, and do you see the problem? They just aren't fun. Like, at all. They're short, easy, and all around worthless. The only one I'd argue is actually fun is the race missions, which involve killing targets in a certain amount of time. This one is actually quite fun, not to mention involves a small amount of challenge! I actually found myself losing these pretty often, and it felt nice to actually like, have to try. 

More to the games credit, the bones of what to come is all there. The synchronization points are fun, and to find missions you actually have to climb them and synch so they appear on the map. Now I LOVE this, and something I love even more is how the first time you go to a certain district, you have to find the first synchronization point yourself. This makes you have to turn your brain on, even for a second, and all around is a great feature to the gameplay of Assassins Creed. 

Now, there is one thing to say about this game, neither good or bad: its map is HUGE. Like, too big i'd argue. Thats actually a pretty big part of the problem, at least in my opinion. There already isn't enough content, and its spread through 3 big cities and an absolutely massive overworld that has almost no purpose. 

In fact, it feels like the game actively wants you to skip said overworld, as soon as you get to the edge of a city you are given a list of towns to fast travel to, or the overworld. Really, they should have just gone one of two ways: have no overworld and try to use some of that development for more side content, or remove fast travel and force you to explore this overworld. The latter wouldn't have been ideal, but it would at least have you exploring something the developers clearly took time on. 

I uh, I don't really love this game. It may seem like I don't like it at all in fact, but I also kind of love it? The freerunning feels AMAZING, and the general gameplay loop of run, hide, fight, see of the cities works so incredibly well, arguably better than some future entries. The combat can be difficult and interesting time, especially in later areas, and the assassinations themselves are extremely fun, cinematic and surprising. The areas themselves are so lovingly detailed and put together, and the story is absolutely amazing. Thin, but really detailed.

I enjoy altaïrs journey from castout to savior of the assassins, and the reveal of the apples effects is done fantastically. Al Mualim being the person giving you your missions, while Altaïr questions this systems and the motives of the brotherhood more and more, before learning that who he followed was his true enemy. The ending is actually fantastic, having to fight the people you were once helping. The final boss with Al Mualim is so amazing to me and probably my favorite moment in this whole franchise, so much so in fact I don't even want to spoil it.

Assassins Creed is a messy game, one of peaks greater than mt fuji and valleys lower than the grand canyon. It is a game I love and hate, a game that I am eternally fascinated by. But also one of a series I didn't expect to continue. I picked up assassins creed ii on a random occasion, and I have to say, this is when I became OBSESSED. I would adore to talk about it, but I think ill have to leave that for another day, this post is already genuinely massive and bloated. 

So, is Assassins Creed good? Uh yeah its pretty alright I guess, don't have much to say about it. What did you think about it, dear reader?

-Rachel May