If you’ve been wondering why there is no game where you can run around a historically accurate Jerusalem assassinating real figures of the past, the answer to your prayers might finally be here. Of course you would probably have to be living under a rock to not have been aware of this upcoming release. Even people that aren’t interested in Video Games have asked me what the deal was with this game.

Ive had a chance to play a few hours in to the game now - perhaps not as long as I should have to write a review. But, nevertheless, I feel I have a pretty good idea of how the game will be playing out.

First impressions? Visually stunning. I never thought I could have fun just running around a city and climbing on structures to look around - at least not after the swing-fest that was Spider-Man. It is, however, quite interesting to scale church towers to get a nice panoramic view of the city you are in. It is also quite cool to run around jumping from wooden board to windowsill and onward. Really though… how long can that last. After your initial wow from exploring the cities, you are left with a reasonably fun game, but that seems quite simple and repetitive.

The basic twist storyline feature to this game is about to be ruined by me. But don’t worry, because even if I didn’t ruin it, Ubisoft will, in the first 30 seconds of the game. You see you do not actually play Altair, the game’s “hero”, but in fact you play some random ordinary guy I will refer to as The Dude. He does have in fact a name, but I forget it and it is clearly not important. The Dude is not some innocent bystander in a market, or even something exciting like a bread thief. The Dude is in fact not even someone from the same time as Altair. The Dude is exactly that, a dude - from present day mind you. You see, some elite science laboratory has found that our ancestors memories are a part of our DNA. The Dude is a bartender and also happens to be a direct descendant of Altair. Kidnapped by Elite Science Org, he is forced into a chamber that allows him to puppeteer his ancestor, playing through his life. Why do that you ask? Well there seems to be a blackout section of his memory that they are trying to access. The only way to do that is to have The Dude control Altair through his life of an Assassin, playing through the memory until they get to the blackout part.

All in all, the storyline itself it not so bad - actually it is quite unique. But why ruin this storyline at the start? Maybe they didn’t want to get labeled as uncreative with one of the “and it was allllllll a dream” endings. At the same time, revealing the twist within the first 30 seconds of the game really takes away from your care or interest for the main character. It’s almost like it’s not even happening. Oh well…

Fly robin fly… up up to the sky!

I do feel the need to mention how ridiculously pointless and absurdly annoying every single cut scene where you control The Dude is. They are too long (even if they are only a few minutes), and they are no better described than to use the word dumb. You’ll find yourself running - or I should say walking… slowly walking around the science lab, uncontrollably mashing the interact button in an attempt to advance the boring story and get back into Altair’s body. These scenes are like they are in every game. Until you find the one item in the room that actually advances the story, you are stuck in an endless walking loop.

Back to Altair. Actually playing through the story of Assassin’s Creed is quite fun early on. You have a set amount of targets you must assassinate. Before you can just march right into their place of business and give them a piece of your cold hard steel business, you must scout them out. There seems to be only a few types of scouting missions which are only fun the first time or two you do them. Beat up a guy in an alley to get him to talk, pickpocket someone, or sit on a bench. I am not joking about the last one. Sit on a bench for 3 minutes and then continue.

The action scenes are quite fun and entertaining. If you want, when you are getting bored of just walking around doing nothing, you can provoke one by smacking a guard in the mouth. I do have to say however that the combat is beyond simple. I really wish they had put more into the system. Every fight can be won the exact same way. Throw all but one of the guards to the ground (which seems to make them fall over and get confused for about 5-6 seconds before slowly getting up and almost walking back to you), and take the 3 seconds required to kill the remaining guard. Now, like any good kung-fu movie, the other guards will happily engage you one at a time - easily allowing you to dispose of them. Oh, and I should also mention that killing a guard can be quite complex. You may wish to study the controls for a bit before actually playing the game. If you haven’t played, ill explain them quickly here, just so you can get a head start. To kill a guard, first hit X on your 360. Then, you’ll want to hit X again. Thirdly, yes, hit X again. Finally, if you haven’t killed your henchman yet, hit X a final time, and he will probably drop to the ground. In essence, it may seem like you are simply mashing X, but in fact you are - actually who am I kidding, you just mash X.

For a game coming from the same studio as the next-gen Prince of Persias, I found the combat system in Sands of Time much more engaging. There also seems to be a fair bit of praise for the overall control system of Assassin’s Creed, and to be honest I’m not sure why. To me it seems overly complicated. The 4 buttons on your controller act to control the part of the body that is most obvious for their layout if you were looking at one of the RPG paperdolls. Y is your head, X is your right hand, B is your left hand and A is your legs. It is not like I am fumbling around hitting the wrong buttons, but I just feel like it is forced and unnatural.

All in all, the game can be pretty fun… but I do feel there are some drawbacks that are keeping it from being overly excellent. I have yet to complete the game, but I have heard that the ending is absolutely terrible, questionable, odd, strange, incomplete, or however you want to describe it. It is definitely worth a rental from your local store, but I would urge you not to buy it. In fact, even without playing it I would urge you not to buy it. These types of games are usually about 10-15 hours to complete, and are one-time play only. How many times have you played through the Sands of Time? In a multiplayer world, these types of games are still fun and worth playing through. I do wonder though how this genre will be able to continue to survive without adding some aspect of multiplayer-ness to it.