Yea this thread is getting ugly.Halo didn't get poor reviews. But I suppose there are plenty of critics who were especially harsh on the campaign. Personally I think that's fair.. but I would have at least saved some criticism for the increasingly apparent lagfest that is multiplayer :)

It's still a great game by any measure though.

No you're wrong. Penny Arcade said so ;)

How the hell this is more "skill based" than Crackdown I have nooOOOooo idea. On the contrary, Crackdown actually expects you to put some damn effort in to reach all the locations that also DO matter and DO give you different gameplay buffs, and if you play the game on harder difficulties you will actually have good use for all the skill upgrades.

I realise Crackdown might've been a bit too heavy on the self referential humour and irony, aswell as having a "cookier" design all around and that might rub people the wrong way, but come on. Taken on the basis of an actual game, there's a fuckload more to do, and there's a fuckload more of a reward in Realtime Worlds' game.

That said, AC isn't without merit, but holding a button and pressing forward is usually all you need to do to get anywhere and everywhere in it.

Crackdown does have some fantastic platforming elements.

Well, the Nintendo philosophy is that the basics are easy to grasp, but even Mario Galaxy has precision jumping and some fairly involving mechanics.

AC really doesn't. It's boiled everything down beyond basics to where you barely do anything. I mean look at Condemned for instance, with its "forensics" bits. I mean those pretty much sum up 80% of the things you do here. You get told at every step of the way what to do, "press that button" and you do, and things happen that aren't terribly exciting.

"Eavesdrop on these guys.. no theeese guys marked with an aura thingy.. there, now sit down, look at them and press Y.. theere you go. Now pickpocket this guy.. noooo where are you going!? THIS guy heeere.. there.. yep.. now press X.. good." And so on and so forth. Then you get to kill someone and that's awesome a couple of times, and then you go back to being told who to eavesdrop on.

AC doesn't just make the basics easy and provide stuff beyond that that is challenging. You'd be hard pushed to mess up any of the different components really and there isn't even a difficulty setting to make the fights hard. You just counter everybody to death, and the window for counters is rediculously big and the people who attack you do so in very friendly ways, taking turns and keeping a good predictable rythm when they stab at you.

There is a rush after you kill a target in the beginning while you still believe people might actually catch you, but they won't. Just hide in hay and they have no idea where you went, and the only way you can make it more engaging is to just run around like a lunatic for a bit - having a good deal of fun watching Altaïr dance around wooden poles and making giant leaps - until eventually you HAVE to hide in hay anyway because that's what the game tells you do do and you NEED to listen to proceed.


The Crackdown comparison is really very valid, and it would be even more so if AC did offer awards for its very mild collect-a-thons. The flags you're tasked with finding is indeed reminicent of the orbs in Crackdown, and the completely open world and its "kill these guys" hands off approach to how you go about it is identical. So is part of the appeal in climbing and reaching dizzying heights, except in Crackdown you actually have to work for it whereas here you pretty much hold the button and press forward and he'll sort it for you. They're both parkour inspired too, and you get a very similar thrill leaping from building to building.

Why hasn't the comparison been made earlier? Mostly because we hadn't played it then and didn't really know how staggeringly similar they would be in setup.

Again, there is merit in AC, but it's mostly attributed to atmosphere and detail. The game is surprisingly shallow, and it does a tremendous job the first hour or two making you believe there's more to it. :|

I don't think I'll regret playing it, but ultimately it has to become about the story and the visual experience rather than a challenging, dynamic and engaging game. I hope Ubi get to make a sequel that sees to all of the glaring problems here, because the work that's in here is pretty astonishing really. You can't help but smile from ear to ear when Altaïr scales buildings and you can actually SEE HIS FINGERS WRAP around tiny objects, and his feet finding footing in cracks and bricks sticking out of the wall.

It just needs to feel more rewarding really. They should've made the skills you reacquire MEAN something, and it wouldn't hurt if - when you kill somebody - all hell did break loose so you'd really have to run like a fucking looney.

In fact, that could've saved the whole game for me.

Definitely! I don't dismiss the idea of having that be automatic and just focusing on finding the right line.

I'd just like it if there was something else to consider then. The guards will never catch you so that's not really a problem, so what else is there?

Which is what I meant by the last sentence in my post. If the guards actually chased the crap out of you it'd be a different thing. Then the chases would actually be thrilling, and you finding the right line would matter. As it is it's stupidly easy to lose the guards, and if they catch up it's stupidly easy and straightforward to dispatch them.

They should have a special difficulty setting that removed all of those special rooftop places where you dive in and nobody finds you, and made the hay bits a temporary refuge at best until people start pointing at them or something and guards jump in too and pull your feet until you're dragged out kicking and screaming.

Make the chase a matter of life or death - death if they actually catch up to you and you're surrounded by a crapload of guys. Life if you manage to lose them by a HAIR. That would make an exciting game.