I’m taking a quick break from the criticism campaign this week to do an actual bit of game criticism.

This game has been out for a while, nearly forever in terms of games, but because of the auspices of GameFly the more popular games take longer to get. So while I got some Eternal Sonatas and other less memorable games that I sent back almost immediately, it took a while to get a copy of Assassin’s Creed. It took a little over a week to play through (I can play every other day and had to share TV time with an 11 year-old, along with the normal complement of our household).

For those that wish to keep the game a surprise, I’ve kept the majority of our discussion after the break. For those that want a preview of the story beyond our summary, much information can be found out about the game at the Assassin’s Creed Wiki page.

I’ve been accused of complaining the most about the games we liked the best. The truth is I do this with books, movies, and most other forms of entertainment. Daggerfall, after all was perhaps the best and worst game of 1996. (Some people thought Diablo was better.) Personally, I feel that near perfection exposes art to a kind of uncanny valley that makes what are, arguably, small warts grow by comparison to the otherwise genius.

If you gather from this that I loved Assassin’s creed, but was greatly annoyed by it, you are right. But there’s more to it than that.

Covus Elrod, at Man Bites Blog has written a great deal about the narrative consistency of Assassin’s Creed. I can’t argue with that at all. Where I have a problem with Assassin’s Creed is twofold: the first is that the game is somewhat too easy, the second is that the game’s environment and, narrative tells you to do one thing, but the risk/reward system tells you to do another. In a game as designed as Assassin’s Creed, everything feels like it’s put there for a purpose — even the things left out. This isn’t a game where there are things left out because of lack of skill or time: it feels like a game where everything is intentional, but it also feels like a game with a dual personality: a stealth game on the one hand and a more traditional kill-the-enemies game on the other.

As I played, I had the very strong feeling that the game they thought they were making, and the game they made weren’t quite in alignment as I read the achievements and considered whether to go for them or ignore them. Then, after spending several minutes carefully setting up a stealthy assassination, I was forced into a one-on-one confrontation where stealth was impossible. But the thing that settled it for me was the ending.

The final boss battle - which had the first real instance of a “magical” device in the game — concluded with a reveal of what information it was your captors wanted, that they wanted you to retrieve. Your usefulness to them concluded we return to ourselves as Desmond in the ‘now’ where our assassin-ally Lucy saves Desmond’s life by suggesting he may still be useful, and walks out with the scientist. You get a weird flash of light, and Desmond says something along the lines of “WTF, mate?” And that’s it.

Only, there’s an achievement, “Vision of the Future” which was still marked as secret, and secret achievements are usually (and understandably) for story elements, so to not spoil said story. But here I am, maneuvering Desmond around three empty rooms. There are a couple of laptops I can’t use because I missed something earlier. None of the doors work. There’s no HUD, which makes sense as that was provided by the Animus — which I can’t use.

At first I thought that by missing the key earlier, I’d missed the ending. I struggled with the idea of playing the game over to not miss those points, but by then the game’s repetitiveness felt burdensome, and Altair’s story was complete and clear. After about thirty minutes of wandering around, questioning myself, I checked gamefaqs. It seems I was supposed to use one of Altair’s abilities here, his eagle vision. That showed me the secret writings, and I got a minor cutscene and the credits, after which I’m right back in those three rooms with Desmond, but can now use the Animus to finish up all those collection achievements I didn’t quite get.

It’s a bad cliffhanger ending. Even Corvus, who was playing through the game for the same week I was remarks on this, a few days after I finished. And I am finished. After that, the desire to complete everything went away, and was replaced by a bit of confusion. For a game that has held my hand and led me through each piece of gameplay, always making sure I knew what to do next, it was jarring. How could I have ever known to use that ability?

In fact, what was that ability good for anyway? After learning about it, I only used it by mistake when I was trying to do something else (namely, synchronize the map on a high point). Ostensibly, it gives Desmond the ability to tap into Altair’s assessment of his surroundings. That is, who is a guard, who is an informant or a friendly. It marks some people as red (guards) and others as white, the rest less brilliant white. But determining who is a guard or thug, vigilante or scholar was pretty obvious in the game. It wasn’t needed, so I didn’t use it.

If your (horribly weak) cliffhanger requires an ability to be used, it better be really obvious that it needs to be used. Since Assassin’s Creed has gone so far for narrative consistency, it had better been training you in the habit of using that ability. But it didn’t. Maybe I missed something really important about it (and if so, why wasn’t I clued in sooner?). It’s happened before, while playing Kya, I didn’t realize there was a block (despite being told in the “trainign” part of the game) until it was the only way to defeat the final boss. Even then I had to discover it while watching a friend play.

The other issue has to do with the verisimilitude of the game: how much do I feel like an Assassin as I roam around the Holy Land plotting to kill the insidious Templars? The answer for me was not much. That has to do with the ease of the game, as well as my own disappointment with some of the early missions, about which I’ll talk more tomorrow.