Assassins Creed

Sadly I can’t assassinate the disappointment

In Assassins Creed you play as Altair. You are part of a brotherhood of Assassins that are on a quest to protect the holy land from the invading crusaders. Assassins Creed is a game that will bring you along on a unique adventure unlike any other.

At this point if you have heard of Assassins Creed you know about the “twist”. In reality you play Desmond who is a test monkey for some kind of evil cooperation. Extremely early in the game you find out that these mysterious scientists are holding you captive in order to get information on your ancestor, Altair. So therefore you must relive Altair’s life in order to obtain the correct “information”.

While playing you are thrust into one of three massive cities. Being as Assassin gives you the ability to scale buildings in a fashion that would put Spiderman to shame. Altair will fluidly scale massive towers grabbing rails and scaffolding without any hesitation. This is by far the best part of Assassins Creed; the platforming game play in this game completely elevate the genre and sets a new benchmark that will be tough be match and even harder to surpass.

While the cities themselves are a superb achievement the events going on within the city are rather disappointing. Whenever you go to a new part of the city you must follow a set routine. First you must get to a high point and survey the surrounding area. Secondly you must collect information on your target. In order to get this information you do one of four things. You can eavesdrop on chatty citizens to get the scoop. Pick pocketing an important document is another possible objective, or you can beat the information out of talkative individuals. While these three objectives make sense in terms of collecting information there is another type that make me confused. There are fellow assassins littered throughout the city that want you to complete objectives for them in exchange for information. However these objectives are so dumb; you either have to finish off their assassination duties for them, or collect the flags that they seem to misplace every single time you talk to them. This might not seem like much but I have one question, why the hell do I have to collect your stupid flags?

Regardless once you’re done with those you have to go and assassinate your main target. These also seem to go by some sort of loose routine. You must find your target wade through the crowd of people and go in for the kill. Once everyone notices the corpse on the ground twenty guards show up to brawl. This brings me to my next topic of discussion, the combat. Early off in the game you spend most of the time mashing on the X button until the dudes die. Eventually you will build up a repertoire of moves that will make you a very formidable opponent. However there is one move that seems a little overpowered, the counter attack just has you patiently guarding until someone on attacks you and you counter which gives you the one hit kill. Then you can just wait as each guard approaches you in an orderly fashion each eagerly awaiting their turn to review a good slash to the face.

While this is fun and exciting the first time around, you soon realize that this cycle will repeat a total of eleven times. Around the third time the cycle starts to become extremely tiresome. This is the major thing about Assassins Creed. Your tolerance to repeat this cycle will determine the amount of enjoyment that you will be able to get out of Assassins Creed. For most people I would recommend you borrow or rent this game first. Assassins Creed is not a game that is necessarily worth the sixty dollar price. In the end Assassins Creed is very ambiguous because whether or not it’s good or not depends on your personal taste. For me I found this a fun but repetitive game that everyone should experience.

7.5 out of 10

Rock Band Review

Info

Name: Rock Band

Developer: Harmonix

Genre: Rhythm, Party

Good

-Diverse Song List

The song choices in the game are extremely varied and transcend many different forms of rock. Any fan of rock will find some songs that will fit their tastes. Like most other rhythm games, you can easily discover songs that you like that you never knew about. This is a good way to find out about some music that maybe you would not have discovered on your own.

-Graphics

The graphics defiantly do take some time to get use to however the clean look of the on stage avatars began to grow on me after a while. While you’re playing songs there are several music video style effects like black& white, distortion and other things in that vein.

-Downloadable Content

When I said that the song list is diverse I was not lying however it is impossible to cater to everyone’s unique taste in one song list. That’s where downloadable content comes into play. For the PS3 and Xbox 360 version you can download songs of their respective market place. Most songs cost about 2 dollars, for what you get it seems like a fair price. The constant stream of new songs each week ensures that eventually something you really like will show up. This is a good way to custom tailor the song list to your own liking.

-Multiplayer

The true fun in this game comes out when you play with a party of two or more people. I’ve had numerous occasions where friends gather to play a song or two. This is not limited to your game playing friends, it can bring in new people and expose to a really fun game. The Big Rock endings are another game play aspect that becomes really fun with more people. It gives all of the players an opportunity to just “rock out”. That alone is worth getting a few players together.

Bad

-Hella Expensive

One of the fatal flaws that make this game a tough sell is the high price. It costs 170$ for the bundle that includes the guitar, drum, mic and game. When you tell someone that this game is really fun for everyone but it costs about 200$ that would deter a lot of people. Now with the release of individual instruments the price strain can be slightly alienated but it is still a large investment. I would recommend this game if you are really into rhythm games otherwise this could end up being a 200$ waste of space.

Overall

This game is the ultimate party game and for any rhythm game enthusiast this is an extremely easy sell. The base song list along with the constant stream of new content makes this a game that’s always getting better.