Destructoid Review: Assassin's Creed - 5.5

Destructoid's Reverend Anthony writes:

"Assassin's Creed is a disappointing, repetitive game filled with horrendously long and unnecessary cut scenes, a boring plot, tedious chores, and significant difficulty problems - it's a game with a few great ideas but absolutely no idea how to implement them...In conclusion, lower your expectations, don't play for more than three hours at a time, and don't pay more than nine bucks to get a hold of it. Assassin's Creed is an above average game...but just barely."

[I_killed_TheMart]

Owned!

[fury]

...shut the f**k up and stop jumping on bad reviews. Play the game for yourself and THEN judge, ok?
No...fanboys like you will never understand that.

[Chubear]

Look out! It's One bubble man!!!

[the worst]

the game is way over rated

[MikeGdaGod]

i've been playing it since Tuesday and i really enjoy it. it's a lil repetitive but i like it. lots of fun to me.

i say: 8.5

[Vulcan Raven]

well personally i think it is a mix of GTA and Metal Gear. So far i love this game and i only got it today. As of right now i am playing it more than COD4 about 70-30. Hope everyone else is smart enough to judge it after they play it, not before.

[Wii60_FTW]

lmao! owned!!!! YUP! ASS CREED SUCKS.

[Spike47]

HAHAHAH, LOOKS LIKE SOMEBODY WANTS ATTENTION.

[dragon376]

typical review of a narrow minded person. Always critical, but completely incapable of doing better. Don't judge other negatively if you can't do better. If you can do better, then just do it.

[fury]

Play the game for yourself and don't let other reviewers form your opinion about a game.

[InMyOpinion]

I've played it and I can agree on that it gets repetitive pretty fast. It's still a good game though. Good, not great.

[sectionz]

get uncharted over this garbage. assassin' creed is a good rental at best.

[gamesblow]

This is spot on... right with my review of it. Which, by the way I reviewed before anyone. People said I was lying. Said this and that, boy did they learn.

[The Real Joker]

For the love of GOD..shut the [email protected] up. No one gives a flying sh!t about your review.

Jesus what an ego maniac.

[cloud360-7th_account]

I do blu. you shut the fuk up for the love of GOD

i think those reviews are hilarious, 99% of the time

"the sites that 100% unbiased 1% of the time"
http://vids.myspace.com/ind...

[ParaDise_LosT]

can fornicate themselves with a barbed iron stick....

[Daytona]

See what's out there to preview and then you be the judge. Not every game is everyone elses cup of tea.

[jcgamer]

well said man, bubbles up...

[fury]

I agree with you. But in the other news I did not.

[Ri0tSquad]

And a rent as well.

[ScentlessApprentice7]

Is this game worth purchasing or not???

I reserved Assassin's Creed about a month ago but I still haven't gone to obtain my copy because I don't know if it's worth dropping $60 on it.

Is it worth buying or just worth renting? or by going from reviews like this is it not even worth renting?

[Gamespot-equals-EGM]

You can't make the decision by yourself? If you want me to make the decision for you then I say buy it. Waste your money, I don't care.

If you don't like it then tough sh!t, try to return it.

[gamesblow]

Again, you all disagree.. Yet, I have proof on my blogsite. I reviewed it well in advance, got flank for it. Said I didn't have it... Said I was lying. Said this and that... Well, funny how my score and everything I said about the game "well ahead of any review" came true. Asscreed is just that ASS! Not even Jade Raymonds, could save it.

[fury]

Stop posting your garbage all over n4g.

[techie]

Both your review and this review are wrong. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[ryanjtravis]

I agree with FuRy above - nobody cares about your review - please stop praising yourself as it is completely annoying to read.

[tmug]

um, there's an ignore option.. it's more annoying to read the stupid kiddyschool arguing.

[Maldread]

That Assassin's Creed is a game people should rent or play for themselves with so many mixed reviews going around.

I think it looks cool, so i`m going to give it a chance.

[Chubear]

This is exactly what LAIR fans have been saying for the longest. I don't know when these ridiculous reviews will stop - if ever, but I am throughly tired of it.

These edotorial gaming sites just see the community as puppets. If a competing forum is getting more hits on their website they jsut throw some contraversy like "MGS 4, pretty but boring 3.5/10" and they instantly get flooded with hits from gamers flocking in their trying to voice their opinions on the review.

They jsut take the community and industry as a joke now, it's jsut gotten way out of hand.

[Keyser]

reviews aren't worth much anymore. You have to go by how you feel. I liked Lair and still do. I'm in the minority but I am a minority so I'm used to that. LOL

Reviewers just want there site to get more hits so they can get more advertising dollars. It's really a disservice for us gamers but we have to be smart and test a game for ourselves. It's the only way.

[Maldread]

I agree, the current review situation is just laughable for me, although in a sad way. Yeah, of course a game is a subjective experience (what isn`t really ?), but there should be a little more consistency in the reviews.

If a game isn`t good, it also needs to be better pointed out why it isn`t. A lot of the reasoning (don`t really want to call it that, but...) i`ve heard in some reviews, just contradict the score they`ve given too, like GameSpot`s Ratchet review to name one. They need more and/or more professional game reviews i think.

Keyser, you`re probably right about the hits for the site, even though it could just mean sloppy journalism in some cases ;)

I trust my friends recommendations much more the site reviews anyway. To try the game for yourself is always better than any review though, either from friend or foe ;)

[tmug]

get real. here's why there are good reviews on ad-funded publications for this huge flop of a game in the first place:

http://www.n4g.com/industry...

remember those huge ac ads on gamespot before the release? hence the 9 from them. if you want good and unbiased reviews, get them from independent sites that don't get five figure income from ads.

[gamesblow]

Assassins Creed is boring.. Very boring. It's tedios and, you're right, it's not for everyone. AAA games are for everyone... So, by that merit, this game isn't AAA. Everyone has their taste... me, I didn't like it. I got mine for free at my work when they came in so I'm not complaining and I'm giving it away on myblogsite like I did with VF5, Ridge Racer 7, Fight Night 3 and Rainbow six. That's why people love me... cause I give back.

[techie]

AAA games are for everyone? I don't like FPS games...your logic and posts are sorely lacking.

[ATLRoAcH]

Thinks hes some kind of reviewer.I got news for you,anyone can write crap on a Myspace blog.You should stay on Myspace and leave N4G and the Playstation Blog alone.All you do is talk sh!t.Go get a Wii you are not worthy of the PS3 or the 360.Oh, and nothing is for everyone.Except Oxygen...I think we all like to have that.

[Myth]

What type of games do like?? Do you like any games that are stealth based?

[PS3Freak]

i could never negative feedback this guy enough for spewing so much crap out of his mouth. Comeback when you have something useful and/or productive to say.

[tmug]

guys. please just push the ignore button. We could do without the badmouthing, it's annoying enough to read the fanboys warbabble. let the guy be, he has a valid point imho. and a right to his opinion.

[nutcase4u]

It may not exactly live up to all the hype that it has received, but it is by no means an average game. Terrific story line, great visuals, huge environment to explore, and just plain FUN! To each his own. I can see where some people would give it a 7 and some would give it a 10. Personally I believe it to be a solid 9 and an experience not to be missed. Just like the reviewers.....DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT.

[achira]

lol, this game has no cutscenes, and they are surely not long. what are they smoking ? laughable.

[rivithed]

Man, Destructoid, don't let this dude do reviews. Kids, if you want to know more about it, rent it, watch videos on it, watch a friend play it. Me, personally, I give it thumbs up. Try it out. Man these harsh reviews begging for attention blows.

[Chubear]

Now had AC implemented gamplay that was radically new like heavy motion sensing control gameplay, it probably would have gotten it's fair share of 2.5s

It's a shame how these trully next gen titles (current gen) that introduce new takes on gameplay are being shot to hell by reviewers. They cry for new and innovative and want new stuff but they contradict themsleves by giving 4s and 5s to these types of great new games but embrass & hand out 10s to old gameplay mechanics like halo3 & Metriod.

It jsut makes no sense what's happening with editorial reviews this gen. I think this kind of editorial reviewer system is old and unneccesary nowadays. There's a huge variety to accesible media that we gamers can use to help oursleves with game info, we don't need gaming sites for this anymore.

Gaming web sites should really be limited to news and/or community forums by gamers. Their review methods are jsut archaic and played out.

[Maldread]

You raise an interesting point again. But i don`t know if a game should get high praise just because it introduces something "new" (even though new and next-gen are expressions which in itself are debatable).

It also has to be executed well in my opinion. If the original idea fails due to execution, but still is a great idea, it most likely will be pick up by some others and made the way it should. Maybe it`s not always fair, but that`s how it is. Like foreign movies with great ideas, but don`t have the Hollywood execution, or Killswitch before Gears.

[tmug]

there's nothing next gen about it. it's definetly more linear than gta, the ai is crap, the stealth is ten steps back from the first hitman (you can't even disguise yourself), and the graphics are choppy and buggy (atleast on the ps3). it's just a shadow of the colossus and hitman copycat, and a bad one at that.. then again, I haven't seen any games worthy of calling next gen yet, maybe mass effect will do it. uncharted certainly has true next gen graphics, but it's a pretty trad game (nothing wrong with that if you do it well).

[Sangheili85]

Didn't this site say COD wasn't worth buying and you should rent that too? I mean come on COD4 was so worth 60 bucks!

[pornflakes]

you right, i played the game now 14 hours. It's really always the same crap. And if you are an xbox360 gamer than you will have to spend more time with MORE boring missions.

Now i reached around 650 score and iam Fücked up with playing that game.
Never played a boring game like this.

i would give 7 points of 10.

[Cartesian3D]

above average means 5.5 !!!!!!!

may be 6 or 7 is an opinion ..

but 5.5 is sth like " PAY ATTENTION to MY SITE"

[rwest78]

...and I much prefer AC to CoD4. What game isn't repetitive in some respect? I think that I compare this game in a lot of ways to Oblivion. Oblivion got so much praise because you could go anywhere and do anything, but it was also repetitive (Go to gate of Oblivion, sword fight little red guys, close gate, repeat...)

I've only played AC for about three hours so far and maybe it'll get boring, but so far I'm really enjoying it.

[Comeplaywithme]

Cause they are a pain in the ASS...no pun intended(yes pun intended).
This site is always stirring up controversey from Halo 3 to a number of other quality titles.
This is what happens when a wanna be up and coming site wants to brandish their big new shiny nuts and say...LOOK AT ME, i'm a complete joke. No gamer in their right mind would turn to this site for an honest insightful review. They're like the National inquirer of gaming journalism..next story Master chief seen giving the Arbiter a reach around. I mean come on.
In cnclusion I feel Assassin's Creed is a quality title that is a true next-gen experience. There are some faults but by no means a 5.5 game, That would mean it's worse than a majority of the recently released games..bull!
Shove it Destructards!

[Raptors]

Wow. They've "Lair'd" Assassins Creed. 5.5? Wow. 7 is one thing but 5.5 is wiping your *ss with the disc.

[Funky Town_TX]

So far it's the FLOP of the Year. I fell asleep playing. Maybe after about 1 hour it will get fun. Right now I fell like I'm playing a boring a$$ RPG. TOO much talking. I hate cut scenes.

[misterssippi]

Actually, Lair is the FLOP of the year. But I guess that is arbitrary, kinda like Destructiod's opinion......IMO

[Funky Town_TX]

There is a button reserved in cut scenes to change the camera angle for glitches. A freeking glitch button. ARE YOU KIDDING ME UBI. Big coding flop. This gen is about GFX. Too much time on GFX.

[Myth]

I know alot of my friends that hate stealth base games. If your one of those people, don't expect to fall in love with this game just cause it was hyped up. No matter how much hype it received it's not going to change your mind if you don't like stealth base games. If you only like action games go play a hyped up action game. But to those of us who enjoy stealth base games it could be great.

[Mars Attacker]

Seems like every time I've been in Game Stop for the last year they've been trying to convince me to pre-order this game. I never did. When I saw all those ads on Southpark a few weeks ago, I knew right away that this game sucks! The cut scenes they showed looked really, really boring and the gameplay looks like it has too much platform jumping.

At this point there are too many AAA games already out to waste time and money on pre-ordering anything that is an unknown.

[BLACKJACK VII]

AC isn't a AAA game by any means, but a 5.5 is ridiculous. Further proof that Destructoid sucks.

[obinofunkenobi]

this review is complete bs. I own this game, and it's one of the best I've played in a while. I think it started off slow in the beginning, but you need to learn how to play it. Review sites need to go down. They're just hurting the industry with their overzealous beliefs that they are the final word on games. I guess I'd be angry too if I was writing internet reviews from my mom's basement. If you really care about these games getting bad reviews, then don't read them and hurt the site's traffic. Whoever employs these people will eventually tire of them when site traffic goes down because they're too incompetent to write an article worth reading.

[Maestro]

Assasin's Creed = Failure of the year.

[PS3Freak]

Whoa, WHOAAA, let's slow down here for a minuite. It's true this game isn't all it was hyped up to be, BUT, it deffinetly diserves more then a 5.5. This reviewer must be smoking crack..

[gamesblow]

Who do I think I am? I'm GAMESBLOW, king of Trolls... 98% approved gamefaqs forum poster and so much more. Like I said, I have the privelage of getting most every game 2 or 3 days before the average person does... Thus I take advantage of ti and write blogs about them for people who are unsure. Real opinions, not biased ones. You might not like my moniker as Gamesblow & that's fine. I'm just doing everyone a favor... I also give out free games on my blogsite atleast once a month... That is why people read my blog and know about me. It's because I'm legit. Like me, love me or hate me.

[rebelxs]

I don't remember ever seeing a game with such a vast discrepancy of scores between reviewers.It's not of the ordinary among movie and music reviews so I wouldn't take it too personally.Hopefully the good reviews will persuade most people to pick it up and give it a deserved chance.I think some reviewers need to take their personal feelings out of the equation when giving a score.Obviously this isn't everyones cup of tea but then you could say that about MGS,Halo 3,etc. but you don't see such extreme variances in scores for these.

[Figboy]

if you liked the Prince of Persia games, you will probably like Assassin's Creed. it's practically an open-world Prince of Persia.

i knew this game was for me, when, about four or five hours into the game, i was given a short assignment to assassinate some punk guard who was harassing one of my fellow Assassins (though, honestly, i should have sliced his throat for being such a poor excuse for one of us). i followed guard along his route, snuck up behind him, and stabbed him in the heart. while he fell to the ground, gurgling his last breaths, i slunk away into an alley, climbing to a rooftop, the sounds of the crowd asking "what happened?" fading away while i made my escape.

i like the game alot. of course, i'm a die hard Prince of Persia fan, and thought that trilogy of games is one of the best in the industry.

this reliance on reviews is beginning to trouble me. when i was younger, we used reviews, sure, but in all honesty, most of the games being released back in the NES era sucked, so a review actually *MEANT something. if a game was good, believe me, they told you about it. it was more black and white back then.

now though, there are too many shades of gray with games, and you have too few people trying to account for the tastes of *MILLIONS.

i stopped reading the OPM review section when my tastes, and the tastes of their reviewers began to differ so much that i couldn't take their suggestions anymore following the hiring of some new staff (either i loved a game they hated, or they hated a game that i love).

you guys seriously need to either rent the game, or bite the bullet and buy the titles that interest you. just as long as you get your *ACTUAL HANDS on the game and play it for yourself.

i took a chance and bought the game Lair. i enjoyed it for a time (and beat it), but ultimately, it's a game i knew i wouldn't play again, once games like Heavenly Sword, Ratchet and Clank, Assassin's Creed, and Uncharted came out, as those are more my types of games, so i traded it in (for Assassin's Creed, actually).

it's getting absurd that people are suddenly forsaking their own tastes for the tastes of, uh, other people? what the hell? anything else in our lives, we rely on our own opinions;

clothes: "i'll wear what i want"
women (and men for some): "i'll date who i want"
food: "i'll eat what i want"

but games? "uh, well, uh, that, um, guy, from, like, ign, said this game, that i really wanted to play sucked, so, uh, like, i don't want to get it now..."

it's ridiculous.

[tmug]

I totally loved POP 1 and 3. I disliked AC from the get go. The sci-fi backstory is distracting, awkward and unnecessary, it doesn't pull you in like in POP, it's just an annoyance. The game doesn't do anything to challenge or inspire you. I get what it aims for, a bit of POP, a bit of GTA, Hitman and Shadow Of The Colossus, but there isn't anything that ties it all together. It doesn't have that spirit..

[sgaap]

Yeah, and tetris is not repetetive pfff... AC is one of the best games I've played this year. The gfx are mind-blowing, and I really feel the ambience of the cities. For the first time in a game, a city feels alive.
How come games like orange box got 9 and 10s? The gfx are mediocre and just shooting at people gets very repetetive. AC should score above that.

[Lethal_Cloud]

honestlyy who eevr wrotee this review must be onee low life who cant get laid in his lifee ...tell me a game that isnt a little repetitive ....
myte as well just say - all u do in halo is go around shooting ppl and throww gernades ..:S

[UltramanJ]

I'll probably rent it one day, or maybe buy it when it hits $25-$30.

[JokesOnYou]

however I still think its alot better than 5.5, wtf? thats just a slap in the face to Ubi, yeah its repetitive and people need to stop making excuses like "all games are repetitive", sure thats true to some extent but its a devs job to make those (similiar/same) tasks varied enough where it doesn't get dull/boring, I still like the game but it seems to me Ubi could have a killer game on their hands if they just would have made some different choices and of course a solid framerate, but again a 5.5?= yeah maybe Destructoid does need the hits.

JOY

[Matpan]

I read the article. The reviewer expressed his arguements and his point of view in a correct and interesting way. Yes, he bashed the game in many aspect, yet he recognized what he blieved, where it´s strong points ("Assassin's Creed will feel like one of the most fun games to come out this year -- thanks entirely to the fighting and freerunning mechanics")

Again, like any other review, it´s written by a person, with his own judging values and tastes. There is no such thing as true objectivity, and surely you cannot expect it when reviewing a game: there are so many factors that can make a game fun for some people and terrybly dull for others...

All in all, what remains a reliable rule of thumb (at least for me), and a quite obvious one is: if everyne says it is a great game, it must be at least a good one. In this case, it seems, the opinion is divided.

So go for it if you feel like it appeals to you.

As for me, I will buy this game.

[Cynical-Gamerzus]

Hey before they decided to multi platform it they should of considered PS3!Oh how did they fit all the greatness on a dvd?hmmlol

Oh well i avoid multi platform crap like this..
time's have changed lets start making console games not off shelf 360 ports..OK!

[Die_Sloe]

First post, though I have read these forums for months now. At first it was enjoyable to get a diverse popular opinion on whats really good in video games. Now, its more like Fox News with a real negative stream of news thats constantly bombards the one thing I'm sure we all have in common.

As far as Assassin's Creed, I'm only about 5 hours deep and I gotta say, whoever gives this game less then an 8 is out of their mind. Beautiful graphics, splended physics, an original storyline and not to mention fun, this is TO ME the 3rd or 4th best game of 2007.

Of course, I hear its repetitive, and I'm only so far, but this assault on a highly ambitious title must stop. I cant believe some of the hate this title has gotten...........