Assassin’s Creed boasts a lot of cool things. It has amazing graphics, a fun concept, a unique setting, and a great parkour-like method of moving about. However, it also boasts a lot of bullshit. While it manages to do a lot of stuff right, it also manages to do a lot of other stuff wrong.
1. “Please sir, have any money?” – I am seriously sick of these fucking beggars telling me how they are “poor and sick and hungry.” In real life bums just sprawl across the sidewalk and groan out for some spare change. They don’t chase you down like they do in Assassin’s Creed. Seriously, what the fuck? Have the game designers ever interacted with a beggar in their entire lives? Apparently not. It goes to ridiculous levels when they start blocking your path. Once, after assassinating one of the main targets, I was on the run from about a million guards, and simultaneously I was being chased by two beggars, flanking my right and left sides. Those beggars have some serious cajones to be chasing after you for money when a cadre of bloodthirsty guards are out for your blood.
2. Save the Citizens again… and again… – Assassin’s Creed must have been developed by a bunch of autistic people, because never before have I come across a game so repetitive and tedious. How many times can you save the citizens of each district before it gets old? I think when I returned to Damascus for the first time, I was getting really sick of this crap. And it just goes on and on and on. It was interesting the first few times, but it quickly became idiotic. If you are an elite assassin, you aren’t going to go around picking fights with the city’s guards in broad daylight. It would draw way too much attention to yourself, and make it impossible to assassinate anybody. (By the way, wasn’t “Be Discreet” the second part of the Assassin’s Creed?) This repetition does nothing more than pad the length of the game, which is just lazy on the part of the game designers. Everything seems to be repeated ad nauseam from climbing lookout towers to collecting flags for information. Which brings me to my next point…
3. Collecting Shit – What I thought was a huge problem in Ass Effect, is taken to a whole new level of absurdity in this piece of shit game. This falls under the typical bullshit of, “Before I can give you this item that will save all life in the universe, first you have to do me a favor.” In order to gather information about your main targets, you need to do favors for your fellow assassins. Apparently they are too inept to do anything on their own. So before they can help you out you need to… wait for it… collect flags… under a time limit. What. The. Fuck? The worst part is if you don’t get all of the flags within the time restriction, they all reset. Who the fuck put all the flags back? Why do these assassins collect flags in the first place? I thought menial tasks like this went out of favor after the Super Nintendo era. Even more frustrating are the timed assassination missions where you have to kill anywhere from 3-5 guys in three minutes and never be seen. If you are noticed, everyone comes back to life and you have to do it all over again. Sure, that makes sense. Plus, who gives a fuck if you are seen doing it? Throughout the rest of the game you are constantly fighting in broad daylight and drawing attention to yourself after assassinating your targets, and it’s ok. But here it isn’t. It’s bullshit. Inconsistency pisses me off.
They don't care about making a good game as long as they have lots of this.
4. Can You Stop Talking and Just Die Already? – After you stab your main targets in the neck with a sword, they lay down and talk to you for a good five minutes or so. How fortunate that each one is able to stay alive just long enough to give you important information like a James Bond villain. This is the best way the game designers thought to advance the storyline. And how exactly are you supposed to talk for five minutes with a dying man with a gazillion guards swarming around you? This takes you right out of the action, lets you snooze for a few minutes while the lame story gets told to you, and then eventually you get to play again. It is really annoying. Worse still are the scenes in the present day where, as Desmond, you have to talk to this asshole scientist for seemingly hours on end about cryptic bullshit. Realistically, the present day scenes are probably five minutes in length, but they are so boring they feel like an eternity. There must have been a more exciting way to advance the story. At the very least they could have had something other than two people standing, motionless, talking at one another. Almost immediately I found myself rapidly switching camera angles, and twirling around the control stick to make the character do an epileptic dance.
5. Word Travels Fast – If you are riding on your horse through the countryside, you are always under suspicion from guards. Suddenly, someone yells out, “Assassin!” and the chase is on. They chase you from town to town, with the alert meter constantly flashing. Word really travels fast. How do the guards in one tiny outpost know that some guards on the other side of the kingdom saw an assassin? Did they fucking blog or tweet it? Seriously. It’s annoying shit. The same holds true for when you assassinate someone in the cities. Every single guards knows instantly who you are and what you did, like they sent out a telepathic A.P.B. Thankfully, these omniscient motherfuckers can be foiled when you find a bench to sit down on and seemlessly (actually, you stick out like a sore thumb, but they don’t notice you) blend into the crowd.
Santa and The Office? Much better games, indeed.
6. No Stealth – In a game where you play as an assassin, you would expect a certain amount of stealth to be involved in your killings. Well, it is there when you want to take out low level bad guys. However, when it comes time to eliminate your main targets, you are almost always forced into a straight up fight. After that you spend the next ten minutes or so trying to run away from 50 billion guards. There have been some great stealth games in the past like the Hitman series, Splinter Cell series, Thief, and Metal Gear Solid 3. The reason those games were great was that they allowed you to take down targets in a stealthy manner and escape undetected. In Assassin’s Creed, however, you make your presence well known to everyone when you publicly kill everyone in sight. It seems like the game designers completely missed the point of how assassins are supposed to operate. I seriously doubt any assassin would try to try to force a one on one duel in a public place with his adversary. Which brings me to my last point…
7. What is This, Warrior’s Creed? – I would think that an assassin would try to be as non-confrontational as possible. They would slip in, kill their target in the easiest (and least noticeable way) possible, and then slip out. But oh no, not in Assassin’s Creed! Instead, you typically take on five, ten, fifteen guards simultaneously with your broadsword. You seriously put Conan the Barbarian to shame with the number of guys you slaughter with sheer brute strength. In the penultimate mission you walk right into King Richard’s camp, mow down 25 of his men, then kill 9 Templars, and finally his right-hand man. All in a day’s work for a warrior, err, I mean assassin. Again, the game designers seem to have no concept of how an assassin would logically operate in the real world. Either that, or they are just too lazy and stupid to think of ways to make the gameplay more varied.
Overall, Assassin’s Creed was a diversion that took up a lot of my time. It wasn’t particularly great, but it wasn’t particularly terrible either. It was good enough to hold my attention to the end. Yet it had a lot of annoying shit that constantly pissed me off. As far as the stealth genre goes, this game should fall somewhere near the bottom. There are a lot of other games that do the same thing it does, only much better.
Verdict: Average
Awesomely Shitty 
1b. Once I realised I could (stealth) assassinate those fucking beggars and drunks and loonies with the only real penalty being the loss of a sync bar, the experience got a tiny little bit more enjoyable, but no less irritating.
3b. Assassinating those fucking useless “brothers” of mine instead of doing their job for them would have been a much more enjoyable option (see 1b).
6b. Stealth Conan style. I had body counts approaching 20 after several of the Save the Citizen quests when guards just kept pouring out of every alley quicker than I could stab them through the top of their skull.
8. Tedious cut scenes. Something I grew to truly despise about Ass-ass-ins Creed was having to sit through the bullshit cutscenes before retrying any failed missions. Hey game designers, after the first time, let me skip that shit and *play* your game.
9. Fucked controls. I lost count of the number of times I ended up climbing on top of a rooftop garden instead into it. Or trying to climb a wall instead of the ladder that was 2 inches away. Or targeting a citizen during a fight instead of the guard standing next to them.
I agree with all of this. Though I didn’t actually read more than a few sentences into the actual post because they insulted disabled people and I just won’t give that type of jackass two miliseconds of my time after that. My sister is autistic, it hits home. Especially when these morons make it obvious they don’t even know what autism is while they’re insulting it.
Autism is defined as repetitive and stereotyped actions. The joke was that the game is so repetitive, that it is like a symptom of Autism. It’s not making fun of Autism, it’s making fun of the game.
yeah I have high functioning autism and am also a psychologist and I did not see anything insulting about the way he or she said that. It was actually a very intelligent good analogy/comparison. Stating a fact about a disease or disorder is not making fun it is a valid scientific description here he used it to make a good reference to the games repetitive UNCHANGING cycles. which even as someone who has high functioning autism and college degrees in psychology and nursing sees zero insult or making fun in the post. You are obviously one of those who get butt hurt way too easily if u make a big stink over a simple well written analogy making fun of a game while using autism as a decent visual concept for those who may not played the game to understand what he was finding an issue with. Obviously you are either uneducated or a soft little whiner who can’t handle anything that isn’t rated G! oh btw most autistic people I know would have found the analogy quite amusing not offensive u whiny bitch!
Lol! Thanks for backing me up.
Ah-ah – I accidentally killed one of the people I was supposed to save. When I look into this game I just wonder how great it could have been, if it weren’t for the stuff mentioned above, and other.
Peace be Upon You Man .. your Article is AMAZING you Really Showed me an Important Lazy Parts in this Game , but in Assassin’s Creed II the Designers Fix their ass .. loool .. any Way those are JUST a GAMES !! .. The Life is Good , All Best Wishes from OMAR
While I do agree with most of your points I have to ask if you ever paid attention in history classes. Bums today aren’t the same as bums in the middle ages. In that aspect the creaters were very accurate
I did pay attention in history class. I don’t recall ever learning about beggars chasing people down while being pursued by guards who were out for their blood. Seems unrealistic in any time period or culture.
I can see how that kinda stuff would piss a person off and I’m a huge metal gear fan and I think they could have taken a stealth lesson or two and the controls are annoying I just like the open world and climbing on the cool buildings and stuff the games do have a lot of flaws but I still really like them for some reason.
I think this game is a total peice of shit and the developers neeed to be shot, what kind of assasin cant swim
hey, im 100% with u
one thing i hated of this game too was that everytime you kill somebody it seems they were actually good people, like if i was killing people who didn’t deserve to die… although maybe later on in the game it would make sense (i didnt finish it yet) i kinda felt that i don’t want to kill those people because at the end of the day, they were “good”. and kinda refer to th assassins as shit so it made it worse
sorry for my english, im from argentina
I used this as a reference for my “I’m on the verge of killing a hobo IRL” beggar rant. Beggars are my biggest pet peeve in this game, no doubt.
http://tomyownbeat.net/2011/03/15/gaming-thoughts-rant-assassins-creed-those-fking-beggars/
I totally agree with the whole unrealistic beggars chasing you for money while guards are after you. I mean in present day that would be the same as a bum begging you for money as the armed responsed unit are shooting at you. It just doesn’t happen!
I agree.. to most of the points.. Yet for that after kill chat that is important to the story line.. yet the most thing that annoy me regarding the assassin creed 1 are the beggars they come and block my path and even more than them are the mad or drunken men who just push you some time they just push me on to a near by guard just before an assassination and i get caught and must start all again… Yet the game is great may be they must have addressed the issue of this mad men and beggars or just told a way to get rid of them or just silence them…. (just for notes i am playing assassin creed 1 just now.. after brotherhood i was impressed with this series and so i played 2 and now i am playing 1 just the reverse order…regarding the 1st just a small and narrow game play yet interesting for the story and graphics alone)
@ Mr. Panzer Kumar.. I agree i wish they just gave altair some money like they did to Ezio… Yet i agree to what you said this i one of my all time fav game… I am playing Revelations now.. I still think all the versions are great for their Graphics and Details it self.. I love Assassin Creed for sure after Age of Empires and Call of duty this is the serious i love the most..
Loved this arricle thank you you made me laugh!
You’re an idiot.
There are so many reasons why a lot of this game sucks, and yet you only point out meaningless things instead of the actual serious issues.
And beggars like that exist in real life, in many countries… well, obviously not running after you with the guards, but I’ve been harassed by beggars that were more insistent than just blocking your path. The worst ones are the ones who grab onto your arm and won’t let go until you give them something. Urg.
I critiqued the repetitive gameplay, crappy controls, the boring nature in which the story unfolded, and several other annoyances. If those don’t constitute “actual serious issues” than what would? What is more serious than the nature of the gameplay and the controls? The fact that you can’t accessorize the assassin’s outfit? That’s probably what you were referring to.
Well actually if you had done a little more research people were assassinated in public on purpose. It was to send a message to…I don’t know, the people? I forgot, but anyways I agree with you on everything else. I’d think that the guy with the dagger on his back and not entirely dressed like a monk would be pretty suspicious.
Well your completely wrong I played the shit out of that game and can tell you a begger back then didn’t have welfare it was beg or die so they did chase you also as for the stealthiness it is auctually extremely hard to kill a target unnoticed but I managed to do this with many of them it just takes patience and skill and the assassins are not the kind you are thinking of it is a organization like the Templars not a job but an affiliation to search for knowledge and defend the truth. This game is rich with historical content and although revalations was a mistake 3 is amazing so back off what you are obviously too cynical to play
I agree with most of this review. The beggars were a freaking nuisance, I found that giving them a thump was the best solution, as it didn’t attract the guards, the same kind of thing worked on the drunks and retards too.
I’d much rather be playing Tenchu, no where near as pretty as AC, can be equally as monotonous, but the game play is much more rewarding.
As for the final boss fight, what a total bag of shite.
Yeah, you are right. The final boss fight was absolutely horrible. What the hell were the game designers thinking?
This might be a bit wordy so I am sorry for that, but I had to get some of this off my chest. So whether you read it or not is up to you.
I understand your gripes with this game but it is far from a terrible game. Just because its not like every other game you played doesn’t make it terrible either. Its a game that is trying to teach you some history as most of the people and events in the games are true and most of the subject matter is true (i.e. in the second game all of the additional extra information you can attain is all true to history). I am sure you are an avid Call of Duty/Modern Warfare player because you constantly rant about realism in games and the Call of Duty franchise is far from realistic, but it still seems to be the topic of most discussion around the faithful that play that game. This is a pretty broad assumption I just made but your critique of this game is based manly in an aspect of “I am not constantly stimulated in the right way therefore this game sucks”.
With all this being said, If you don’t like doing the save the citizen missions then don’t do them. If you think there should be more stealth in a game that doesn’t really preach about stealth then go and play Hitman (there is plenty of stealth that is needed to play that game). If you don’t like “collecting shit” then don’t do it. I also notice that your ADD seemed to flair up when there is plot being established with your comment “Can You Stop Talking and Just Die Already?”. Its a game that lives off its story and in the first game it trying to make a framework for the rest of the series. If you don’t like the game then don’t play it, please. But please don’t come on the internet and rant and rave about a bunch of small sins a games has that is trying to do something different. The other games from my knowledge have been fixed of all these annoyances and are a lot more polished.
Also you seem to forget that this game is taking place during the crusades. Which was a spectacularly shitty time in history where many people were persecuted and killed unjustly for having different beliefs. So most of the stuff you see in the game such as the beggars, are a lot different than it is now. Stuff was a lot more dire back then and there was probably a lot of harassing of citizens and probably even killing just for fun and raping for fun. So the game attempting to make the protagonist a keeper of the peace and make him seem human instead of a cold blooded killer. All and all I can understand some of the things in this game that confound you, but do you think you could take a different perspective on this game other than “They don’t care about making a good game as long as they have lots of this (money)” as there are a lot of companies out there and they don’t survive by making a game that caters to you. Cast your gaze upon a series like Call of Duty which really doesn’t shape gaming in general instead it provides more angst to players instead of quality like you are boasting that doesn’t exist in this game.
So in this all being said there are far more terrible games out there, but this one is far from one of them.
Also just one more thing to add is be calm and don’t panic, its just a game. If you keep that in mind and just have fun there will be a lot less things that annoy you. 🙂
Vinny, thanks for the well thought out reply. Most of the replies I get here are along the lines of, “U R A STUPID FCKING NOOB GO TO HELL LOL!” So, it was nice to see a response that someone put thought and intelligence into.
I don’t really enjoy Call of Duty/First Person Shooters. Just read my Halo review for proof of that. And that is quite a leap in logic to think just because I didn’t like Assassin’s Creed, therefore I must like Call of Duty. But you acknowledged that, too.
Really, the problem with Assassin’s Creed has little to do with the historical accuracy. It’s the gameplay. Bogging down the actual playtime to watch a bunch of cutscenes (worse than cutscenes actually because it’s in-game graphics of people standing around and talking) is inexcusable.
If you check out my Assassin’s Creed II post, you’ll see that I find they improved on a lot of the shit that pissed me off in the first one, and I rather enjoyed it. This company is capable of good games, but the first Assassin’s Creed is definitely not one of them.
Laughed my fucking ass off at this! Every single word of it true! I’ve experienced all of this! Serious hilarious and true!
Thanks, Bro. Glad you enjoyed the review. One of the most frustrating “good” games I’ve played in a long time.
Don’t the parts where you are saving the harassed citizens drive you insane?? Because while your guy is fighting off the guards with his sword, wrist blade or what have you, the citizen will sometimes run ALL UP in the way freaking out and pleading; therefore, if you aren’t paying attention he ends up stabbing them in the neck or slashing their guts out. And it’s like you yell at the screen: “Get the hell outta the way! I’m trying to save you, you panic-y FOOL!” (Or proclaiming a cavalcade of explicatives.) And then killing too many citizens lowers your synchronization a good deal…which is a pretty big pet peeve after enough times! I LOVE the dynamic of Assassin’s Creed and its presentation, but yes, it has some dope-y parts.
Great post and observations and a very funny read!!
Thanks a lot. Yes, saving the citizens always drove me crazy. I started laughing just reading your comment, because that shit always happened to me. I would always end up killing citizens while trying to save them. I’m not sure if you’ve played any more Assassin’s Creed games, but they do get better after the first one.
Haha! You’re welcome! And I was laughing reading your article because even though AC is an awesome game, it also, as you said, involves some stuff that makes you go ‘What the HELL, maaaan???!!! Aaaargghh!!’ You were spot on! Lol… I’m glad you also (of course) related to the wayward citizens. It’s like they develop confused-itis or something. I have been working my way through AC, but only still on the 1st one because it IS time-consuming and I still have to, like, do other things like LIVE. Lol…so it is taking time. I hope it does get better and I will trust your word on that as you would know more than me. Thanks!! : )
I think you’re just complaining about the challenging aspects of this game. The beggars are put there to frustrate the player, and they do a great job at it. It’s all part of the game and is even historically accurate.
Well then I guess you never fucking heard of history class….
Which history class was it where you learned the minutiae of daily life for someone living in the Crusades-era Middle East? Unless it was an incredibly specific college course, it didn’t happen.
point 1 have you interacyed with a begger in the sixteenth century, no you havent, so shut up.
point 2 the game is not for discreet but for free running and fighting.
point 3 if you cant do it on your own, so you ask for help, so why cant they ask for help.
point 4 all games you stand around mottion less and they only talk to for about 30 seconds.
point 5 in the city the bells ring to alert the guards and messengers go from outpost dozen times a day in the sixteenth century.
point 6 not all assassins are stealth, yet again the game was not made for stealh but for freerunnig and fighting.
point 7 its a war not a quick ops so yes you do confront guards the name of the creed is assassins doesn’t mean its stealth creed.
so go get a life you stupid fucking asshole you no nothing about a good game or having fun on a console. YOU PRICK.
1) You’re right, I haven’t interacyed with a begger in the sixteenth century.
2) I’m pretty sure they spend a lot of time in the game’s tutorial showing you how to be stealthy.
3) I have no idea what you’re talking about.
4) If all games made you eat a turd sandwich, would that make it OK?
5) Um, sure, maybe the messengers did go to outposts, but they weren’t telepathic like the game makes it seem.
6) Yes, the freerunnig was fun but it was not the only reason the game was made.
7) It’s a war? What war?
I’m sorry I “no nothing about a good game or having fun on a console.” I guess the last 25 years I’ve spent playing games on consoles hasn’t been fun at all. What a drag.
You’re an idiot. Just thought I would throw that out there.
@smarter than you dick heads
Yeah, I agree the specific gaming mechanics and a lot of the gameplay is bullshit. The fact that all the beggars, drunks and shit only target YOU is fucking crap, for a start. Don’t get me started on the ”save citizens” and occasional huge lack of realism. What I enjoyed, however was the overall sandbox-style feel and the actual storyline, cultural and conceptual value actually made me take this game seriously, in a way. Which is interesting for me because normally I just play games for fun.
As for the repetitiveness, I think that came from the fact that they were trying to build a more ”liberal” game, which was centered around locating and assassinating targets in cities. If they had added more variety, depth and realism to the small gameplay mechanics (which is normally the thing everyone bitches about, you included by the looks of it), then I think it could actually have been a much more varied and enjoyable game. Normally, I try to play it as if I genuinely were a Nizari third crusade cult member assassinating political targets; avoiding getting into fights, staying stealthy, changing my actions depending on how far through the game and in what city I am, etc, simply because playing the way any normal person would makes the game far too stupid and repetitive, like you say.
It’s hard when you have fucking Templars who are always conveniently located so that you can’t get to your objective without getting into at least one fight, and the fact that you have to get into huge ass street fights with guards before you can ”unlock” groups of monks and get to your target without getting spotted or putting yourself at a tactical disadvantage.
Overall a good story. I don’t believe stealth would have fit into AC:1 style and I respect that.
But everything else you mentioned is 100%
I found myself screaming at my TV and throwing my controller across the room quite a bit.
Once I 1k this game its going on e-bay and I am never getting it again.
Kind of like a sub-par movie. Worth a watch/rent but definitely would not shelf it.
I’m glad you agree. The first game was quite subpar, as you said. They did get better after that, though.
I almost agreed with you. But then you insulted autistic people so now you’re just a dumb, bigoted twat, and I don’t care to read any further. Have a nice day, go kill yourself.
Wow, overreact much?