Assassin's Creed

Other products by UBI Soft

Product Features

• Experience exclusive PC content
• Be an Assassin! Plan your attacks, strike without mercy, and fight your way to escape.
• Realistic and responsive environments - Every action has its consequences. Crowds react to your moves, and will either help or hinder you on your quests.
• Dedicated historical accuracy, from the models of the in-game cities to the weaponry to the portrayal of actual political figures who died or disappeared in the year 1191.
• Experience heavy action-blended with fluid and precise animations. Use a wide range of medieval weapons, and face your enemies in realistic swordfight duels.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0010EK3SE
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches ; 6.4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: April 8, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #959 in Video Games (See Bestsellers in Video Games)

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Product Description

Platform: PC | Edition: Director's Cut

Amazon.com

The setting is 1191 AD. The Third Crusade is tearing the Holy Land apart. You, Altair, intend to stop the hostilities by suppressing both sides of the conflict. You are an Assassin, a warrior shrouded in secrecy and feared for your ruthlessness. Your actions can throw your immediate environment into chaos, and your existence will shape events during this pivotal moment in history. As an assassin you will master the skills, tactics, and weapons of history’s deadliest and most secretive clan of warriors. Plan your attacks, strike without mercy, and fight your way to escape.

Features:

• Four PC-exclusive investigation missions make the game an even better experience than its console predecessors, including the Rooftop Race Challenge, a race to a specified location and the Archer Stealth Assassination Challenge, where the player must assassinate all archers in a certain zone to help out fellow Assassins.
• Experience a living, breathing world in which all your actions have consequences. Crowds react to your moves and will either help or hinder you on your quests
• Eliminate your targets wherever, whenever, and however. Stalk your prey through detailed and historically accurate environments. Scale buildings, mount horses, blend in with crowds
• This game immerses you in the Holy Land of the 12th century, featuring life-like graphics, ambiance, and the detail of a living world
• Find action blended with fluid and precise animations. Use a wide range of medieval weapons, and face your enemies in sword fight duels

Product Description

Assassin's Creed redefines the action genre. Assassin's Creed merges technology, game design, theme, and emotions into a world where you instigate chaos and become a vulnerable, yet powerful, agent of change. The setting is 1191 A.D. The Third Crusade is tearing the Holy Land apart. You, Altair, intend to stop the hostilities by suppressing both sides of the conflict. You are an Assassin, a warrior shrouded in secrecy and feared for your ruthlessness. Your actions can throw your immediate environment into chaos, and your existence will shape events during this pivotal moment in history. Next-gen gameplay - The proprietary engine developed from the ground up for Xbox 360 allows organic game design featuring open gameplay, intuitive control scheme, realistic interaction with environment, and a fluid, yet sharp, combat mechanic

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars TIPPING THE SCALES OF POWER WITH YOUR KNIFE, April 13, 2008

By	NeuroSplicer (Freeside, in geosynchronous orbit) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This is on of the most anticipated games to be ported to PCs. For this, the Director's Cut edition was produced, adding some content over the console versions (mostly rooftop action missions), and care was taken to make the gamepad to keyboard/mouse-transition as seamless as possible. For the most part it was successful.

This is a TREMENDOUSLY BEAUTIFULLY GAME. The first thing that grabs you is how REAL the city environments feel. The graphics are just OUT OF THIS WORLD! You will need a very good PC to enjoy their full potential (minimum requirements provided below), but real skies, dynamic shadows, facial expressions and realistically flowing robes are only beginning to describe it! Run on a roof and the other citizens will gather around and comment on your crazy behavior! Throw someone on a vendor's cart and he will come after you complaining about his ruined produce! And the city is alive well beyond your character. If only BIOWARE could take some lessons for its next BALDUR's GATE...

Adding to this is the wonderful sound! From the crowd murmurs and the NTCs cries for help, to the whistling of the wind and the well-chosen background music, a good sound-card and speakers set is recommended to truly enjoy this game. If you have a 5.1 speaker system (I do not) I can imagine the experience to become even more immersing.

As to the gameplay, you control Altaïr ibn La-Ahad ("The Flying One, Son of None"). He is a member of the Assassin Brotherhood that sides, well, with both...sides, during the 3rd Crusade. In a story twist, he is also your ancestor, the game being your/his flashback memories. This is a twist I could do without, but I would guess it lays groundwork for the sequels.

The Third person perspective works beautifully and will never loose your interest. Most missions require sneaking and murdering in the shadows. Others will have you eavesdropping for passwords or pickpocketing documents to gain access into target buildings. Some will have you sharpen those sword skills. Still, the game does not avoid its share of stupid "keep this...suicidal character from getting killed" missions. Keep in mind though that ASSASSIN's CREED is rather a strategically thinking action TPS, not a hack&slash fast-paced one.

Controlling your character with a keyboard/mouse takes a lot of getting used to as you have to manage running, climbing, fighting as well as modifying your actions from low to high visibility. The keys are remapable but their complexity will never let you forget you are playing a game. Now for some bad news.

These are the official MINIMUM Requirements:
* Pentium D 2.6GHz (YES, Dual Core!) (or AMD equivalent)
* 1GB RAM (WinXP) or 2GB (WinVISTA) (3GB RECOMMENDED!)
* nVidia 6800 (or Shader Model 3.0 compliant or ATI equivalent)
* Dual-Layer DVD-ROM (or BluRay disc)
* 12GB HDD Space (although my install folder was no larger than 7GB)

As one can see, this is worse than CRYSIS! What I cannot get is how on earth ASSASSIN works on only 512MB of RAM of the XBox, yet it is recommended to have...3GB of RAM on a PC! Sure, the extra content is nice but who did the porting, unpaid interns? Has ANY PC optimization been attempted at all?
Keep also in mind that (as with CRYSIS) in order to fully enjoy the game, barely meeting the minimum requirements means you will barely experience the game. I refuse to deal with WinVISTA so, obviously, this review pertains to DirectX-9. The game is also DirectX-10 compatible, something I cannot comment on though. And now for some good news.

UBISOFT has been recently hit with a $5million class-action suit for hardware (OK, "allegedly") damaged by StarForce bundled with its games. Since, they have announced to be abandoning its StarForce partnership - so let's all rejoice: unlike other UBISOFT games, ASSASSIN's CREED does NOT sport StarForce! Instead, a much milder SafeDisc is used.
It is a pity it took litigation to finally listen to their own customers (suing StarForce would make much more sense, but try finding them in Russia!), but let's count our blessings.

So, overall, this is a well made and beautiful, immersing (although quite short) game that needed more work in PC optimization (where it looses 1 star Overall) and character control (where it looses 1 star for Fun).

As Altair himself would have put it: "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted."
Well, not everything - and certainly NOT StarForce.

34 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars PC version is locked in at a widescreen ratio but still entertaining game... for a while., April 12, 2008

By	J. Lundberg - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

Just a warning... if you have a standard non-widescreen monitor, the pc version of Assassin's Creed is locked in at a widescreen ratio. There is no option for full screen either. Which means that it will play on a standard monitor but the black bars on top and bottom are huge! They take up half the screen. This might be something to consider before purchasing this game if you have a standard full screen size monitor. It doesn't matter which resolution you choose, the black bars will be huge on a regular 4:3 monitor. I chose 1024 x 768, 1280 x 960, and 1280 x 1024: all the same: huge black bars.

The game itself is still very entertaining but the controls on the pc take some getting used to. In fact, you can definitely tell this game was meant to be played on the console not the pc. Once you get used to the pc controls, the game become much more enjoyable.

The graphics are incredibly good although it seemed like the further I got in the game, the more faded the graphics looked in places on the pc version. Also, I really, really like the amount of freedom you have in Assassin's Creed. You can choose however you want to accomplish each objective and whatever order you want. The game is pretty open that way. You can explore the city for hours if you want before doing the objectives too.

Because of the inability to play in full screen and the awkward controls on the pc, I'd rather play this particular game on the PS3 or xbox 360. Even on the console, there is still a problem with the game play. It gets pretty redundant after a while. How many times can you protect a citizen, pick pocket, etc.? After about the 4th or 5th assassination, you might start to get a little bored with this game. There are 9 assassinations you must make and I really started to lose interest after the 4th or 5th one. It gets to be the same thing over and over again.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous environments, chases over rooftops and fun swordplay in this game (PC version), August 10, 2008

By	fcatamazondotcom (LAUDERHILL, FL United States) - See all my reviews

Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

I bought this game on Steam.
The video game was amazing. Here are the pros and cons that I saw:
PROS:
1. The outdoor environments are huge and all beautifully detailed. You also get to ride on horseback.
2. The buildings, mosques and churches and other architecture are amazingly realistic and I think these along with #4 below "made" the game. These really made it feel like you were in Jerusalem or Damascus. FREAKING amazing. I think this game is a landmark video game just because of the quality of the graphics for the buildings. Even the golden domes on the mosques shine with the sunlight. The game should get an award for this.
3. You will have many hours of fun because of the swordfights. Every time the player levels up, he acquires new swordfighting and combat skills. This makes combat always interesting and there's always something new to try out on your targets.
4. Both the "Bourne Identity" movies and the new James Bond movies have scenes where the hero has the climb walls and jump from roof to roof all with just his bare hands. In this game, YOU are Jason Bourne doing all that stuff. This and #2 "made" this game. When you're jumping from roof to roof and you're being chased by 12 guards while archers are taking aim at you, the feeling is exhilarating.
5. When you are in a city, you have a lot of freedom about where to go and what to do. It feels like "GTA" with horses and not cars. There is even a meter that indicates how "wanted" you are by the guards.
CONS:
1. The "Save a citizen" quests feel very repetitive after you've done a hundred of them.
2. You cannot swim. If you land in the water, you die. Why? If the hero is able to pull off the roof jumping stunts, why can't he swim?
3. You have to pick the pockets of armed thugs to replenish your knives. There is no assassin's store.
4. There is not enough variety in the dialogue spoken by NPCs. It becomes irritating to hear the same thing said over and over by towncrier-type NPCs.
Note to the folks at UBISOFT:
UBISOFT, be careful that the depiction of the Christian religion in your video games is fair compared to the depiction of other religions or beliefs. There are people who seriously consider that when choosing to buy your high-quality games or high quality games from another company.

ADDENDUM: ABOUT THE MEMORY LOG!
When I was at almost the last mission of the game, I discovered the MEMORY LOG. Remember all the Quests you did (getting flags, meeting informants, pickpocketing etc.)? They all get logged in the MEMORY LOG. To get to it press Escape and then click on MEMORY LOG. You can click on each memory in your DNA memory to view the maps and other "intel" you gathered on your target. Unforunately for me, I only found out when I was about to assassinate the second or the last guy...

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