Assasin Creed's hands on impressions

After waiting in painfully long line of software developers, journalists and other industry insiders, I was finally allowed behind a curtain to play Assasin's Creed together with one of the lead designers, Philippe Dionne. Judging by the looks of it, Altair's (main protagonist) adventure is almost in final stage (okay, at one point there was a little texture flicker - but that's all).

I can positively confirm that the control scheme is indeed unique and original, but in the same time really playable and allowing for some smooth movements. Graphically, the game is really impressive with a huge city, massive number of passers-by, excellent textures and lightning effects. The game AI is also impressive, both in terms of crowd management and individual entity behaviour.


There are lot of little nice touches :

• as a person practising climbing, I appreciated the fluidity and realism of Altair's movements;
• when I was using throwing knives and suddenly enemy knight attacked me from just behind the corner, instead of stupidly throwing his knife, Altair quickly stabbed him with it;
• bullying people around caused some thugs to concentrate their attention on me... ouch;
• when I was being chased by guards, I climbed the wall thinking it would get me to safety, since not one of them had a bow - wrong, they started throwing rocks at me, which made me lose my balance and fall down, where welcome comitee was already waiting;

The framerates where impeccable, the build seemed very close to final, the release date was set to November this year and my overall impression was very positive. This is just another game that might become a system-seller.


Asked about the possibility of the title ever arriving to PC, Philippe said that there are no plans for now, but (and this is my own thought) seeing how many Xbox 360 titles get ported to PC, I wouldn't totally exclude such possibility. Though it might require getting Xbox-like pad, in order to use the brand new control scheme.