WARNING: CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR GAMEPLAY UP TO SECOND ASSASSINATION (SECOND BEING IN ACRE).
Assassin's Creed, so far, is a great game. The graphics are absolutely amazing, and the crowd dynamics are so different than anything else. The first thing I tried was, of course, the free running system, which is absolutely perfect. I can think of nothing that they could have done to make it better. It is very intuitive, and what you want Altaïr to do, he does. The animations are absolutely mind blowing. When I jumped at one part, I expected to use both hands to grab a ledge, but he only grabbed with one hand, his other was on a pole a foot down. That kind of precision that is programmed in is just amazing, because it would have been easier to just grab the ledge, but the dynamic movement just makes it so much more realistic. The fighting took a little bit to get used to, and is frustrating until you get the counters. I encountered a Templar Knight who could not be sneaked up on early in the game, and if I fought with him, he countered all of my attacks, and if I just blocked, he'd continue attacks until he got through the blocks. I ended up climbing a roof and slicing him every time he climbed the ladder up. There are some things the A. I. does stupidly, but for the most part they're pretty good. They are not overly violent and unrealistic like in Hitman: Blood Money, where in the Las Vegas level, if you're on the wrong floor of a hotel, the guards shoot you. That would be ridiculously illegal and unthinkable. They made it so people question what you're doing, which means the guards don't attack you every five seconds, but this lack of anger can cause them to seem stupid. The speech for saving civillians can get annoying, as they have about three different lines. Other than some minor things that I can easily overlook, I really enjoy it. IGN claims that revealing the futuristic aspect ruins the game, but I find it not to be the case. When you're in the futuristic parts, you're not thinking of Altaïr, and when you are Altaïr, you aren't thinking about the future. It's very immersive in that way.
