The chances of you not knowing what this game is about are slim, actually very slim. But, if you are telling me you have never heard of Assassin’s Creed and on top of that if God forbid, you tell me you haven’t heard of Miss Jade Raymond, the smile; the face that sold a million copies then you my friend have missed out on two of the best things that have ever happened to Gaming industry. Ubisoft Montreal had two things going for it – firstly, a game in development which had it all from a Prince of Persia-esque style atmosphere combined with Hitman style assassinations with Grand Theft Auto like freedom and super kick ass character who is nothing less than a Medieval Spidey. Now what more do they want? They have an awesome game powered by a splendid engine, but that is not their secret weapon. It’s Miss Jade Raymond. She is like the real life Kortana for every Master Chief or Alyx for every Freeman out there. Practically, Assassin’s Creed has to have Jade Raymond associated with it. They could have just released Assassin’s Creed : Jade Edition ( With a Jade Raymond Poster/Figurine ) for PC instead of Directors Edition (Which has 4 new missions) and got themselves another hit on the PC.
Well this impression isn’t about Jade Raymond anyways; it’s about Assassin’s Creed for the PC. AC has minimum system requirements of a Dual Core (Dual Core is a MUST!) with atleast 2GHz frequency along with a minimum 2GB system memory (3GB recommended Memory!!), a Video Card with minimum 256MB Memory and it should support Shader Model 3 or Higher!! Those requirements are so insane that people with such systems are in minority. Now these requirements portray the game as a very buggy port. It might be because of the hefty system requirements. But let me clear this out first and foremost, this is a good port if you have “the” hardware. Now if you have a SM2 Card with 128MB memory on an AGP slot with 4 Pixel pipelines and bitching about the FPS then you my friend need to get a tight slap across your face. I was personally skeptic of the idea of Ubisoft porting the game to PC because of the crapfest of a port of their Splinter Cell Double Agent turned out to be, but surprisingly Assassin’s Creed for PC does not disappoint at all. The game actually seems to utilize both the cores on a dual core processor efficiently. The game can clearly give competition to Crysis and the FPS scales better with better (Good Hardware = Good FPS) hardware unlike in Crysis where even the monsters of setups fall down to their knees and beg for mercy.
I managed to play the PS3 version of Assassin’s Creed at a friend’s place long time back. Few hours into Assassin’s Creed convinced me that this game has to be played with patience. I convinced myself to wait for the PC version and when it’s out, I shall enjoy this game with my own time and ease. I finally have the game in my hand and I am happy that the long wait has paid off. In geek terms, Assassin’s Creed might give the same satisfaction that Miss Jade Raymond would give if she were ever your girlfriend. Again, the chances of you not knowing what Assassin’s Creed are slim but for those of you who popped down the tummy of your mummy few seconds back, Assassin’s Creed is about a Creed of Assassin’s (Whoop De Doo!) of which you are a member of. You play as a character whose name is Altair who is arrogant and full of himself in the beginning. His arrogance and complete disregard for the Assassin’s code of conduct causes him to fail an important mission upon which he stripped off his ranks and asked to start all over again as a Novice. As you progress through the game, you retain new abilities like counter attack, throwing knives, improving sword play etc, in short you improve your equipment with time which helps you in your running, jumping, combat skills. This is in a way your reward or level up system.
Altair’s inefficiency to carry out orders was the reason for his downfall so after that Altair is ordered to complete missions which involves him assassinating 9 important figures (In return for his own life) who were propagating the Crusades. The whole story involves this as your primary objective but its share of twists and turns along the way makes the game a hell lot interesting. Giving more insights into the story would just spoil the whole thing for you and believe me with the surprisingly unique ending it’s not worth spoiling it one bit. Kudos to Ubisoft Montreal for giving Assassin’s Creed such a unique story! These 9 Assassinations take place in huge cities which consist of Acre, Damascus, Jerusalem and Masyaf. Masyaf is the stronghold of the Assassin’s and this is where you begin your game from. Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem are locked and have to be explored by the player to unlock them. These cities are in no way similar, each city has its own architectural heritage, way of speaking and sense of clothing. In fact, each city has different zones which separate the poor and rich and it becomes clear when you see the buildings which clearly show the difference between these zones. The developers have gone to great lengths to convince the players that these cities are life like and this is how it would have looked way back in the 12th Century. The cities are buzzing with life where merchants are selling their merchandise and boasting about their superior deals or beggars just annoying the crap out of you asking for a few coins. We see women carrying pots, people sitting on benches, crowd gathering when someone is announcing something, guards watching important places etc. To make things more realistic, you see the wind movement having an impact on the clothes of the citizens and Altair as well. Detail to every minor thing is so articulate, when guards are stabbed/wounded, they struggle for long periods of time before they die. Even after death, their bodies lying on the ground show cloth movement from the wind, amazing! The matter of fact is that it doesn’t look monotonous. Everyone has something to do or somewhere to go. No doubt about it, each city has its own identity that separates it from the other cities. The View distance in the PC version has also been increased and there are some minor improvements from its console counterpart. The texture quality has definitely improved and looks amazing!
In order to get clues as to the whereabouts of your assassination targets, you have to perform various tasks like eavesdropping, forceful interrogation, pick pocketing and can also perform tasks for informers (they are Assassin’s like you as well), like clearing out a few enemy archers that are giving them (informers) problems or assassinating other targets, after which they will give you some useful information regarding your own Assassination targets. The game has plenty of side quests (that will keep you occupied for a long time) like collecting flags , rescuing citizens harassed by the guards or just finding Templars and killing them. It does get insanely monotonous, so when it does start happening it will be a complete turn off. So after that it is ultimately your option if you can take it or not. AC will be a stunner in the beginning but all that will fizzle out soon. However if you can bear then you have a lot to look forward to. The game is very open ended and gives you the option of completing the missions as and how you feel. AC has an amazingly sleek combat system which is somewhat tough in the beginning but after a few levels when you are given the option of counter attack by click of a button, it becomes extremely easy. Though, it makes sense that you assassinate with stealth rather than indulge in an all out battle. So, killing dozens of guards before reaching your assassination objective makes no sense. The whole point of the concept is assassinating with stealth. After you assassinate, you will have hordes of enemies behind you. You can rather stay put and indulge in a blood bath and kill each and every guard or make a run for it until you are out of sight and find a good hiding spot. This is where one of the best elements of the AC comes in. It’s those high tension chases with you jumping from roof top to roof top and performing some insane stunts (the fact, that these jumps are random makes it all the more exciting!) that may seem physically impossible. The whole beauty of the game lies here when you notice the fluidity of Altairs movement. How he performs those jumps with ease and the developers have managed to make it look quite believable. Altair has the capability to climb each and every building and he uses every architectural feature of the building for climbing, which looks damn sweet and fluid!
Ultimately it boils down to you owning a very good system which meets the recommended requirements; otherwise the whole experience of Assassin’s Creed is lost. The whole city is meant to be experienced with all its bells and whistles activated to the max. Though the requirements may be a drawback, the reason behind the insane RAM requirements according to what I have read in various forums is that the game loads sound from every city along with the level itself onto the memory (in the beginning itself!) when you are in the main menu. This might be to reduce loading time as the loading times on the PS3 could go to nearly 1 to 2 minutes whereas on the PC with the recommended RAM requirements the loading time maxes out to 8-15 seconds tops. So, if you really want the best experience and you don’t have a PC that meets the recommended requirements then I suggest you play the game on an Xbox 360 or a PS3.
So all in all, the PC version does bump up the notch in graphics/detail a little bit here and there. Frankly speaking if you haven’t experienced Assassin’s Creed on any console or you really love Jade Raymond then buy this game!
My System Config : Q6600 @ 3.7GHz , 4GB of System Memory, ATi 2900 Pro 512MB Ram. Game was played at 1280×1024 with everything set to max including Anti-aliasing; the FPS was playable and ranged between 50-80.
By – Akshay Singh