Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed 3D offers you with 23 levels in fully 3D-rendered medieval environments: Damascus, Jerusalem, Masyaf, and Acre, you can visit inside & outside buildings in time of day or night. A realistic tactical scenario based game and you just can't start out all guns blazing during the start of a level. Everything you do depends on your skill level and to increase these skills you will have to collect magical orbs and trade them for points. These accumulated points can then be used accordingly to trade against specific skill upgrades which will make you a better assassin with every upgrade.

The overall graphics detail are truly astounding throughout the game and rarely you will have environment that are similar to any other level. Sword flashes and sparks are beautifully engineered to their impact to provide you the top notch flames. 3D based night and day based surroundings make this mobile game a gamers delight and such details are rarely seen on other games. Audio effects are at an acceptable level and should not irritate you even if you hear them a thousand times.

The variable speed game play lets you improvise moves within move, combo within combos and more often you will have to think outside the box to get out of a 'one way out' type of levels. When exploring a level your trails usually lasts a while, however in open environment they disappear quickly and makes it extremely difficult to go back when you are lost.

The high definition environment of Assassin's Creed 3D lets you choose between multiple routes that you can take to reach the 'final boss' of a level. Each route has its unique characteristics which can be negative or positive depending on the situation. In some level you will face more number of enemies with a straightforward way to follow while in some the number of enemies will be much less but the route itself will be very difficult to pass and filled with confusing puzzles and traps.

There are several different ways you can terminate an enemy including a 'stealth mode' which I personally like. The stealth mode kill is highly useful and effective specially when you are the start of a level and do not want to attract too much attention. However, stealth kills are much difficult to perform as such kills are usually generated by 2 combo moves from your end and needs precision timing.

The other way is to choose and fight with swords/knives/daggers etc which does make a bit of noise but is easier to control and execute from both short and long distances. It is highly effective when your enemies are aware of you or when there are a number of enemies in front of you.

Features:

- Responsive environments based on your own behaviour.
- 23 levels in 4 fully 3D-rendered medieval environments: Damascus, Jerusalem, Masyaf, and Acre, you can visit inside & outside buildings in time of day or night.
- A wide range of acrobatic moves: Run, jump, climb.
- Impressive combo attacks mixing sword skills and kicks for relentless fights or silent kills.
- Extended weaponry: now 11 weapons adapted for close combat and long range attack: 5 different swords, daggers, bombs, a grappling hook and many more!
-Gather orbs along the levels to upgrade your life bar or sword.

Assassin's Creed 2 marked a massive improvement on the original game, but with this sequel appearing only a year later I was half expecting something of a rush job. Fortunately, Brotherhood manages to combine old and new elements with skill and imagination while adding, for the first time, a potentially fascinating multiplayer component.

Buy it from
PS3
XBox 360

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Ubisoft
Fans of Ezio's time-straddling storyline may initially worry that all the action is now set in Rome, rather than the three distinctive city architectures of the previous game. And indeed, things do start slowly, with the Siege of Monteriggioni lulling you into a false sense of security as you get used to new abilities - from being able to ride horses, to two-handed combat against enemies that will happily gang up on you rather than waiting politely for their turn. Finally, when all hell breaks loose (courtesy of a cannonball crashing through your wall), the real story begins and you'll find that things move at a speedier pace.

When in combat, you can now use more powerful kicks, a new disarm move and even a crossbow that allows your to shoot enemies off nearby roofs - but this is just the start. Ezio is now an assassin leader rather than just a lone operative, and is able to summon teams of assassins to perform "brotherhood assisted moves". You can train these cohorts as much or little as you like, even to the point where they can take care of mundane skirmishes while you're up to something more interesting.

However, as before, this is primarily a stealth-based game, with enemies likely to bolt or summon reinforcements at the first sign of trouble - which makes early recon essential to pick exactly the right position and time to strike. And it's not all about fighting - there are missions that involve sabotage, retrieving objects or escorting other players and, as in AC2, hidden levels that rely on purely platforming skills, with pixel-perfect jumps made all the trickier by needing to examine the scenery with your eagle vision to discover the upward path.

As for the multiplayer side, players can choose from eight assassin types and a pair of weapons before being cut loose in disguise somewhere around Rome, tasked with locating and taking down a player-character who is also hunting you. It will be interesting to see how the dynamics of this play out once the servers fill up, but it's something that could easily evolve into its own MMO, given time and a few more playing modes.

For now, it's the single player campaign - filled with stunning cut-scenes, music and voice acting - that prove the most compelling reasons to play this excellent sequel. On this evidence, I can't wait for the next one.