Assassin's Creed, 6 ways for a smoother playthrough

I found the game infinitely better the less of it I played at a time...

Since doing multiple mini games consecutively in a row can be mind-numbing, try breaking up the game into many tiny sessions. If you take a break after every quest or mini game or so, you not only do your eyes a great favor in keeping them healthy, but also work time into your session that can be used to brew yourself a cup of coffee or tea, breaking the boring tedium if you should rush out all the identical gameplay elements in a short time. This way, you get to maximise the best and minimise the worst parts of assassins creed gameplay

This way, you get to make yourself a sandwich, a meal and beverages, without burning yourself out on Altair's journey in assassins creed.

(and an interesting fact, it takes about 1 minute 20 seconds from the time you start up the dvd to the time you can actually move Altair about)

Did you know Altair has only 9 fingers?
One of his fingers is replaced by his hidden blade, I didn't realize either, until I saw the trailer for Assassin's Creed 2, where the developers pointed out that Ezio (the new protagonist) actually had all his 10 fingers intact.

Similarly, as you go about the world, you can look for achievement related items such as flags or more viewpoints, or do additional side-quests. Perhaps you could save some citizens, or just marvel at the detail and effort developers have put into the game.

One interesting fact about the internal game auto saves is that you can get teleported back to the bureau if you exit the game (alt+f4) after a successful completion of a mini-game/investigation. Its a great way to take a break, like in part 1) of this squid, or to quickly teleport yourself back to the bureau to undertake the actual assassination kill mission!

Another way to force a save would be to pick up a flag (or assassinate a templar), the game will create a checkpoint for you. Do take note that the "save point" created by killing a templar/picking up a flag, only lasts for your game session. It can be helpful if you're doing an investigation, and are stuck and keep losing synchronisation. It gets wiped when you alt+f4 out of the game however.

It is also not recommended if you're going for the flag and templars achievements, as it makes it harder to go back around a second time to grab them, as there is no way in the game to check which flags and templars you have picked and killed.

As is expected of sandbox games, there is more than one way to do one thing, and many ways to do anything.

A few ways where you can stray from the usual path is in
You can simply walk up to the areas where the investigations are located without even using the viewpoints. That is, you can do your own investigations "on foot", no need for the flashing signal on the map, you can just do those quests by just moving into those areas and initiating it.

As for view points, sometimes you'll see a tower that has an alcove that is relatively inaccessible. To get to it, you'll have to properly time a jump. It'll probably take a few tries to get onto those towers by jumping, just have to engage in a bit of trial and error! (if there is an eagle there, you know you havn't been there yet)

While the general combat options in assassins creed is very limited, it is sufficiently wide for you to come up with creative and interesting ways to handle this particular path. If you're getting bored of your usual style of dispatching guards and bosses, why not try out something new?

You can pick up either of the blades or swords that you've found yourself not using, and check it out.

If you're playing it on a laptop, you might want to use a bluetooth gaming mouse so that there is no cord to hamper Altair's way.

If you're all hyped up over Assassin's Creed, you might want to check out my lens on ezio!