Assassin's Creed - Personal notes

So I finished Assassin's Creed on Xbox 360 finally. Yes about a year or so too late but I do that from time to time. I haven't even finished Half Life 2 yet even though I still play it. These days, I savor the game experience for a longer period of time. Mainly cause I don't have the time I use to when I was younger and also, I've become more patient in gaming( Not including FPS's like BF2 where I get pretty crazy playing sometimes...but I digress ).

So back to Assassin's Creed. Best points, graphics are amazing...animation is pure genious in how fluid moves transition and the realistic motions that I am sure are mostly keyframed since this is the same studio who brought us Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell...Ubisoft Montreal. These guys have quite a history of hits and megahits. So for this alone the game is superb. The only minor flaw is repetative missions. Even this I can overlook for the most part. No, the main thing that really irked me was near the end. Don't worry I won't spoil anything here but basically the gameplay through 90% of the game allows you to be stealthy (which I prefered) or more confrontational and combat centric with NPC's. Unfortunately the game forces you to do pure combat the last chapter and this really frustrated me in my enjoyment of the game. Not only this but during boss battles the game decides to change the rules. What once was hack hack dead for NPC's is now completely opposite. I had to go online and read a FAQ or two to figure this out. Plus the game gives you no indication of this fundamental gameplay change and therefore your left to your own devices to figure this out. Normally, I like figuring things out but this was a bit much. Kinda like playing 3 quarters of a football game with the usual rules then the last quarter playing the rules as Gaelic football but no one lets the players know this. Not fun...

Besides this major flaw, I still found the overall experience quite enjoyable and the character of Altair and stories involving his adventures would be great in film form. In fact I have heard rumors of such since Ubisoft has it's own motion picture studio now. Supposedly they will start out slow with a 10min short involving Assassin's Creed theme. Either way I predict a major motion picture in the future for this franchise. Let's hope they do it justice and please leave the sci-fi part out of it ( You'll understand this last phrase if you have played even the first 5min of the game ).