OK, i got the game yesterday on release after a long wait and ran home to play it. Is it just me or from all the trailers and things did you get the idea that you were going to be a cool assassin "oblivion" style with no complications?

So it turns out your some guy in the future thats been taken to this facility where people want to unlock your DNA memory of your ancestors to get important information. That doesn't sound to bad i guess but when playing and your really getting into the action and gameplay and the game does this weird thing where it skips to a "more resent memory" and you get a feeling of wtf?? I wanted to kill that soldier or run up that wall and you feel really restricted. It can also pull you out of the memory and you go back to the facility and rest which is like someone has pressed a big pause button. Its doesnt need to be so complicated.
At the start of the game the training feels really forced and like they couldn't decide what they could do at some points. It has the worst intro of any game i have ever played and it has a feeling of one of them games thats going to take a while to learn and get into.. not a great start.

Graphically the environments are amazing! Not so much at first but on the later levels when you look over the cities. Every character but yours look poor but otherwise very good.

AI....... What AI. Seriously i went up to a group of soldiers and this one guy was at the front giving them a weird pep talk and i thought it would be funny to kill him and get them all chasing me, so i ran to him pulled out my big sword and killed him.. Nothing happened, they all just stood there as if nothing happened staring at me (this isnt a one off eather it happens alot). It sucks when you kill someone privately where no one can see (like some cool assassin or something) and you walk down the road and everyone starts running around calling you a murderer which happens all the time.. I just gave up having fun killing people because you cant do much without everyone in the whole map suddenly knowing about it. Oh and people just walk aimlessly around also like they have no personality, just a set route.

Revolutionary combat is boasted but you give up and just doing the easiest thing, bash the X button until everyone dies a very unconvincing death. Dont think they could be arsed with such tiny things as xbox live compatibility eather.

Even though these faults are screaming at you there are good points. The graphics, very good. The animation is very clean. The horses look very realistic. The game is very cool when your stuck in the action.

THE BEST BIT!!! Free-running its totally awesome, without it this game would already be in a bargain bin. If found myself saying screw the storyline and just going running across roof tops. This feature would be brill in a gta game.. but thats for a different time i guess lol.

Its not a bad game but its not good.. Never a classic. I feel a bit cheated out of a good game.

This is just my opinion, except for the AI, that really is piss poor.

JC.

Oh and dialog wise.. say if you save a civilian, The women always say the same line " Thank god you came, another minute and they would of had away with me" and the men say something different. EVERY SINGLE TIME! All the guards shout "you will pay with your life" in the same tone.

Civilians all shout the same crap over and over and over it gets sooooo annoying! Very very poor quality.

In fact the audio its self doesn't really sync in-game (if your on top of a church or very high building you can still hear people talking on the street as if they where right next to you with my dolby 5.1). They really couldn't get figure out that if your further away from a character there voice shouldn't be as loud as if your next to them. I think they spent about 10min in total recording the all the samples for assassins creed.

Free running is the only thing pulling me through the game.

There's been a lot of harsh criticism on this game lately that I feel is pretty unwarranted.
I thought the game was great the free running was incredibly detailed actually having to look for a handhold and then having an animation showing you grab that specific handhold was just amazing.

I thought the fighting mechanic had a lot of depth, enemies don't just stand around, they wait for an opening and they will attack you in the back. sure you can just keep pressing X to win but then you miss out on great Combo/Counter kills, throw reversals and ground kills. these took a lot of practice to pull off but were very rewarding.

The missions were repetitive, but you dodn't have to do them all to get to the main target.
The scenes in the lab, if you used them right, reveal a lot of the back story.

I thought the A.I was really good. Kill a guy and throw him off the roof and you can hear the reaction from the people below and guards will be on the look out for you doing something suspicious.... stealth kill a guy in the street and you have a little time to blend before it gets discovered..... climb up a building and people are like "what the hell is that guy doing?".... jump off a building and land in a crowd and everyone just stops and stares at you... it's very cool.

I hated that water killed you instantly I understand its the desert and they probably dont have access to swiming pools, but seriously this guy can climb a 4 story building and can't tread water?
also if he can't swim why make it possible to jump in the water? most frustrating part of this game was trying to jump from pole to pole in the water, practically impossible.
I wish you had a sneak option because it didn't feel right just walking up behind someone on a roof and they don't hear you or anything, the running stealth kill was cool though.

Overall I thought the game was very good and had a great time playing all the way to the end.

Here's a link to an article on penny arcade about low review scores for AC, interesting read and good commentary on review scores in general.

Penny Arcade