So I have decided after my recent play though of Assassins Creed, which you can see on YouTube, to give you a review.

First off let me give you a bit of background to my relationship with Assassins Creed. I first bought the game when I got a PlayStation 3 on release, and I actually ended up trading it in very quickly because it felt dull and repetitive.

But about a year later I was given it on Xbox 360 and it was a very different beast, it was a lot more enjoyable and the reason for that was achievements.

Those dull repetitive things now became things I wanted to do because I wanted the achievements, I spent a lot of time in that game trying to score as much G as possible.

And the story got me hooked as well, and it still is a very good story.

Anyway so how does it hold up from a modern perspective, well it’s a bit middling.

The game still looks good, I think games of that generation still hold up today and frankly are comparable to those on mobile phones and even the Switch, yeah the textures are a bit meh, but it still looks amazing.

The score is wonderful and very atmospheric, but the speech of the NPCs is very repetitive, which is think is a result if the limited size of the DVD media that it was released on for Xbox 360, and it didn’t really take advantage of the Blu-Ray disk for PS3.

Gameplay is still good, but the initial complaints still stand, it’s dull and repetitive and I can see why Ubisoft have not remastered this game, it would need more than some HD textures to improve it, it needs a whole remake.

The crack is that doing the game without achievements, although I did have some to collect still, makes it a much less enjoyable game, because it feels like you are doing the exact same thing over and over again.

Yeah it set up the franchise, but it is, absolutely not a classic, if anything it’s a bit of a disappointment in retrospect.

It just doesn’t stand up to modern standards, but the green shoots of what would come in the sequel are there and waiting to be improved upon.

Assassins Creed as a franchise has come a long way, and this was that first step.

Flawed, but with its own charm.


Scoring this game is difficult, I love the story, Altair is an engaging character, it looks good and the score is evocative.

But the gameplay gets boring very quickly.

So I have to give the game 2 out of 5.

Hardware

  • Xbox Series S
  • Xbox Controller
  • 1080p