I don’t know that I have much to say by way of introducing this game.  It’s published by Ubisoft.  It’s been out for a while.  If you want to know more, check out the link on the sidebar.  Let’s get into it.
 

• Attitude problems don’t constitute interesting characters.  I don’t care much for the main character’s attitude.  I’d much rather have played a true novice, than an asshole who got demoted.
   
• Simple controls are not necessarily a bad thing.  Climbing is incredibly fun.  It consists of pressing up, for the most part, but that doesn’t matter.  The simple control scheme allows me to focus on how high I’ve climbed, and how fluid the animation is.  Very well done.
   
• NPCs should be just as real as the player’s character.  I wish that I didn’t feel like “Main Protagonist” all the time.  There are beggar women and mental patients in the street.  They see me and the beggars run in front of me begging and the deranged push me around.  In theory, I shouldn’t kill them, and I don’t, but they’re annoying.  The thing is, they only bother me.  I don’t see the beggars block anyone else’s paths, and I don’t see the (I’m guessing) schizophrenics push anyone else around.  I’m supposed to be anonymous while moving through the streets, but I very much don’t feel that way.
   
• The outside-the-Animus scenes: please don’t ever do that again!  It seems to me that this was Ubisoft’s idea of keeping the player engaged during a cutscene, while also giving the option of skipping said cutscene.  I’m usually just annoyed, though.  There’s nothing to do, no gameplay to be had, and the story is largely throwaway.  It’s an irritating break thrown arbitrarily into the game and I have yet to feel like it adds anything significant.  Maybe when the game’s over I’ll have a different opinion, but, over halfway through, I’m just annoyed.
      Okay, I’ve finished the game, and the non-Altair scenes just got more and more annoying.  They completely broke my sense of immersion, and I really just couldn’t care less about what was going on.  I can forgive a HUD and a timeline that skips around.  It’s really, really, not necessary to pull out the contortionist routine to explain save games and pause menus.
   
• All cutscenes should be skippable.  Lemme say that again.  All cutscenes should be skippable.  EVERY SINGLE ONE.  I’m sure that developers everywhere think that they’re story is incredibly compelling and needs to be seen, but gaming is about making your own story.  I just cut a swath of destruction across Acre, as I rode down the guards at the city entrance and picked every fight I could on my way to each of the city’s viewpoints.  That’s what I’ll remember later on, not the verbal sparring between the asshole main character I don’t identify with and the asshole assassin’s guild bureaucrat I don’t care about.  Allowing me to walk around in circles while talking to the guy only really breaks my suspension of disbelief even more.
   
• Audio should be centered on the character, not the camera, by default.  I don’t know if this is an option that can be changed, as it’s only happened during the annoying modern day scenes, but the dialogue fades out if I move the camera around the room.  So, in order to hear what anyone is saying I have to have the camera pointed right at the person, regardless of where my character is standing.  This is boring, and in a scene I already find pointless, this is especially excruciating.  Audio (dialogue, at the very least) from the character’s point of view should be the default mode, regardless of whether it’s an option or not.
   
• Genre fusing is dangerous territory.  I’m still torn over the (I assume) alien object at the end of the game.  Even if it’s just wildly technologically advanced, it still kind of came out of nowhere.  I can accept the Animus.  We’ve established that this company has developed a new technology that can read genetic memory, fine.  One assumes that this technology is based off of previous technological advances also from the modern day.  The technologically advanced object in the Middle Ages, though….  Well, I’ll say that I’m not surprised that they went there, but I do wish that there had been a little bit of foreshadowing.  I’m all for mixing genres and playing with audience expectations, which is why I can’t condemn this outright, but I’m not so sure it was handled very well.
   
• It’s not necessary to throw a sandbox and hundreds of collectibles into every game.  Every area in this game has a ton of little collectible flags for you to find.  The game also includes the “Go anywhere, dick around as you please” philosophy of sandbox games.  This is only a real issue because the game also tries to instill a sense of urgency into you.  Outside the Animus, you’re constantly being told that your life is dependent upon your cooperation, and that you need to hurry up and get on with it.  Inside the Animus, there’s a sense of “I’ve got a job to do.”  Neither of these is exactly conducive to just popping around and picking stuff up.  And, realistically, the sandbox game works best when you’ve got lots of options, lots of things to do.  Altair can basically only kill people and climb stuff, and, really, what point is there in just randomly running around and killing people and climbing stuff?  He’s supposed to stay anonymous and protect the people.  These are not ideas that play well together.  I understand that Ubisoft’s trying to add value to the game, but all it really does is break immersion.  The doc will scream at you if you take more than two seconds to pick a level, but he has no problem if you pick a level you’ve played three times already.  That makes sense.
   
• Finally, GIVE YOUR STORIES A PROPER ENDING.  I don’t care if you’ve got a trilogy planned, paid for and written.  I don’t care if I don’t care about the story you’re telling.  I don’t care if the ending is happy or not.  I just care that you actually END the damn thing.  I’m not even talking about the surprise hint at the end of a story, where someone you thought was dead opens their eyes, or something like that.
      No, I’m talking about “To be continued” endings.  I despise “To be continued.”  I especially despise it when I’m looking at a year or more before the story actually is continued.  And the worst part is, in Assassin’s Creed, it was the modern day story line that failed to wrap up.  Altair’s story ended satisfyingly.  He figured out what was going on, reconciled past differences and took out the bad guy.  There was the obligatory “The real story is even bigger than that” ending, but Altair’s plot line was complete, and that revelation was more prologue to a new plot than anything to do with the old plot.
       The final scene outside the Animus, though, was not a resolution.  I don’t want to give it away, since so many people despise spoilers, but basically, you started out stuck in a room with nothing to do, and you end up stuck in a room with even less to do.  There are hints of future revelations, but NOTHING HAPPENS.  Nothing happens through that entire story line.  Nothing gets developed, nothing changes, the characters are all flat and what little plot there is is left completely unresolved.  I didn’t like that part of the game to begin with.  When I got to the end, I despised that part of the game.
   

In the end, I really liked the Middle Ages portion of the game.  Sure, the gameplay wasn’t exactly varied, but it was incredibly executed.  I just wish the Middle Ages portion was the only portion.