Assassins Creed.

I'm surprised I haven't done my ode to Assassins Creed yet.

I wasn't even AWARE of Assassin's Creeds' existence until people compared it to Tomb Raider and one of my other favorites Mirror's Edge, but I didn't actually acknowledge it until I saw a commercial for the Assassins Creed Brotherhood multiplayer, and I mistaked it for Assassins Creed 2. From then on, I did my research and watched people play it on youtube, to actually buying ALL the games and playing them several times, and also buying game merchandise.

 

In 2007 the original Assassins Creed came out. The story is basically about this bartender named Desmond miles who gets kidnapped by Abstergo, a pharmacutical company. They strap him in the machine called "The Animus", which is a machine that lets you access your ancestor's memories. 2 or the Abstergo workers, Lucy Stillman and Dr. Warren Vidic, want to access Desmond's memories back to the Third Crusade. His ancestor is Altair Ibn-La-Ahad, an Assassin (which are like, ninjas who wear white) who lives in the holy land in 1191 and battles Templars. The ending was a cliffhanger: Altair had found a powerful artifact known as the apple of eden which grants infinite power to it's holder. After the people at abstergo had located it within Desmond's memories, they decided to kill him, but Lucy spared his life.

Since I did not play this series in chronological order, I played this game after I played AC2, and this game does seem a lot darker than the others, mainly because I think the developers were not sure that this was going to work. The game is extremely repetitive, there are no subtitles so you can't follow what's going on, Altair is the only one with an American accent and the graphics suck. But it was really groundbreaking, and the open-endedness of the game is really what got me hooked.

In 2009 Assassins Creed 2 was released. This one picks up where Assassins Creed 2 left off. Lucy, proving herself to be an ally, helps Desmond escape Abstergo, which turns out is run by modern day templars! dun dun duuuun! Together, they escape and meet up with two modern day Assassins (white ninjasuit non included) to put Desmond in another animus, called the animus 2.0, to relive the memories of Ezio Auditore, another ancestor of Desmond who lived during the Italian renaissance. Unlike Altair, Ezio didn't start off as an Assassin until a conspiracy causes his dad and 2 brothers to be innocently executed in front of a crowd. Taking on vengence, Ezio becomes an Assassin through the help of other Assassins and uncovers the truth to everything around him. In the end, Lucy, Desmond, and the gang are all caught by Vidic, but they escape to a safehouse.

This game was like, a total redux to the whole series. AC1 was dark and ominous in nature and in gameplay, but AC2 was beautifully done: gondolas in Venice, rooftops of florence, even a changing night and day system. Plus a little humor. Ezio was also less of a bland character made by some awesome-o character development. We saw him grow from a baby to a master assassin. This game improved on gameplay and graphics.

In 2010, Assassins Creed Brotherhood came out, and while it was the next game in the series, it was more like a Assassins Creed 2.5. In this one, the gang went to a safehouse in Italy to live more of Ezio's memories. In this one, he travels to Rome and.....I guess he just tries to get the apple of eden away from the Borgias, a real life family who lived in Rome during the time and participated in all sorts of debauchery despite Rodrigo Borgia being Pope. Well, they are bringing tyranny to the streets of Rome, and Ezio needs help liberating Rome, so he goes around trying to recruit more people to be Assassins and rebuild the brotherhood, hence the name, Assassins Creed Brotherhood! The ending was a real hoot, too: the modern day crew of Desmond, Lucy, and the rest travel below the colusseum to retrieve the apple of eden, but Desmond ends up killing Lucy and falling into a coma.

Overall, this game was not like AC2 for me. This game didn't really have any character development since we knew everyone, and where AC2 was more of coming-of-age, this was more of KILL KILL KILL DRAMATIC MUSIC KILL KILL...FAIL. This game was probably the hardest in the series for me because if you didn't do the missions a certain way, such as performed a stealth attack instead of just running in murking everyone, or not completing the mission in like, 3 seconds, you fail. This game was awesome indeed, but a bit scarier. However, it is probably the most epic game of the series.

In 2011 I pre-ordered Assassins Creed Revelations. I had been looking forward to it ALLLL year, because it was supposed to wrap up the storylines of both Ezio AND Altair. In this game, Ezio is really old, and he travels to masyaf in search of clues left behind by altair, but the clues aren't in Masyaf, they're in Istan Constantinople. So we have to play as now SSI eligible Ezio and Altair and watch Ezio get his mack on to Sofia, his future wife, but she helps him find the clues. Also, Desmond's mind is trapped in the Animus, so we have to do these first person puzzles to help him fix his memories. Plus Lucy is a templar and that is why she was killed. I had to go on Wiki to figure that out. In the end, Desmond wakes up from his coma and says "I know what we have to do" and the game ends.

When the game first came out, I paid 55 dollars for it. Last weekend I went to gamestop and it's 9 bucks. For starters the game is good, but it is short and unnecessary. I feel like the elements that were placed into the game should've just been placed into a book or something. I felt guilty playing as old Ezio and even WORSE as 90 something year old Altair. The game didn't really answer my questions at all, and it didn't really feel like I was playing Assassins Creed, it felt like I was playing Quest for the apple or something.

And that's the thing about the Assassins Creed series. It's like a spouse; there are things you love and things you hate, and one of the things I hate is how I felt it has deviated off the path of the original game. Desmond was kidnapped, then trained, then almost killed by a machine. Plus it just seems like 2 different game genres in one. For an example, first you are Assassins Assassinating people and being cool and ninja, then the ending of the game turns into final fantasy or something with glowing floaty people and ancient artifacts and magic...WTF? That would be like Red Dead Redemption, the whole purpose of red dead redeeming yourself would be so that the reapers of Mass Effect wont take over the world. It just shifts from one gaming genre to another.

But I have a very complicated marriage to Assassins Creed. The storyline got me, the characters got me, the fact that I can achieve more in a game than I can in real life got me, the graphics, and the fact that I'm a real history buff...it all got me. Plus I can pick up on Italian really fast now, and you'll get me again on October 30th when AC3 comes out!

Assassins Creed...you got me.