Gameplay:

As an assassin your job is to sneak around and take down your target with out being being noticed and the city going hysterical. So the game gives you many different ways to go about you tasks. You can keep a low profile and walk the streets and not do things out of the ordinary and blend in, run around and stand out more from everyone else or (and this is definitely one of the best aspects to Assassins Creed) you can scale the walls and wonder the roof tops ala Prince Of Persia. You can leap from roof top to roof top, scale walls and tall structures, hop across beams etc. The way Altaïr does all these actions are so smooth and well done that you have to see it to believe it. He will literally grab every nook and crevice on a building while he is climbing like the bars of a window or the round decorative pieces. If you do get a guard seeing you do something wrong and alerting others that there is an assassin you have to run and hide. The hiding it really done nicely from hiding in hay to blending in with scholars who are dressed like you. Though the strangest one is just sitting on a bench, it does raise questions but you'll be glad that you can hide on a bench when you get further into the game. Before you can assassinate the key target you have to do a bunch of tasks around the city. The main problem with this is that you have to do quite a bit of these and there is no variety in the number of tasks. There are about 4 different tasks and you have to these over and over again. So the repetitiveness of this does show up but the tasks are indeed fun to do.

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Controls:

The controls of the game are interesting and work very well. As it says in the manual it has puppet like controls. The Y button is your head, X and B are left and right hands respectively and A is for your legs and theses buttons are contextual and will change their function depending on the situation. The climbing and free running controls are easy to get into and are immensely great fun. You hold RT and A to jump which may seem weired at first but work well and you use the LS to climb/scale and as said before it all flows smoothly and nicely. The fighting controls are nice and may seem like button mashing at first, but then you'll see its about timing. You do learn some counter attacks, they are nice and gruesome. The problem with them is that they are one hit kills and feel a little cheap since if you get into a fight you can counter attack each one and be on you way in under a minute.

Graphics/Sound:

One word. Amazing. The game has awesome attention to detail and everything looks insanely well done, cities look immersible thanks the high quality draw distance, buildings all look natural and look accurate to what they were in the past, Altaïr looks so real and life like as does the peasants. Easily the best looking graphics so far for both the 360 and PS3.

The voice work is really outstanding here and nothing feels out of place. Altaïr's American voice may feel out of place at first but you'll soon forget about it. The ambient sounds of the country and cities are immense since there is no music in the game (except cut scenes) and the voices of the people just make the city come to life. The only downside is the repetitive dialog of the AI. You'll hear the same line 5 time's in one minute.

Score:

Gameplay: 8/10

Controls: 9/10

Graphics: 10/10

Sound: 9/10

+'s:

+ Graphics are the best to date this console generation

+ Easy controls

+ Assassinating is fun

+ Wall climbing!

-'s:

- Repetitive tasks

- Repetitive Dialog

- Repetitive all around

- Counter attacks feel cheap

- Annoying towns people