Assassin's Creed Director's Cut Edition

It's been six months since the console release of the well-acclaimed Assassin's Creed. One would hope in that Ubisoft's extra time would have thrown together more than a PC convert with chocolate sprinkles. The original game was not without its flaws, and especially with a title like "Director's Cut" we'd hope some heavy ironing would have been done.

You play as Altair Ibn La-Ahad, a member of the Hashshashinin Assassin's brotherhood during the crusades in 1191. At no point during the game are you expected to pronounce your own name or your organisation's, thumbs up for that. Your core mission amounts to assassinating some key figures who are propagating personal and political agendas in amidst the cloud of the crusades. According to Ubisoft's PR reps these people are real historical figures who all vanished for unknown reasons in 1191.

Actually, you really play as Desmond Miles, a bartender from the year 2012. Desmond has been inexplicably apprehended and imprisoned by a group who give no explanation of their identity. Under the care of a doctor and an assistant, with no visible guards, he is then plugged into a machine called the Animus.

This device is able to read DNA memories of a person's ancestors. The captors are searching for a mystical item which they believe will have its location revealed in the memories of Altair Ibn La-Ahad, Desmond's distant great great great whatever grandfather. However in order to access the required memory Desmond must first play through all the memory events leading up to the desired one. These memories are, of course, the assassination performances of Altair during the crusades.

The game kicks off with a tutorial-like mission in which Altair has been sent to retrieve an ancient artefact from Soloman's Temple. In Metroid style, you start off with all of the abilities and weapons which you will later have to earn one-by-one throughout the game.

The mission is botched due to Altair's gung-ho over-confidence, causing the death of a colleague and the loss of an another's limb. When Altair returns he is demoted to the lowest rank possible, rather than executed which would be standard procedure, and given another chance to prove himself. This means he loses most of his weapons and special abilities. The leader of the brotherhood reminds Altair of the three rules called the Assassin's Creed. These are not to kill innocents, to hide from sight, and to never compromise the brotherhood.

Altair is then sent on numerous assassination assignments throughout the realm to apparently influence the tide of the crusades. Each assignment involves travelling to a city, performing some minor information gathering missions, and then carrying out the assassination in question.

In gameplay terms, none of this amounts to quite as much as one might hope. Information gathering is a series of mini-missions which have exciting names such as interrogation and eavesdropping but amount to little more than sitting on a bench and aiming the camera at a couple of NPCs, or beating someone up. They are relatively novel at first, but remain unaltered throughout the whole game and soon become repetitive. Furthermore, the information gathered by Altair actually affects very little in the final execution of his target, which frequently descends into a mass slaughter of guards and a retreat over the rooftops.

For the PC version a few more information-gathering missions have been added. One involves the assassination of some roof archers without detection, and another involves a race between two points on the map. That's basically it, and none of the new tasks are actually anything that console Assassin's Creed players won't have done before in afirdt play through anyway.

The frequent combat is heavily counter-based, which although drawn out is also incredibly aesthetically pleasing. Altair dances cinematically in and out of his foes and his gruesome executions are performed with a combination of grace and satisfying brutality. Blood is sprayed gratuitously and the assassin's coupe de grace is accompanied by excellent gut-wrenching sound effects.

However combat is not nearly as deadly or challenging as it needs to be in a stealth game, meaning that the need to remain undetected is largely understated and transgressions of the second rule of the Assassin's Creed often go unpunished. This is ironic given that Altair's arrogance was one of the reasons he found himself having to prove his worth in the first place, but players will no doubt find themselves, especially towards the end of the game, leaping brashly forth into combat situations and not being too concerned about the supposed danger.

A large portion of the gameplay is made up of sailing gracefully over high towers and rooftops, as anyone who's seen the game will no doubt be aware. This portion of the game is incredibly aesthetically pleasing and the full grace of Ubisoft's next-gen engine is on display when Altair is doing what he does best. His movements are both physiologically realistic but superhumanly impressive as he skates effortlessly up and down buildings; using notches, poles, and stone ornaments as climbing grips along the way. Hopping from roof-top to roof-top happens effortlessly on the part of the player and throughout this process the exceedingly beautiful graphics engine produces fantastic scenes and a great view of the living cities. The draw distance is impressive, and the detail of the surroundings and people alike is worthy of praise.

Control-wise the PC version could never hope to compete with its console predecessor. You'll need a control pad to really get to grips with this game, and you'll find yourself changing the configuration often when you first pick the game up, trying to find a button mapping which suits. The closer you can map the controls to their console defaults, the better.

One final note, and opinions will differ on this one, but personally I was never happy with the cliff-hanger style ending of the game, it leaves the player feeling quite unsatisfied and shamelessly sets up a sequel. No doubt it'll be a great sequel, but Assassin's Creed is certainly lacking some closure.

Overall, there's not much to make Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut stand out from the console release half a year ago. The graphics are still pretty; the gameplay is still simplistic but satisfying, and the information gathering missions are still quirky at first and sluggish by the end of the game. The implication that this version is superior by the movie-like suffix is mainly unfounded, and what exactly is "Director's Cut" supposed to mean in gaming-terms anyway? What we have here is a PC convert of a good console title which is ever so slightly inferior; but perhaps we should be happy it made it to the PC at all.