Assassin's Creed

And so ends a wildly successful Memorial Day weekend of logress for me. Before you judge me for spending a beautiful weekend inside watching movies and playing video games… shut up! I did like eight hours of yardwork, too, and went out for a couple of nice dinners. Now, next weekend, with Mario Kart 8 coming out on Friday, sure, you can bet your ass I'll blow the weekend on video games regardless of the weather. This weekend? Some opportunities arose, I guess. Nothing more!

Assassin's Creed is, of course, a wildly successful action-adventure video game series. There've been something like six or seven releases in the last seven or eight years. It was high time I checked one of these games out, so when I found the first one for six dollars I jumped right in. The verdict? Eh, I'm not really sure I have one. All of the elements were in place here for a great modern day open world sandbox. It had the same parkour and wall-climbing elements that so many recent classics do, and it tacked on a stealth element as well, allowing you to sneak right up to enemies, for the most part. But there were a few warts here I just couldn't get over. For one thing, the controls were needlessly complicated and a little unwieldy. For another, despite a rich plot and lots of characters, I just never found myself sucked into the story at all. A distant third issue was the combat mechanics; fortunately, the game doesn't rely much on combat, as it's generally a "Plan B" for when a nice stealthy assassination goes wrong.

I dunno. I'm not sure what didn't click for me here. The elements were in place, but this didn't resonate with me nearly as much as something like Uncharted or Infamous or even the slightly older Prince of Persia. I've been told that the series really gets good with the next release, Assassin's Creed II, along with its two follow-ups, Brotherhood and Revelations. I could buy all three right now for twenty bucks or so, but for now I'm going to hold off. There are just too many older games in my backlog for me to justify lumping another three in there when I didn't love their predecessor. I'm sure I will someday, but not yet. Not yet.