Assassin's Creed

All right, a little fan-girl geeking out coming up. You have been warned.

I'd always known of the Assassin's Creed games, but had never played them or really known about them in depth.

And then a couple of years ago I came across this really cool video of parkour/free-running inspired by the Assassin's Creed game style.



I loved it! But still I didn't attempt to get the game itself at the time. There was no particular reason; I guess I've just never been a massive action game player.

And then last year I played the most recent Devil May Cry, DMC, and really liked it. My little sister and I started working our way backwards through that franchise over the summer and it got me playing games again (we played quite a bit of video games growing up - Pacman, Super Mario, Bomberman, Sonic, my favourite Ecco the Dolphin ^_^...)

Anyway, so Assassin's Creed Unity was launched just at the end of last year and the guys who did the original parkour video did another one with 4 people, to tie in with the new game's multi-player co-op capability.


Talking about how cool it was with my other sister's boyfriend over Christmas, he said he had Assassin's Creed Black Flag on his Xbox and let me have a go on it. I have to say I didn't get into it so much on first play because I found the gaming style quite complicated, the controls confused me somewhat. But I was on board now, and after finding Assassin's Creed II on special offer on Steam over New Year's (=D) I gave it another shot. And I'm really glad I did as I was very impressed with the whole world and back story that they've built up for it - warring factions, Templars and conspiracy theories, sci-fi crossed with historical drama! The intrigue! The sense of adventure! I'm a really clumsy assassin though; I keep walking into walls and falling off rooftops (unintentionally)... and my brain's inability to realise that it's not really me climbing up those high places is a bit of a problem (I'm scared of heights) but it's definitely a great game. I really like how detailed the locations and historical information are, it's almost like going on a virtual tour of the time periods the games are set in - currently I'm still rampaging through Renaissance Italy.

I also can't stop re-playing the cinematic trailer for Assassin's Creed Unity because I love the song - Lorde's smokey cover of 'Everybody wants to rule the world' - and the action is so brilliantly choreographed to every beat. Very neat.


Word is that the next one is to be set in Victorian England. That'll be interesting. But the one I really hope they develop is the short side game China Chronicles that they've already released. Not only would the backgrounds and graphics plus the martial arts influences that'd be in there be so awesome, the main selling point for me is that the assassin in that story is a woman!