Leaping lizards!
The cities of Jerusalem, Damascus and Acre are stunning in both design and look. The streets are full of beggars, scholars, merchants, guards and locals hustling with market traders. There are busy town squares where crowds gather to listen to speeches, ornately designed buildings and stone-clad houses where ladders lead to rooftops allowing you to traverse from one end of the city to the other. The middle-eastern setting is made more authentic by the architecture, including decorated arches that connect the streets, ambulatories, bathhouses and minarets that dominate the skyline high above the busy city. It’s truly an impressive achievement by the developers and the first time you climb your way to the top of one of the cities highest viewpoints is definitely a moment to be savoured.The whole environment is designed with the freedom of movement in mind and crafted specifically so you can explore it from many different angles. The free-running (or parkour) element in Assassin’s Creed has been well documented and in reality, for the most part, is a great deal of fun as you jump onto the roof of a market stall, climb up the façade of a building, swing on a wooden beam and lift yourself up onto the rooftops.
There are limitless ways in which you can make your way to and across the rooftops as you jump from pillar to post to your next objective and the animation of Altair as he leaps from one building to the next has been captured with great expertise. When I initially began playing Assassin’s Creed I was frustrated with the controls and found myself flipping back off walls rather than grabbing onto the ledges, but once I got used to the jumping mechanic, which requires you to hold down the trigger and press a button to jump, and I got my timing right, I found myself leaping across the cities in all sorts of inventive ways. The whole city is a free-running playground.
Click for larger image
Click for larger imageThe free-running part of the gameplay can be a great deal of fun, but it isn’t really used to great effect in the game other than for exploration. There are four main reasons why you may head to the rooftops. Firstly - so you can reach somewhere or someone quicker than having to push past the people in the busy streets. Secondly - so that you can escape from the guards. Thirdly - for searching for one of the many viewpoints in the game, that subsequently unlocks parts of the map or finally - for searching for flags hidden around each city. (I believe the only reason to search for these are so you can unlock the achievements). Jumping and leaping around is all well and good, but it never really ties in with any of the missions of side-objectives and thus feels a little wasted and starts to get a bit, well...boring.
