Assassin’s Creed – The Most Impressive iPhone Game Yet
Assasin’s Creed was just released on the App Store, bringing one of last year’s most popular games to the iPhone. And the best part is that this version actually rivals its console counterpart.
Is This Gonna Be Good? No, really?
Have to admit, I was a bit hesitant to buy Assassin’s Creed, thinking that it might be another dissapointing game on the App Store (Spore, I’m looking at you). Not to mention the fact that it’s a higher priced game (£5.99 here in the UK).
Anyway, after 10 minutes of play, I realised I had made a great purchase. I was blown away by the quality and you quickly realise that this game provides tons of replay value. (I haven’t finished it yet, but apparently it lasts up to 10 hours!)
Screenshot 1
Quality
I read that this game is a port of an existing Assasin’s Creed game for the Nintendo DS. And that does make sense. Would imagine there’s lots of DS publishers out there right now, porting over their games to the iPhone, since both platforms share the touch features.
So right off the bat, there’s lots of content already built in and the quality is immediately apparent. The graphics, for a mobile game, are superb. The gameplay consists of navigating your character (Altair) through the side scrolling 3D world. It’s mostly linear, but there’s enough freedom to warrant a little arrow popping up to help show you the way. You’ll need it when you are navigating a tricky part from the street level up to the roofs.
And it’s the little touches that show the quality, like suddenly caving through a collapsing roof or being able to knock enemies off of the rooftops.
Screenshot 2
Control
Your virtual controls appear on the sides of the screen. To the left you have a joystick and on the right you have your various actions buttons. Now, for the most part, this system really does work. It’s wierd at first to not have the physical feedback from actual buttons, but you soon forget that and are just concentrating on playing the game.
Although, to be fair, it does fail at times. Found myself falling off roofs or not making jumps because the reaction from the controls is not always perfect. These were minor distractions though and it doesn’t ruin the game in any way. Plus, the action is full of save points, making it easy to retry sections.
Verdict
Highly recommend this for anyone interesting in gaming on the iPhone. To me, this seems like the first real example of how well a game can preform on this new platform. (Not to mention, making it the perfect game for my daily bus journey!). The iPhone is on the verge of being a serious gaming device.
May 13th, 2009 at 10:13 am
[...] post by Dennis J Coughlin [...]