In November '09, 3 Assassin's Creed games were released: Assassin's Creed II (PS3 and 360), Assassin's Creed II - Discovery(DS and iTouch/iPhone), and Assassin's Creed Bloodlines. Today, I'll be reviewing Bloodlines.
Story - 1/10: Assassin's Creed Bloodlines picks up where the first leaves off. Only in Altair's story, anyway. You start out watching a cool CG scene showing Altair and his fellow Assassin's kicking Templar ass. Then, Altair does this wicked boost jump off of a Templar knight's head and lands on the upper part of the fortress he's infiltrating. At this point, you're thinking "this is awesome! I can't wait!". However, you'll soon realize just how lacking the story is. The dialouge is horrible. Just horrible. Example: During Bloodlines, Maria, the Templar lady you spare at the end of the 1st, asks Altair "Where are you going", to which he responds "West". End game. Also, the story took me 3 hours to beat. 2:56 to be precise.
Graphics - 8/10: The graphics aren't very impressive, with the exception of Altair, but the animations are. The animations are absolutely amazing. The animations look like they pulled Altair's model from the 1st game and ported it straight to PSP. However, everything else looks like crap. The enviroments looks sterile. When people talk, the color of the inside of their mouth is the same color as the rest of their face.
Gameplay - 5/10: The platforming aspect is what most people think about when they think Assassin's Creed. As such, I'm going to cover it first.
Platforming in this game feels nearly identical to the 1st. There's plenty to climb on, to jump off of, and the such. However, it's not as good as the console experience. Why? Because everything you climb off of looks like it was made to climb off of. One of the best things about the 1st was that you were climbing on things that weren't made to climb off of, but you were climbing on them anyway. With Bloodlines, it looks like they put the occasional brick sticking out of the building for you to climb on. Not only that, sometimes when you get on a thin piece of material (like a railing), Altair feels the need to flaunt his abilities by walking like he normally does, which usually results in him plummeting to his death.
Battles in the game, however, are not as good as the platforming aspect, for 1 reason: When you kill a batch of Templars, you exit combat mode. Then, another group of Templars come running after you and attack. Because you're not in combat mode, you can't guard. This always results in losing 1 bar of sychronization(health). Everything else though is great.
Sound - 7/10: The voice acting in this game is a mixed bag. Some voice actors (such as Altair, Maria, and some villians) sound good. Some voice actors (such some villians and generic people) sound like crap. The music score, though, is really nice. My only 2 complaints about the music are:
A) Sometimes the audio glitches and it repeats the same sound 3 times
B) They replaced the Viewpoint melody with... ummm... something loud... I can't describe it
All-in-All: 5/10 In November '09, 3 Assassin's Creed games were released: Assassin's Creed II (PS3 and 360), Assassin's Creed II - Discovery(DS and iTouch/iPhone), and Assassin's Creed Bloodlines. Today, I'll be reviewing Bloodlines.
Story - 1/10: Assassin's Creed Bloodlines picks up where the first leaves off. Only in Altair's story, anyway. You start out watching a cool CG scene showing Altair and his fellow Assassin's kicking Templar ass. Then, Altair does this wicked boost jump off of a Templar knight's head and lands on the upper part of the fortress he's infiltrating. At this point, you're thinking "this is awesome! I can't wait!". However, you'll soon realize just how lacking the story is. The dialouge is horrible. Just horrible. Example: During Bloodlines, Maria, the Templar lady you spare at the end of the 1st, asks Altair "Where are you going", to which he responds "West". End game. Also, the story took me 3 hours to beat. 2:56 to be precise.
Graphics - 8/10: The graphics aren't very impressive, with the exception of Altair, but the animations are. The animations are absolutely amazing. The animations look like they pulled Altair's model from the 1st game and ported it straight to PSP. However, everything else looks like crap. The enviroments looks sterile. When people talk, the color of the inside of their mouth is the same color as the rest of their face.
Gameplay - 5/10: The platforming aspect is what most people think about when they think Assassin's Creed. As such, I'm going to cover it first.
Platforming in this game feels nearly identical to the 1st. There's plenty to climb on, to jump off of, and the such. However, it's not as good as the console experience. Why? Because everything you climb off of looks like it was made to climb off of. One of the best things about the 1st was that you were climbing on things that weren't made to climb off of, but you were climbing on them anyway. With Bloodlines, it looks like they put the occasional brick sticking out of the building for you to climb on. Not only that, sometimes when you get on a thin piece of material (like a railing), Altair feels the need to flaunt his abilities by walking like he normally does, which usually results in him plummeting to his death.
Battles in the game, however, are not as good as the platforming aspect, for 1 reason: When you kill a batch of Templars, you exit combat mode. Then, another group of Templars come running after you and attack. Because you're not in combat mode, you can't guard. This always results in losing 1 bar of sychronization(health). Everything else though is great.
Sound - 7/10: The voice acting in this game is a mixed bag. Some voice actors (such as Altair, Maria, and some villians) sound good. Some voice actors (such some villians and generic people) sound like crap. The music score, though, is really nice. My only 2 complaints about the music are:
A) Sometimes the audio glitches and it repeats the same sound 3 times
B) They replaced the Viewpoint melody with... ummm... something loud... I can't describe it
All-in-All: 5/10 |