Final Remarks
We've seen a number of Assassin's Creed reviews, and we've run more benchmarks on the game than we'd care to admit. The question most gamers really want answered is: should they consider purchasing AC, or should they give it a pass? That's a judgment call that will vary by individual preferences, so let's dissect things a bit further.
First, there's a suggestion in some circles that AC is heir to the Thief throne -- that those who loved the Thief series will think AC is awesome. We definitely wouldn't make that recommendation, as the style of gameplay is dramatically different. Where Thief primarily involves skulking about and avoiding confrontation where possible, AC revels in wanton violence. Sure, you can use stealth at times to avoid the guards, but it typically is not required. In fact, we're more inclined to view AC as being closer to FPS games like Serious Sam than to "thinking" FPS games like Deus Ex. (Ed: the first Deus Ex.) Besides, a bit of violence generally results in the more entertaining free running escapades, which are one of the better aspects of the game.
The second complaint that comes up is the matter of repetition. There's no getting around this one: the game is repetitious. If you're looking for a game like Oblivion where you can wander freely and experience the game world for hundreds of hours, AC will disappoint. At their core, however, most games are repetitious. In FPS games you explore levels killing foes and going from point A to point B; in RPGs you fight battle after battle where the specifics change but the essence remains static. Some of the best games of the past year or so -- STALKER and Bioshock -- are also quite repetitive. What I can say with relative confidence is that if you didn't like the story and presentation in Bioshock (I know a few people out there that really dislike that game), it's unlikely you will enjoy AC. And as for repetitiveness… well, maybe it's the fact that running benchmarks is part of my job description, but I didn't find it to be a huge concern over the course of the game. If the game had extended beyond the 20 hour mark, it would become more of an issue, but doing similar tasks repeatedly seems to be typical of almost all games. (MMOs anyone, or how about Solitaire? You don't even want to know how many hours I've spent playing Solitaire and Minesweeper over the years!)
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Personally -- and ignoring the DirectX 10.1 controversy -- I found the game to be highly entertaining and wouldn't hesitate to recommend people give it a look. This is made all the more viable with the reduced pricing: the game is available for $35, which is very reasonable for the 15-20 hours of entertainment it provides. It's unfortunate that Ubisoft didn't release a demo for the game, as that could have helped more people come to a decision, but if you have a chance to try the game at a friend's house or elsewhere I'd suggest you do so. AC certainly rates high on my list of best games released so far in 2008 (for the PC), but then 2008 hasn't been a stellar year so far. (Ed: I'm drooling while I wait for Fallout 3….)
Ultimately, gaming likes and dislikes are highly subjective. I've seen mediocre reviews of AC and I've seen others hailing it as the best thing to hit the market in recent history. I'm inclined to take the average of those viewpoints… and then leap 200 feet into a waiting pile of hay to avoid the pursuing trolls. Some will find the sci-fi "setting" of the game a nuisance; others will go into full fanboy mode and wander around conventions dressed as Altaïr. The game doesn't have any multiplayer aspect, and it's linear enough that there's no major reason to replay the game. However, $35 for 15 hours of entertainment is a lot better than three or four trips to the movies.
Still not sure if the game is worthwhile? We've put together some videos of the various gameplay elements on the next page. The videos come from the second major mission in the game and should help to give you a better idea of what it's like to step into Altaïr's sandals.
| Assassin's Creed - System Requirements/Recommendations | ||
| Required | AnandTech Recommends | |
| CPU | Pentium D 2.6GHz or Athon X2 3800+ | Core 2 Duo E6600 or Faster |
| RAM | 1GB XP, 2GB Vista | 2GB or more |
| Storage | 8GB free HDD space, Dual-layer DVD-ROM | 8GB free HDD space, Dual-layer DVD-ROM |
| GPU | 256MB DirectX 9.0c (SM3.0) PCI-E Radeon X1600 or better GeForce 6800 or better |
256MB DirectX 10.0 PCI-E Radeon HD 3850 or better GeForce 8800 or better |
| OS | Windows XP/Vista 32-bit | Windows Vista |
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bill3 - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
Actually it's terrible, I cant read the graphs AT ALL.seriously my eyes just glazed over those terrible charts..completely unreadable. I still, have no idea what I'm looking at. Is ATI supposed to be faster in this game? Why did they test with version 1.00 on ATI and 1.2 on Nvidia? I dont know because the graphs are totally useless.
Nihility - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
I second that. The graphs are terrible. Maybe bar graphs would have been better?Sometimes when you're the one making the graph it's hard to imagine what other people are seeing when they look at them. I suggest having another pair of eyes check the graphs out for readability.
Besides that, I loved the review. Especially the performance part and the 10.1 controversy.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 - link
Charts are colored with similar colors used either for ATI vs. NVIDIA, 1.00 vs. 1.02, or dual-GPU vs. single-GPU. I could have generated four times as many graphs to show the same data, but I figure most people are capable of reading the labels on a chart and figuring out what they mean. Here's a hint: when you can't see the difference between two lines because they overlap, it's a tie.If you want to give specific examples and recommendations on what would look better and still convey the same amount of information, I'm all ears. However, simply stating that "the graphs are terrible" does little to help. Tell me what graph specifically is terrible, and tell me why it's terrible.
As an example of why I used these graphs, page 9 has two charts showing 40 total data points. You can get a clear idea of how performance scales with single or dual GPUs at the various detail settings looking at a single chart. Green is NVIDIA, Red is ATI. That makes a lot of sense to me. Creating ten different bar charts with four lines in each to show the same data makes it more difficult to compare how Medium graphics compares to High graphics performance, and it takes up five times as much space to tell the same "story".
Page 6 is the same thing, but with green used for dual-GPUs (light and dark for 1.00 and 1.02) and red for single GPUs. 24 data points in two charts instead of using six charts. Having established that 1.00 doesn't perform any different than 1.02 on NVIDIA hardware, I skipped the 1.00 NVIDIA numbers to make those charts easier to read on page 7. Then I put in the four standard test system (0xAA and 4xAA, ATI and NVIDIA) on 1.02, with 1.00 4xAA ATI in blue as a reference.
Lastly, on page 8 I have two clock speeds on NVIDIA, three on ATI, with different base colors for single and dual GPUs. ATI and NVIDIA are in separate charts, and brighter colors are for a higher overclock.
There's method to my graphing madness. Are the charts immediately clear to a casual glance? No, but then that's really difficult to do while still conveying all of the information. I spent a lot of time trying to make comprehensible charts, and settled on these as the best option I could come up with. Again, if they're so bad, it must be easy to generate something clearly better - have at it, and I'll be happy to use any sensible suggestions. However, if the only complaint is that you actually have to look at the charts and think for a minute before you understand, I'm not likely to be very sympathetic. I think our readers are smart enough to digest these graphs.
mpjesse - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
While I appreciate the detailed review, isn't it a little irrelevant now? I mean, the game's been out for nearly 2 months now and it's been reviewed everywhere. The only thing new about this review are the performance benchmarks, in which case I would have have made the review solely about performance instead of gameplay.Just my 2 cents.
ImmortalZ - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
Its sad that the companies with money always manage to suppress innovation.I hope this article by AT will raise some ruckus in the collective Interwebs and cause something. But I doubt it.
ViRGE - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
For what it's worth, another forum I read had some screenshots comparing DX10 and DX10.1. The problems the poster had managed to find involved trees; there was some kind of post-processing rendering going on with trees that wasn't occurring with DX10.1, which made them look weird.Not fixing 10.1 may be an NVIDIA thing, but there was definitely a problem with it as-is.
tuteja1986 - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
Well why where the hell is nvidia dx10.1 support if dx10.1 actually brings some kind of performance improvement in AA.Why aren't GT200 series have DX10.1 ?
I thought PC gaming was all about being the cutting edge on all technology front...
Anyways , this is not the 1st time Ubisoft or Nvidia have done this.
wyemarn - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
Maybe because Nvidia GPUs cant support AA through shaders. So no use supporting dx 10.1. ATI GPUs have 320 stream processors so it can utilize for shaders and etc. Nvidia cards have less SPs but more ROPs, TMUs which translates to more brute power if games dont use shaders or SPs much. Technology wise, I think ATI is ahead but NVIDIA GPUs have game developer support and more raw horsepower so performance wise NVIDIA is ahead and I think this trend will continue with GTX200 series. I choosed G92 over RV670 because the raw performance is much better even though on paper HD 3800 series look great.SteelSix - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
Worthy of a thread in Video. I just started one..Gannon - Monday, June 2, 2008 - link
The original halo had performance issues but they weren't alarming, halo was actually not too bad port compared to many other console to PC disasters. Halo 1 got 'better with hardware' advancing. Halo 2 on the other hand is just all around atrocious. Halo 2 was just not a very well made game, period, despite the addition of cutscenes, etc. Halo 1 had a much better feel and better vehicle design IMHO, I hated how the warthog looked in Halo 2, it annoyed me to no end.