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• Reviewed on: Xbox 360 (Viewed on a 42-inch HP-PL4200N plasma television at 720p)
• Also available for: PlayStation 3, Windows PC
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• The Good: A massive and immersive world filled with lifelike cities and literally thousands of civilian characters; our hero's acrobatic antics are easy to pull off and beautiful to watch; serves up several distinctly original story ideas
• The Bad: Gets a bit predictable and repetitive
• The Verdict: You probably never imagined what it would be like to perform parkour in the crowded streets of Crusade-era Jerusalem, but, luckily for us, Ubisoft did
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In trying to come up with a witty summation for Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft's new stealth action game set in 12th century Middle East, I considered declaring it Grand Theft Horse, seeing as how it provides the same sort of open-ended sandbox-style play as games in Rockstar's popular Grand Theft Auto franchise. But horse thievery plays a relatively insignificant role. In fact, there is a distinct — if unconventional — morality at work in Assassin's Creed, which I decided renders any comparison to the crime glorifying GTA games tenuous at best.

Then I thought about suggesting that it could have been called Parkour: The Game, by dint of our hero's wild urban gymnastics, which involve, among other sprightly monkey business, running up walls, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, and jogging along ceiling beams. But I balked at that one as well — after all, this is hardly the first game that has allowed players to pull off incredible physical stunts (even if no previous game has managed to capture quite so precisely as Assassin's Creed parkour's fluidity and grace).

Other clever synopses came to mind as well: An ancient Arabic Splinter Cell (due to its spy and assassination themes); the unofficial game based on the movie The Kingdom (because of its similar period, locales, and subject matter); and what The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion would have looked like had it been set during the Crusades (thanks to its enormous and richly detailed world).

But in the end I decided that there isn't any way to accurately sum up Assassin's Creed in a tidy little one-line description or metaphor. It derives, without shame or regret, inspiration from a variety of sources, augments and modifies the ideas it stakes claim to, and then wraps it all up in a decidedly unique story that mixes modern science-fiction with antique cultures to create a game that has an essence all its own.

Making your own memories

You will be confused when you start playing Assassin's Creed. It begins by giving players control of a nameless, hooded man running around an ancient street in a strange blue-white fog sprinkled with phantom bits of digital detritus in the form of floating equations and honeycomb-like lines. We don't know what to do or where to go; we simply run about in a minor state of panic, listening to ghostly voices coming from somewhere beyond.

Don't worry; the confusion is intentional. It's Ubisoft's way of introducing the player and the game's protagonist — a modern-day bartender named Desmond — to the Animus, a high-tech contraption that allows people to experience the lives of their ancestors by tapping into memories stored in their DNA.

For reasons not immediately known, a pharmaceutical giant — the inventor of the Animus — is interested in what Desmond's genetic code can remember. They've kidnapped him and are keeping him locked up in a futuristic laboratory, where he gets strapped into a curvy metal bed every morning and sent nearly a millennium into the past to remember the life of one of his forebears: Altaïr, an Arab assassin.

The notion is that whatever we do in the past as Altaïr (i.e. assassinate people) is what really happened in his life, and Desmond is just remembering it. If we screw up and Altaïr dies, it merely means that Desmond's memory has fallen out of synch with the real memory (that is, he's imagining things that didn't actually happen), and the Animus simply reinitializes the experiment from his latest accurate memory.

It's an obvious contrivance meant to explain away anything we might do that Altaïr obviously wouldn't have done (not to mention a means of rationalizing the unnatural event of a person dying and then coming back to life). But my suspension of disbelief was held firmly in place throughout the game, thanks primarily to Assassin's Creed's most potent feature: Its immersive world.

Losing yourself in the Holy Land

The incredible vista overlooking Jerusalem; the authentic, crumbling buildings in Damascus; the realistically wall-like crowds of Acre — these are the things that players will remember long after finishing Assassin's Creed.

Looking down from a hill over one of the game's sprawling, intricately detailed metropolises that you're about to explore fosters an undeniable sense of excitement and anticipation. And as you plunge inside the town walls and get jostled about by scores of people streaming through narrow alleys, the feeling that you are truly exploring a real city begins to emerge.

I passed crowds gathered around political orators, wove my way through meandering lines of women carrying pots on their heads, walked carefully past guards who eyed me warily, and was accosted by beggars who would run in frantic circles around me as they delivered stories about their wretched lives and pleaded for charity.

And all of these artificial intelligences reacted appropriately to my behaviour as I moved amongst them. If I simply barrelled through a group of pedestrians rather than gently nudging my way between them, they would lose their balance and stumble away while cursing me. If I suddenly began scaling a building in front of somebody, he might comment on how he's never seen such bizarre antics before and wonder aloud if I was right in the head. If I unexpectedly jumped down from a roof into a crowd, everyone would back away and gasp loudly. And if I did any of these socially unacceptable things in front of guards, they would grow suspicious and perhaps even give chase to me.

Consequently, my actions were governed by a very real-world common sense and caution. I walked rather than ran while on the streets, and never drew my sword unless I intended to use it. This heightened level of realism made for an exhilarating video game experience.

Of course, there was the occasional glitch — like a pedestrian who sauntered by as though nothing was happening as I interrogated a suspect at knifepoint. However, the genuineness of the world is, for the most part, unequalled within the medium.

Leaps of fun

My only beef with Assassin's Creed is that things become predictable and repetitive. I'd be assigned an assassination target, travel to the city in which the mark lived, explore the streets and alleys to investigate his whereabouts and security, then observe and kill him. By the third target, I had the routine down pat — and I was only about a third of the way through the game.

But, oddly, the repetition isn't particularly monotonous. I never grew tired of scaling towers like a lithe, little King Kong. The act of climbing — or indeed any of Altaïr's amazing acrobatics — was far simpler and more satisfying than I expected. To amble up a spire all I had to do was hold down one trigger, press up on the thumbstick and he would automatically search to find makeshift hand and footholds while using his immense strength and cat-like agility to push himself upward and jump to new precipices.

In fact the sheer joy of moving around the world is what continues to drive me to search out all of the optional collectible flags hidden around the Kingdom — a task that looks as though it will nearly double the campaign's 20-or-so hour duration.

Just one more of this fall's essential games

With the dozens of worthwhile titles released this fall, your gaming calendar is likely already booked through next summer, but don't neglect adding Assassin's Creed to your list of must-play games.

In years to come, people will look back on it as a minor milestone in game design for the new bars it has set in the areas of environmental authenticity, virtual society immersion, and interface accessibility. It will act as a reference point for games that follow.

More importantly, it will almost certainly wind up as the first game in yet another long-lived Ubisoft franchise, and a requisite play in order to get the most out of future games in the series.