Call of Duty 4 Review

Call of Duty 4 is the latest venture into warfare by Activision, But instead of Germans and Mustard Gas we have Terrorists and Nuclear Weapons.
How will it fare?

Story
The interesting thing about the CoD Series' stories is that there is usually more than 1. CoD2 Had the stories of British, Russian and American soldiers in their chosen conflict zones, CoD4 Has a plot involving the British SAS (Special Air Service) in Russia and the US Troops in a tactfully un-named Middle Eastern country, So as not to spoil anything, we'll cover the initial story of 'Soap' McTavish.

"Soap" and a group of SAS Soldiers including Captain Price and Gaz, as well as a few un-named troops catch wind of a cargo ship with Estonian serial numbers in the Bering Sea that supposedly contains a nuclear weapon. The Small SAS Squad is then sent to investigate the ship and confirm the presence of a nuclear device. At this point i'd like to outline a very clever point in the start of the story that determines the difficulty the player should be playing at. A wooden construction of the Cargo ship to be stormed is erected in a warehouse at the SAS Training camp you start in, and depending on how quickly you can reach all 6 points while following Captain Price's instructions, the game will determine a recommended difficulty setting for you.

Whilst down in the Cargo Holds, Captain Price recieves news that Hostile MiGs are headed for the cargo ship. Panicked, the squad attempts to flee the ship when the first missle hits. If you've seen any of the E3 footage for the game you may have seen the clip in which the player is on the floor, his vision is orange and blurred when Captain Price helps him up and so famously says "On your feet soldier, We. Are. LEAVING!" which i found particularly amusing. As the ship begins to sink on one side causing the entire vessel to lean awkwardly to one side the SAS Squad manages to get out onto the deck just as the chopper they arrived in (Convieniently) waits on the edge. To really rack up the tension the vessel leans even more as "Soap" gets to the edge, forcing him to make a leap of faith from the ship to the chopper.

This opening sequence left me practically bouncing in my seat for more, i was extremely impressed with how such a complicated plot was mixed so seamlessly with such incredible action and tension, I could go on for ever about how the plot is so brilliantly written but i don't want to spoil anything, so i won't.

Assassin's Creed Review

Assassin's Creed artfully combines the grace and fluidity of Freerunning with the Nitty Gritty business of Assassination. Let's see how it shapes up.

Story
Assassin's Creed is set partly in Modern Day America, but mostly in the Medieval Holy Lands. The transition between them is frankly genius, Imprisoned by a group of rogue scientists from the Abstergo industry, Desmond is made to play out the memories of his Ancestor using a machine known as the Animus. Whilst playing out these memories, the Animus gives Desmond full control of Altair as he begins his mission to assassinate 9 historical figures propigating the Crusades in order to restore peace to the holy lands.

Assassin's Creed has one of the best stories i've seen in a game for a long time, the way everything ties together so well just makes the game so much more immersive and i applaud Ubisoft for their dedication to the story.

The first memory Desmond experiences while playing out the memories of Altair is to retrieve a mysterious artifact from the ruins of Solomon's temple with Malik and his brother Kaddar, However the artifact is also sought after by the Knight's Templar unknown to Altair and his accompanying assassins. We open to a cinematic of Altair driving a blade through the throat of an innocent victim, which is then revealed to us as a breach of the first rule of the Assassin's Creed, this plays a vital role in a key story point shortly afterwards. Altair attempts to engage Robert IV De Sablé, Grand master of the knight's templar in combat rather than using stealth and cunning to gain entry to the temple. Altair's overconfidence soon becomes his downfall and he is easily overpowered by Robert and thrown from the temple, Rocks then collapse over the entrance leaving Malik and Kaddar inside to fight off Robert and numerous other members of the knight's templar.

Defeated and humiliated, Altair returns to the base of operations for the Assassin's Creed and confesses his defeat to the leader of the Creed. Shortly afterwards Malik returns to the base, mutilated and enraged by the loss of his brother he hands over the artifact Altair was supposed to retrieve and explains how Altair's cocky attitude got Kaddar killed and also brings to light Altair's breach of all 3 orders of the creed. Altair is then demoted to an uninititate and stripped of his privileges and equipment, he must then fulfil menial tasks to regain his rank and equipment, piece by piece.

Gameplay
The gameplay style of Assassin's Creed could be descibred as a sandbox style experience. Upon arriving at a city, Altair must locate and enter the Assassin's Buerau and learn who is his target. He must then scower the city for informants and perform the tasks they ask to gain information which will help him kill his target.

At this point, i must outline a criticism i have with the tasks necessary to gain the information. There are only 3 tasks, and these are the same tasks in every city for every information which makes the gameplay become repetitive, the Director's Cut edition of the game added 2 extra methods which are quite fun (Assassinating Guards through the city and Destroying Market Stalls) but it is still a fairly limited experience.

This lack of variety was what made me spend most of my time messing about on the rooftops assassinating guards i happened to come across.

However, the addition of free-running or Parkour makes the experience somewhat unique. I was at first skeptical about how the controls would allow the player to smoothly mix sword fighting, assassination and freerunning, But i was proved wrong, by using 3 seperate "Profiles" the user can Fight, Blend or Freerun in any situation.

Low Profile is the default and allows the player to run or walk through the city, gently pushing citizens to the side in order to not cause a ruckus and doesn't attract much attention from guards.

High Profile is enabled by holding down Shift and allows the player to run through the city barging people out of the way and punching those that won't move such as beggers and leppers. By holding another button (typically Shift) whilst in high profile mode, Altair will simply sprint, this is where freerunning is enabled and as soon as an obstacle such as a wall or a jump is encountered Altair will automatically climb or jump wherever the user wants him to go.

Whilst not sounding particularly exhilirating in a review, it adds an entirely new dimension to the gameplay and becomes immensely addicting when you have the hang of it

Another criticism i have with the game is the AI of the guards and citizens, Crowd Physics is a fantastic idea and it's extremely well implemented into the game, it feels somewhat too easy to trigger an alert though.

Simply walking past a guard will make them suspicious so you have to be careful not to bump into anyone and cause a panic which seems to happen very easily. Whilst out on a horse outside the cities it gets worse though, there'll be no guards for miles and miles; Then suddenly without warning you'll have run into a village at full pelt on your horse and you'll have infinte numbers of guards running towards you ready to make you into mince meat.

There is a way to sneak past guards completely without arousing any suspicion which is the "Blend" option in low profile, doing this reduces your speed to a crawl though which somewhat defeats the purpose of getting on a horse in the first place.

Gameplay - Combat
Sword Fighting is the element of the game that eitheir Made it or Broke it for me. It's challenging and requires the player to be very observant of what's going on around them, as an attack can come from any angle and the player must be ready to deal with it as soon as it happens.

Whilst fighting off 2 or 3, sometimes even 5 or 6 guards can be a pulse pounding experience, Guards will flood to help each other in combat and it's very easy to be completely overwhelmed when you least expect it.

It's quite difficult to decide whether this is a bad design decision or a way of re-inforcing the importance of using stealth, Earlier today though i triggered a guard's paranoia in a secluded alley way and a sword fight ensued. While i managed to dispatch the guard and 3 comrades easily enough, a slew of enemies suddenly appeared round the corner and proceeded to slice me to shreds.

Aesthetics
The game engine allows a powerful computer (or indeed a console) to scale the environment beautifully. There were a few moments in the game after climbing the highest buildings in the cities that were literally stunning, you could see the entire city below you and the occasional guard on a rooftop somewhere below. My current gaming rig has an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor (Detailed specs below), 2GB of High end gaming ram and a 256mb Radeon HD3850. Even at 1280x1024, with high detail on the shadows and anti aliasing (Smoothing to anyone scratching their heads on that one) the game looks absolutely amazing and runs beautifully.

Tech Specs
- Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 @2.86GHz Stable
- 2GB OCZ Gold Edition @ DDR800
- 256MB HIS Radeon HD3850 @ Stock
- Hiper HM580 580W Power Supply
- Hitachi DeskStar 120GB S/ata 2 HDD

Conclusion
Despite a few very minor bad design choices Assassin's Creed is a highly polished and immensely addicting game that almost never loses it's appeal. Even just a 5 minute run around on the rooftops is very entertaining, especially when there's a few guards to deal with. I would highly recommend this to anyone that has the power to run it smoothly.
I would give it an 8/10, The only things letting it down are the Over-sensitive Guard AI and the somewhat limited methods of gathering information, The sword fighting i can excuse as a little caution and patience is all that's needed to avoid being overwhelmed.