Game Review: Assassin's Creed Altair's Chronicles Free

Assassin's Creed Altair's Chronicles Free by Gameloft

Run Altair run!

In Assassin's Creed you play the assassin Altair (go figure). In the demo you get to master the movement skills, as well as some combat. It's all fairly simple so you should be climbing walls and gutting foes in no time!

The game looks great, a hell of a lot better than the Nintendo DS version. I might even go a step further and say that it controls better than the DS version as well. The demo is fun, and Gameloft gives you just enough of a taste to make you crave it.

The opening movie for the demo (and the full version too, I'd assume) is straight out of the PS3/Xbox 360 version of the game, which looks awesome. Just like in the console version you can climb up onto roof tops and other high places and skulk through the dark looking for your next victim.

The controls are very straight forward. You have a virtual d-pad on the left side of the screen while the right side is reserved for jumping, and heavy and light attacks.

But hold up! You can't just start slicing people up, no no no, first you'll need to get a sword. Luckily for you Templars have just slaughtered a village nearby and one of the village guards (mortally injured) gives you his sword, and asks that you avenge the slaughtered villagers, and guards.

You get a bit of practice avoiding traps, jumping from ledge to ledge, as well as a making short work of a few Templars, before the demo ends. This was a ton of fun, but not really enough to justify paying $4.99 for the full version (for me at least… I've played through the game on the DS already).

Sword play

The good: Great graphics, sounds, music, and voice acting. The controls handle excellently, and the game runs very well.

The bad: Somewhat short, I suppose to lure you into coughing up the $4.99 for the full version.

The breakdown: This was a really fun game, I really enjoyed it a lot more on the iPhone rather than the DS, but unfortunately that's not enough of an incentive to buy it. I would encourage those who enjoyed the demo to buy the full version because the game is quite good. I might be just biased due to the fact that I already own it on the DS. All in all a solid 4.5/5