Thanks for humoring my midnight release aside . Now onto the good stuff!

Assassin's Creed was my first blockbuster following my beloved Mass Effect. Coming off the high from the latter, I'd say that the action-adventure had a lot to live up to. And I'm still, months later, grappling with how I feel about the first installment.

Here is the first time that I began to get particular about gameplay. Variety is the spice of life, and that ingredient could've been added in my opinion. Jumping from Damascus, Jerusalem, Acre, repeat...sure there is the lab thrown in the mix, but I would have liked more of a sense of that time period with different key cities available to be traipsed through.

Same could be said for the mission types. I could have gone for a setup like this: unlock a weapon/ability, unlock a different way in which to investigate. The easier ones such as scale a tall, tall building come first and eventually culminate into something in line with outright interrogation. Yeah or neigh?

But I fear it is all too easy to take up the role of critic. From a bystander's POV, there was some drag, were some moments of monotony. But even in the life of the assassin, there is order, even if routine~dig for information, go in for the kill, report. So that's where I stand, on the threshold of making complaints, which can be easier to utter than compliments, and wondering where that leaves me. Yes, I have a right to feel what I feel, but if I was in the designer's shoes, who says I could've done better?

Do not misunderstand me, though. AC's triumphs are many. The game really should be (and probably is) credited with blurring the line between good and evil. One's actions may very well be "good" from one viewpoint: do unto others/help others, particularly those less fortunate (like with the twisted doctor mark), yet clash against another: Doc is messing where he shouldn't, is drugging the vulnerable. So, it becomes a question of ethics and a question of perspective.

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Altair's whole questioning of his teacher is really what we are supposed to come away with, I think. Sure, the creed is the law, but in the end, be true to one's own creed and one's own sense of "Right". So many warning signs (blue backdrops...ALL OF THEM), my hooded friend!

And again the treatment of history, with these unnamed (in the history books) as agents of bringing about what we know to be true. Our understanding of the past is a knowledge of key players and results, but not so much the behind the scenes players. Those in shadow. But it can be the actions of small fries that alter that which ends up getting passed down from generation to generation.

Makes me wish I went in with more knowledge of the Crusades!