It's always great to see new intellectual property in the gaming market - additions to long standing series are fine, but when a new name with new characters and new ideas comes along it's good for the industry and good for the gamer. Perhaps the most hyped and anticipated of the newly created gaming IP's for 2007 has been Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed, promising gamers a 'never before seen' type of experience in the shoes of a deadly ancient Assassin, which is a welcome shift from today's overriding focus on modern shooters. This much touted title is now available and while some of the pre-release expectations are met in full force, other aspects of the game don't manage to deliver quite as well.

Set in the year 1191 AD, Assassin's Creed tells the story of a dedicated group of assassins trying to squash the hostilities between the Christian Europeans and Muslim occupiers of the Holy Land during the Third Crusade. It is the Creed's duty to try and create peace amongst the people by all means necessary, which includes assassinating corrupt leaders and influential figures fueling the Crusade's war path. Controlling the character Altair - a highly skilled assassin but also one who can't help but think for himself - you must reaffirm your loyalty to the Creed and what it stands for through the elimination of nine key figures in the Third Crusade's cause on both sides of the conflict across various cities and locations spanning the Holy Land.

This is not the full story, however. In fact, when you're playing as the character Altair there is a major twist in the very reason why you're even controlling this guy that you wouldn't have seen coming a mile away and it adds another layer of depth to what would have already been a rich and engrossing storyline. Without acting the spoiler, it involves the shifting of time back and forth (although there is no time travel directly involved), the introduction of a secondary main character, and, believe it or not, the shady world of aspiring global domination by a multi billion dollar corporation.

Even though the sections of the game which are focused on Altair and his 1191 AD world are not the only point in time this game covers, this is where Assassin's Creed spends the vast majority of its storyline and hence gameplay. Being a single player only game, the storyline is of huge importance to keep you going and it does a great job of telling a rather interesting and unique story that makes you want to keep playing. Even though the game is obviously based on real world history to an extent, the story focuses more on a character to character level rather than a grand scale level so Assassin's Creed is not a game which will be spoiled in any way by knowing how history actually played out.

There are three major locations or cities that Altair will find himself not including the Creed's home base, which is known as 'Masyaf'. These cities are Acre, Damascus and Jerusalem, which of course attest to the real world history aspects of the game. While these cities obviously look quite similar on a street level, they each have their own characteristics not to mention a crap load of room and detail in what has to be at least very close to realistically scaled sizes, although initially you will only be able to access a portion of each cities ,or more specifically a district, which there are three of - poor, middle and rich. Of course, the visual and social differences between the three are also quite apparent.

To get a good view of the cities you need to get up high, and this involves utilizing the game's climbing gameplay so you can ascend structures known as 'view points'. Once on top of a view point, you can 'synchronize' the view with the game's GPS map system (not exactly 1191 AD authentic but hey, it was kinda' necessary I guess), which unlocks detail on your map for the immediate area, including where missions are and so forth. There are quite a lot of view points in any given district let alone city and while it is not necessary to climb every single one of them you still have to ascend quite a few to unlock enough details of the city on the GPS. The good news is despite being reasonably simple, climbing view points never seems to come off as tedious or annoying like you may expect.

Unfortunately, the same can not be said for all aspects of the gameplay. Assassin's Creed is presented very nicely and the storyline keeps you interesting from start to finish, but a lot of the gameplay on offer is really quite disappointing. Despite the open nature of the environments, what you will actually be doing in these environments is rather formulated. You see, before you can assassinate any one of your targets you must learn about his ways and construct a game-plan so to speak, and this is done by taking to the streets and investigating. This seems rather cool when worded like that, but what you're actually doing is simply going to a few preset locations on the map to conduct one of the game's inbuilt tasks, which range from helping a fellow Creed member get rid of a few guards which saw his face before he gives you information, to pick pocketing, eavesdropping or intimidating those with knowledge.

The problem is, these almost mini-game like objectives get ultra repetitive in a very short period of time. There are only a few on offer and for any given assassination attempt you will be doing at least a few of the same ones over and over again. For a game that seems so open and dynamic on first impression, this style of gameplay is very restrictive, not lending itself to the strengths of the game at all really. What's worse is the actual assassination attempts themselves which you can attempt after collecting enough information are not much better, as they seem to follow distinct patterns creating a repetition of their own. In fairness there will be opportunities for you to try out different stuff while attempting certain assassinations but most of the time you're just waiting for the cut scene setting up the scenario to end so you can race up and plant your knife in the target's back, and even when other options are offered, they tend to come off as obvious attempts by the game to suggest trying a different tactic which isn't overly rewarding.