assassin's creed, check!

let me get this out of the way at the beginning because i really only have one nice thing to say about this game. the visuals are great. ass creed looks fantastic. the city detail and building detail is beautiful, the lighting is nice, and the characters are well designed. now for the rest...

game play:
drags on and on, and as dude? said, when you've finished the 1st level, you've played the whole game. there's simply no variation. what ass creed wants you to do is sneak around from rooftop to rooftop (something mirror's edge did soooo much better) which is clumsy at best, climb up to the top of buildings to view the city. although it is beautiful, it gets old pretty quick. the fighting in the game is terribly boring. there are some really cool animations when you kill someone, but, this too gets really old, really quick. the fighting is very frustrating because the best course of action is to just wait for the opponent to attack and then counter, over and over. being proactive is a waste of time seeing as the opponent will block every single attack you throw at them... ahhhhh! bosses are no more difficult to kill than a regular character, they just have a bunch more people surrounding them that get in your way. it's all together frustrating. the worst single aspect of the
game is the crazy bums and beggar ladies that constantly get in your way. the bums push you and the ladies stand in your way and follow you around. it's needless. i hate it.story:
to be honest, i don't remember. i stopped paying attention after the first couple cut scenes. oh god, the cut scenes are loooong, booooring, and freeeequent! ahhhhh! i got to the point of taking bathroom breaks during the cut scenes becuse i didn't need to understand the story to progress in the game at all. the story was boring, and convoluted. forgettable.
there is a 2nd ass creed in the works and I'm not sure what it's gonna be like. if the game play questions are fixed, the cut scenes are shortened and the graphics are equal i might be willing to give it another shot. i think the next one will be taking place in Japan or China because of clues at the end of the 1st one. it might make for an interesting dynamic and might cut down on the crazy Templar based confusing (stupid) story crap.
score:
a bucket of ice cold water to wake them up.