Review: Assassins Creed (xbox 360)

I've decided to make this easy for you. Sectionalized and everything. Yes, "sectionalized" just became a word.
Genreal Premise: You are Desmond, and your DNA holds the story of your ancestor, Altair. You travel through Altair's story (he's an assassin) and deliminate 9 targets, leading up to an exciting conclusion (I'm spoiler free, if you want a more detailed [anything] just let me know and I'll fill you in).

Story: BRILLIANT, combines modern day "things" (dates, global warming, drawings of the Nazca lines which are a lot of lines (in Peru) that, when viewed from above, are actually giant animals. Here's a website with everything explained in depth *SPOILERS*: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=175552). The story is intricate and involves the future and the past in a very intwined way.

Controls: Fairly simple: D-pad selects your weapon of choice. High and low profile selects your movement. If I tried to explain it, it would be a few paragraphs, instead I'll let you know that it is very easy to use, although at times Altair jumps (for example) when you didn't intend for him to, or in the wrong direction. Although that doesn't happen very frequently. I fell confident that anyone who has played another xbox 360 game before will be able to learn the controls fast, and master them in 30 minutes to an hour. Most of the game you will be running over roofs parkour style (jumping from one edge of a roof and grabbing on the ledge of another, pulling yourself up, and running around in near impossible ways in general).

Graphics: Stunning! The cities are very large, and all the buildings give it a real feel. The thousands of people walking the streets also gives you a sense of really being in the game.

Gameplay: Here is where the main fault of the game lies (unfortunetly). The premise is great. You pickpocket, eavesdrop, interrogate, or perform deeds in order to find out about your target. Using the information you learned, you stealthily assassinate them, and flee without being seen. In reality, in order to use your information (like the lcoation of gaurds) you have to go through multiple screens many times, and remember the location of all 12 of them. Also, you perform the same 6 tasks for ever assassination, for 9 assassinations. It gets real old, real fast. Another major problem is that while the cities are very expansive, they could be 1/3 of the size and still work just as well, since you only use 1/3 of the city at a time and everything else is filler, as you run right past it to your objective. Here is every complain in full, if you want to read them all (http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/11/review-why-assa.html). While it is possible to "correctly" play the game, it takes MUCH more time.

The "Kid angle": Rated M by the ESRB. There is a lot of blood with the sword fights HOWEVER it can be turned of in the options menu. The game IS focused around killing people however, so don't expect there to be rainbows. As I will say time and time again, think about your kid and what his friends play. If all his friends have the game, he's seeing this anyways. If anything get the games so he gets bored of it and wants to play something outside. Very minimal swears. There are a few graphic scenes (legs get broken) but its more the sound than the sight (they just go the wrong way past the knees).

Overall: This game is about $20 right now, which is a bargain for videogames these days. You could rent it and play it hardcore for 2-3 days and finish it (that's what I did) don't expect to get all the flags though. Here's the link to Amazon to purchase Assassins Creed for yourself. I would really recommend just renting the game however, seeing as once you finish it there's nothing else to do.