During The Gathering 07 on Saturday the 25th September we managed to get some hands on time with Ubisoft’s forthcoming game, Assassin’s Creed and we have to say that from our limited time with the game, it really is the next gen gem that we had been hoping for.

The demo we played had you starting off on top of a roof with spectacular views all around you, looking down below you could see all the people of the city going about their daily business and on further inspection, a cart full of hay, now you might have heard about a little thing in the game called the leap of faith, which has you swan diving from the top of the building into the hay below, well if done correctly at least. Attempting the leap of faith move for the first time will have your jaw dropping to the floor.

The controls are quite simple, but take a while to get used to. To control your characters basic movements such as fighting, running etc you use the buttons, combining the A button (which controls your movement) along with the right trigger allows you to access the free run mode. In free run you can perform some great moves, like scaling up just about any building you want, all you need to do is head for the building of your choice while using free run and your character will usually find his way up to the top, if you get stuck you can usually just scale around the ledge until you find another way up, it really is quite spectacular and very easy to use.

Once your character makes his way onto the streets you soon notice that they are crowded with merchants, thugs and other people who are going about their daily business. The way your treat these citizens is met with different reactions, for example, as we were running along we accidentally hit a lady who was wandering through the street, this caused a reaction in the crowd which caused some to flee and one person to attack us, luckily we managed to deal with him ok, but still you better be careful.

Of course the whole point of Assassin’s Creed is to be an Assassin, you are given certain targets that you must take out and you are aided in finding these people by the press of a button, which in turn brings up a flashing light that points out your enemies. When fighting your enemies you have a few options to make things a little easier, one of which is a parry move, the way this works is that you press the right trigger, which in turn enables your character to parry any move made against him and counter it with lightning precision. Another great thing about combat is that you have a choice of weapons, these range from a sword to your assassin’s knife, however you can also throw knifes which comes in very handy.

Graphically Assassin’s Creed is probably one of the most unique games we have ever seen, it has a very artistic feel to it, everything is drawn so beautifully and you can interact with the environment easily by being able to climb up practically any building you see, probably one of the best feelings about the game is that you can go anywhere and do anything you want to, we just can’t wait to see the full version when it is released in November.