Assassin’s Creed, one of THE premiere game releases for the Xmas season is soon to be released in New Zealand. But of course, we had to get our hands on code before the release so we could get the juiciness out to you, our loyal and hungry readers as soon as possible. As you read this, the game might actually already be released. But that’s okay. We won’t be following in the footsteps of one US gaming website and spoil the entire game for you by revealing everything in the first paragraph. We’re much too classy for that ?

Assassin’s Creed is the story of Altair, who is an assassin. The game is set in the Middle Eastern cities of Damascus and Jerusalem. You play the assassin Altair and your mission is to well, assassinate and kill lots and lots of people. There is a lot more to the game than just the killing and the assassinating and the acrobatic jumping from rooftop to rooftop, Prince of Persia style. But as noted above, we don’t want to give away any of the juicy secrets of the game. What we will tell you is that everything in this game will surprise you.

The code that we played was not final code. There were a few bugs and of course, the storyline is incomplete. Altair is an awesome character to play and being an assassin means you’re pretty nimble on your feet. He’s also an exceptional fighter, trained in various weapons and assassination techniques. Movement in the game is vital to Altair’s survival. You have to be able to manoeuvre Altair around any situation whether that means running or jumping your way around multiple enemies or just killing them the old fashioned way; with a knife or sword.

As an assassin, Altair also has some special abilities you can play with. You’ll get to use these at different times in the game and you’ll need them. It seems that Altair is not a very popular guy and even with the ability to blend into his surroundings, there is always going to be someone wanting his head on a stick. Thankfully, there’s an ‘Aggro’ meter on the top left hand side of the screen which tells you when you’re likely to have to act (when the meter is flashing red, it means get ready to rumble, literally). The movement in the game is controlled by the left thumb stick and the right thumb stick controls the camera angles. The camera angles give you full movement which is awesome as there is so much to see in this expansive world.

Interaction with other characters in the game is also a huge draw-card in Assassin’s Creed. As the game is classified as an RPG, you’d expect the interactions with other characters to be one of the most refined aspects of the game and from what I’ve seen, the developers have done an exceptional job in this area.

Although I only managed to see a snippet of the game through the preview code, even with the bugs it’s enough to keep me satisfied that the end product will be everything it has been hyped up to be. My personal recommendation would be not to miss out on this game if you enjoy role-playing games, strong characters, exceptional NPC interaction, expansive and immersive environments and kick ass visuals, sound and gameplay.

Assassin’s Creed releases 23rd of November here in New Zealand for the Xbox 360, PC and PS3 platforms.