I love this game, it gives the best escape from the real world one can find (IMHO) You can spend the rest of your life playing this game and never see every world to visit, and that is just awesome...
Having had this one for a while, I was not able to really get into it due to sub par systems mainly my GT1030 4GB, having solved that now with a GTX 1660 Ti OC 6GB DDR6 and it is fantastic. I love the game, the cinematic style of the story line is impressive, though the 1st person over 3rd person gameplay is not as immersively brilliant as the Devs think, but only because of the detailed character creation and then very little oppurtunity to see it in game. everything else is awesome!
Having played this back on my trusty C64, I am thrilled to see that Clive Townsend returned to help bring his masterpiece back to life, 33 years later. not only do we not have to mess around with emulators or aging faulty original home computers, (I still have my C64) we can play on a modern PC, with new content added to the original, the various graphics modes is awesome for those of us who remember the game from back in the day, this is the way all remasters should be done. and for some of us we can see what it was like on other platforms. Brilliant! it comes with an accurate look and feel for a modern version of an old game and that is hard to come by, and for a mere $12au price tag it is a real bargain. I remember paying $35au back in the day and that was a lot of money to us teens 33 years ago. Well worth though, and at today's price, even more so.
this is where the franchise started for me and remains the jewel in the crown of the franchise, sure they added much in other installments of the franchise, but focus here is the game got it right from day one, an open world stealth game, it does have world limits but you rarely see them, the game being first of its name, focusses on a more simple ideal, you play Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad the hero of the entire franchise and sadly only in this chapter, though the story links between games very well. Altaïr performs all the tasks the other games show, that make this series what it is. well written story, the arc links well and seamlessly. personally I miss playing Altaïr, and the era he was in, Ezio was great, but for me they over used him. everything that makes Assassin's Creed the epic game series that it is, is right here in this game, anything else is icing on the cake. why people love AC2 and seem to hate this one is beyond me, they are both fantastic, and I really do not care because simply this is the start of it all and it was done right in the first place.
This game, is in it's own right, brilliant, but suffered in the polls, and in one way rightly so, as many fans of Far Cry expected a continuation of the story, instead we got one of the best 1st person war shooters there has been for single play experience, the game is slower than the 1st in the franchise passing on the arcade style flash bang instant action that comes with most games, instead going with the RPG experience offering a more realistic example of driving in the environment and with encounters. one of the best things in this game for me is flushing out the enemy mercenaries and bandits by setting fire to the grass they are all hiding in. The Driving is better than in the first game but still needed work in my opinion, overall this game is far better than the reviews it usually gets, mostly I think because those reviews are by people who prefer the fast paced action genre rather than the think first action games as this one is. It should not be overlooked based on other people reviews, especially at the price it goes for now, it still plays better than many of the newer titles out there. a raw gem stone that should you play through it will sparkle like a well cut diamond by the end.
While the original edition might not be the game to end all games, this is the best way for a game to live on, credit to GOG and Blizzard for making a grand effort to keep this old game alive and well. updated to modern machines yet still plays as it was intended on the original platforms, perhaps even better than it did. and at A$.13.79 (US$10) it really is a good price for what you get. this is no bargain bin special, this is the old game remastered for the new age. Well worth the money and well worth the wait we fans have had since our old PC's died and we could not play anymore.
I own the originals of these and to see them here means I no longer have to worry about the originals failing on me, the games are terrific adventures, the graphics are of course dated, we are talking about the era of Intel 486 CPU's here, and VGA video cards with 128kb of VRAM, if you were lucky. as some reviews mentioned there is no automapping so you need to map it on graph paper yourself as we did back in the day, I guess if you can't live without the PC doing it all for you, then you will have to miss out on this fantastic series of games. and yes as the others have no doubt already said, #3 was not the best one of the bunch and has some issues, but it is still fun to play.
