I Never Played It – Assassin’s Creed

I have a shocking true-life confession. I never played Assassin’s Creed.  Look, I WANT to have played it, but the truth is… I just never got around to trying any of the games in this massively-successful franchise.

Don’t you judge me!  Developers are making great games at a rate faster than any single person can play them all, and every gamer has at least one classic game that they just never found the time for.  I keep up on the development of hot new games, and try to get in a little time with all of them, but I heard mixed responses to the first Assassin’s Creed, and when the second one started getting such great press I wanted to make sure that I had played the first before trying out the sequel.  Of course Ubisoft is cranking them out so fast that the third one, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood was already on shelves before I could grab the others.


One of the things that kept me away from the series in the first place was my fierce aversion to The Davinci Code, and anything remotely related to it.  Assassin’s Creed had the misfortune of appearing about a year after the film adaptation of that hated book, and I shrugged it off as an attempt to cash in on a stupid concept.  The game’s premise of using a memory machine to unravel secrets of the Renaissance just sounded a little too close to a shameless Dan Brown tie in.  Perhaps I’m just making a crazy connection between two unrelated events (Much like Mr. Brown), but since I haven’t actually played the games for more than a few minutes, I’ll just assume I’m right. 

Then there’s that whole concept of a device that lets people relive the "Genetic Memories" of their ancestors…  I’m no geneticist, but I’m pretty sure that DNA doesn’t work that way.  Even in the distant future of 2012 when the game is set.  I don’t think we’ll have that sort of tech in the next six months.


Of course, as a red-blooded American Yankee Joe, I wasn’t too thrilled about the notion of playing as a member of the Secret Order of Hashshashin; the actual real-life Secret Society that spawned the word Assassin.  They were the bad guys during the Crusades (Depending on who you ask), and when a developer asks me to play as one, it’s a lot like marketing a GI Joe game in Palestine.

Still, the Assassin’s Creed games sure seem like a heck of a lot of fun.  I hear my coworkers bragging about their status in some sort of multiplayer thingy the latest game appears to have.  They’re certainly having a ball assassinating somethin’ er other.  The few minutes of hands-on I’ve had were enjoyable and all of the screenshots and videos I see make me wish I’d been in on this series right from the start.

Now, with a fourth game on its way I find myself facing the task of squeezing a trilogy of old games into my already packed gaming schedule before Assassin’s Creed Revelations appears this Fall.  Yet I must erase the stain of shame that mars my honor over this, and regain my Nerd Cred by playing them all.