This is going to be a long one; you've been warned.
Assassin's Creed was one of those games that immediately grabbed my attention when I first saw the trailer. It had atmosphere, texture, mythology, and a musical score that was wonderfully dramatic. I didn't own a Playstation 3, but my roommate at the time did, and together we dove into the Animus to discover the secrets of the Templars and Assassins. And we both loved the game, but there were also some obvious problems with the game's free-running system. Occasionally Altair would run into a hot spot that would send him sailing off a ledge into oblivion rather than into the much less lethal haystack; or perhaps worse, into the haystack rather than up to the next handhold.
That was six years ago. Ubisoft has released six more Assassin's Creed titles, and although each game is set in the same universe and the mechanics are largely the same, there are elements that have evolved, grown, or disappeared altogether since AC1.
I had the bizarre notion last year to play as many of them as I could, as quickly as possible. I made it through Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood, Revelations, and III. What you are about to read is the product of that experience.
You'll notice that Assassin's Creed III is rarely mentioned. I'll explain why in more detail in a later piece if I have time; in many important ways, AC3 doesn't play like an Assassin's Creed game.
On my desk I have six pages of Assassin's Creed notes. I'm going to distill them down as much as possible, to talk about the changes that were made between each game, why they worked, where they failed, and how they could have been done better.
