Assassin's Creed PC

Introduction

Most people don't like leftovers. A second round of heating can result in overcooked foods that are dry and/or tough. There's nothing worse than a high-quality filet mignon that's been overcooked. However, not all leftovers are bad, and some foods can even taste better the second time around as flavors are allowed to mix and mingle another night in the refrigerator.

If you'll pardon the terrible analogy, the same can be said of video games that are ported from one system to another. A half-baked port can leave users wondering why the developers even bothered to make the effort. Halo, Halo 2 anyone? But sometimes you get a game that translates well to another platform, and with a few enhancements and upgrades it can even surpass the source material. Perhaps more importantly, plenty of people don't have access to all the various gaming platforms; if someone missed a game on the original platform it might just be worth checking out the ported product.

Today we'll be looking at Assassin's Creed (AC for short) for the PC, a port of a game that launched over six months ago on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Reviews were decidedly mixed on the console version, with some publications declaring it one of the best games of the year and others labeling it as merely okay. As usual, what you actually think of the game will depend a lot on what you're looking for, and there are certain to be users that will love this game and others that will hate it. We'll discuss the gameplay and the pros and cons of the game momentarily.

One of the other interesting tidbits about the PC port of AC is that it's one of the first titles to launch with support for DirectX 10.1... sort of. Version 1.0 does indeed support DirectX 10.1 features, but Ubisoft decided to remove this functionality in the 1.02 patch. Whether it will make a return in the future is unclear, but signs point to "no". Given that we're late to the game in terms of reviewing AC, we are going to spend a decent chunk of this review looking at the technology side of the equation and what it means to gamers.