The highly-touted "free climbing" control system is also very satisfying...when it works to your liking. The thing about Assassin's Creed's controls is that they are complex in their simplicity. In order to perform almost any maneuver in the game, all you have to do is hold down both the right trigger and the A button and run. That's it! Simple, right? Well, yes and no. Since we've been trained as gamers to use a jump button for everything we do, it's bizarre to play an action game where such an option does not exist (The Legend of Zelda notwithstanding). Contextual button pressing will take some time to get used to, but when it works, it works really well. And because the animation is so amazing, it really is a treat to watch Altaïr scale buildings with ease. But once the game applies the pressure and sics a slew of guards on your ass, things aren't so simple. Instead of going at your own pace, you are instead forced to hop around frantically searching for a hiding spot, and this means making many, many mistakes. Or at least I did, and it was mighty frustrating -- you really have to learn to love the controls.
Though I'm focusing on a lot of Assassin's Creed's faults, this doesn't mean I didn't enjoy playing the game -- it attempts a lot of ambitious things and it almost succeeds at every one. But it's apparent that these grandiose ideas may have been a little too much to master the first go-round. But hey, at least the groundwork is laid for a killer sequel -- right, Ubisoft?