Assassin’s Creed – usability / user experience review

How is it that a game can receive a wide range of review scores? A mediocre six seems light-years away from a stellar nine, however this is the range of scores that were awarded to Assassin’s Creed. After playing AC on and off for a few weeks now, there are times when I would have rated the game at either of these scores.  For me, AC would have been a solid 9 had it not been for the problems associated with its controls (input) and feedback (output).

Shrink wrap

I unwrapped the game whilst a friend was over, so I let him try it first while I observed.  He had difficulty with one of the tutorials where the aim was to move through a crowd by pushing them gently out of the way.  In AC, the UI provides visual feedback on which buttons on the controller are being pushed, so although he could see he was pushing the right buttons, he was still failing the tutorial. It turns out that the user has to hold down the hold button during the entire duration they want this feature, essentially, you go into a state.  However this goes against the experience of games players, where our history has taught us that whenever we want an action, we push the button to activate it.  AC uses both these ’states’ and the usual interactive actions throughout the game, however, a better explanation could have been used in the tutorial to explain this.

The tutorial section was also rather long, my friend never got to see the real game before he had left.  Would it not have been possible to introduce the player to the controls from the very start?  I don’t want to be taught how to play a game, I want to learn by doing it.

Second Impressions

After my friend had left, I didn’t play AC for a few days.  I was put off by the tutorial and the first introduction level to the game which was quite dull, I had other things to play and this was likely to end up on eBay.  Thankfully however, I did play the game again and I’m (more or less) glad I did. Once past the introductory levels, the game starts in ernest and it is much different that initial perceptions.  Both the graphics and audio are stunning (PS3 version for reference), I found myself just walking around to listen to the snippets of conversation from the townspeople.  Were these conversations important, was I picking up extra clues?  I didn’t know, and that was a good feeling, it made me feel immersed in the world and made me more willing to explore the cities.  The movement of the character is incredible, free flowing, natural, detailed, and easy to control.  The free-running ability is the main feature of AC and again, this is operated by entering a ’state’.  At first I thought this was not the right approach, but considering the alternatives such as tapping a controller button every time you wanted to jump or climb, I think the state approach is definitely the way to go.

Feedback

However, despite offing amazing scenery, and free roaming gameplay, I have eventually stopped playing the game even though I’m only 1/3 of the way through.  Essentially the plot of AC is to find and assassinate nine people, however after finding the third, the compass stops working.  I tried everything, I completed all side missions, went back to all other places I’d been, wandered around for hours looking for something that I’d missed.  Nothing.  I genuinely thought that there was a bug in the game, so I went online to see if anyone else had a similar problem.  Almost everyone else who bought the game it seems has this problem. Why did the feedback stop?  Why not give the player some clue that the methods they had been using up until now were no longer useful?  It turns out the player has to look and listen for subtle clues, so an element of the game that I liked before had now turned into an annoying gameplay trait.

From a usability perspective, I think Ubisoft have messed up here.  With so many people finding this part of the game annoying, I’m sure they could have controlled the difficulty transition in the game much better than this.

Controls

There are other feedback / control issues also.  While each level loads, Altair (the main character) is seen against a blue background.  When I first saw this, I thought I had to do something, find an exit etc, but no, it serves no purpose. This really does seems like a wasted opportunity to provide engagement with the user.  Some of the controls are incredibly difficult also, using blend mode and trying to look around causes the fingers of my right hand to play world-class Twister.

The side missions can be quite interesting, and one which I thought was quite innovative was eavesdropping.  To activate this you sit on a bench and look at the people you want to listen to.  However, once you look at the people you have to enter another mode, and it’s this last step that I kept forgetting.  My mind was on sitting down and looking in the direction of the people I want to listen to, this final step of ‘turning my ears on’, just wasn’t part of my model.

Pace

Time spend roaming the streets and assassinating people is punctuated with periods which are set in a modern day lab.  These interruptions completely upset the pace of the game and introduce boredom and frustration.  I’m told they’re part of a huge plot twist in the game, shame I’ll never finish it to find out.

Scoring

Overall, I think AC is a good game, but it could have been stunning. There are too many aspects of the game which are frustrating (moving between cities) or repetitive (missions).

I would find it difficult to put a single score on AC.  It has elements of greatness which are marred too often with control / feedback issues.  So even though I’ve enjoyed it, I have also been sufficiently put off to not continue with the rest of the game.