Assassin's Creed Thoughts - Not Repetitive to Me

I rented Assassin's Creed from Gamefly and have been playing it quite a bit over the last week or so (I got more time with it because of the XBL outages).  I wasn't eagerly anticipating this game pre-launch.  While it certainly looked impressive, it was just released too close to CoD4, which I was eagerly anticipating.  I read about 7-10 reviews about the game in the weeks following its launch and the one consistent theme was that the game had the ability to grab ahold of you early, but that it became very repetitive by the last half to quarter of the game.  So, when I received my copy in the mail (finally - it was #1 on my Que since its launch), I went into the game with tempered expectations.

I haven't quite finished the game yet, I am about to hit the 7th assassination target of the 9 and I have really enjoyed the game so far.  Part of that is due to lower expectations based on the reviews.  But, the biggest part is that I anticipated that the game would become repetitive and have varied my approach to the game almost level to level and, as a result, I haven't found it any more repetitive than most other games that I play.  What I mean by varying my approach is that I have accomplished assassinations by being stealthy, by fighting off all of the guards, or by simply charging in to hit the target before the guards can react.  I have done most of the investigations tied to a particular assassination and I have done the minimum.  The complaints about the repetitiveness of this game remind me of those same complaints being made about Crackdown.  A few reviews for Crackdown complained that it was repetitive in that you could simply use the same strategy on every boss and it would work every time.  This is generally true of any sandbox type game.  Easy solution to this "problem" is to vary your approach, challenge yourself to accomplish the goal in a different way, and the game won't become repetitive.  I also do a lot of stupid crap that I enjoy doing, even though it isn't within the concept envisioned by Ubisoft (I get a tremendous satisfaction from assassinating beggars and those jackasses that hit for you no apparent reason, but one of my favorite aspects of the game is the chases).  The game's setting is absolutely gorgeous, I like that after you initially travel to each city that you can subsequently skip from Massayf directly to the desired city without having to go through the Kingdom (which would have been tedious as hell), and I LOVE the Leap of Faith.

The only real knock that I have on the game right now is that the combat is too easy.  However, that has a lot to do with the fact that I won't vary my combat approach (the counter attack is SO effective), so, consistent with my analysis above, that is a knock on me as a gamer more than a knock on the game itself.

So, if you haven't played Assassin's Creed yet, you probably haven't put unreasonable expectations on the game.  If you commit to varying your approach as you play, I think that you will have a lot of fun with this title.