Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles Review
A Journalistic Review by DefiantParrot
*Warning: Contains Spoilers*
Originally Written: 01/06/2019
Developer: Gameloft Bucharest
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: Nintendo DS
Genre: Platformer, Stealth
Release: February 5, 2008
Holy shit this game sucks.
I mentioned before that Altair was my favorite Assassin, from the AC series, this game really makes me rethink that.
Anyway Altair's Chronicles, was a game that always eluded me, I never heard anyone talk about it. It was a mobile game that I think was originally going to be a straight up portable version of the console game, but overtime became something else. What it became was complete and total rubbish.
Set sometime before the events of the console game, Altair and the assassins are on the look for The Chalice. An artifact the Templars are seeking to take over the world, and it turns out to be a woman that Altair seemingly knows.
Yeah I'm gonna jump way ahead here but the Chalice is a woman called Adha, she IS the artifact they seek.
How? Why?
If she's so powerful and needs to be hidden how the hell does she and Altair know each other? Shouldn't she have stayed hidden, and if she didn't need to, did she always know she was The Chalice? Fuck this is stupid.
Anyway sorry let's go back again.
The templars led by Lord Basilisk a mountain of a man who I guarantee had absolutely no ties to House Slytherin is leading the Templars against Altair.
The gameplay of Altair's Chronicles attempts to bring the main game into a handheld format and fails spectacularly. The game tries to be 3D and yet has the camera of a 2D game, this isn't true 2.5D if it was it would control better.
I missed countless platforms, by falling short or leaping over them like a fucking idiot because it's hard to judge the distance between yourself and the platforms the game wants you to jump on. It doesn't help that the climbing controls are absolute ass.
It attempts to have the same controls for climbing as before, but either the game won't read what your wanting your table-clothed assassin to do, or it'll be so fucking picky that you'll fall to your death.
The game doesn't look very good either, hell the mobile phone version looks better than it does here, the DS wasn't a very powerful system I'm aware but it could do much better than this.
Many of the character models in the game are recycled over and over with only Basilisk and Adha being completely unique. There were times I lost track of Altair when near other assassins.
Even if the controls were fine tuned and the game looked brilliant the gameplay here is extremely repetitive.
Platform here, combat here, stealth here, pickpocket here rinse and repeat. The main games have these same problems too I'm aware, but here they were much more prevalent. Maybe it's because I tried to marathon this game and get it finished as quickly as possible, but fuck did these drive me up a wall after two hours of it.
Oh yeah pickpocketing is here too, as well as interrogating certain enemies. This game is on the DS after all so it attempts to make use of the touch screen by giving you mini-games to complete these objectives.
For pickpocketing you must clear the darkness from the bottom screen so you can drag the key or what be it from their pocket without bumping into other objects. For interrogating you must press the corresponding buttons in time. Holy fuck they're quick-time events!!
More laughable than those is blowing into the microphone. There wil be times that you come across a chest covered in sand and you can blow into your microphone to clear it away and open the chest. I only came across two my entire playthrough, mind you I wasn't really looking for them but still these are so infrequent I wonder why they bothered.
I could say that for all of these mini-games though to be fair. Sometimes it feels like they forgot about them and tried to shoehorn them in where they could.
Inside those chests that you may unlock are most likely orbs, these are all around the game and once gathered can upgrade Altair, from his health to his sword.
The upgrade system is the only thing I'll slightly praise in this game in that it fucking works, collecting these orbs is not difficult and the upgrades work, you even get new swords as you upgrade Altair's damage output. That's cool now if only it was fun to use.
On top of the repetitive gameplay, forgetful gimmicks, poor graphics and terrible controls this game drops frames like an abusive alcoholic drops women. This fucking game would stutter and damn near crash from transitioning from one screen to the next, when there were a lot of enemies on screen. instances like that led to so much stuttering I could barely take it.
Holy shit this gave me a headache, I don't usually bitch about framerates and such I don't give a damn if a game is running at thirty frames per second or sixty as long as it's consistent. This game was shaking and stuttering and losing it's mind more than Michael J. Fox operating a jackhammer, it's fucking ridiculous.
Oh and the music is forgetful, as in I damn near forgot to mention it. So...
There aren't many boss fights in this game hell Lord Basilisk is repeated three times and each time it's a goddamn QTE are you kidding me?!
Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles receives my Order of Execution.
This game should be put through a goddamn wood chipper, it's boring, annoying to play, painful to look at. I'm just so done with Altair at this point is it too late to join the Ezio bandwagon?
*Warning: Contains Spoilers*
Originally Written: 01/06/2019
 |
| Oh god what did they do to you? |
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: Nintendo DS
Genre: Platformer, Stealth
Release: February 5, 2008
Holy shit this game sucks.
I mentioned before that Altair was my favorite Assassin, from the AC series, this game really makes me rethink that.
Anyway Altair's Chronicles, was a game that always eluded me, I never heard anyone talk about it. It was a mobile game that I think was originally going to be a straight up portable version of the console game, but overtime became something else. What it became was complete and total rubbish.
Set sometime before the events of the console game, Altair and the assassins are on the look for The Chalice. An artifact the Templars are seeking to take over the world, and it turns out to be a woman that Altair seemingly knows.
 |
| The dumbest artifact in the history of artifacts |
How? Why?
If she's so powerful and needs to be hidden how the hell does she and Altair know each other? Shouldn't she have stayed hidden, and if she didn't need to, did she always know she was The Chalice? Fuck this is stupid.
Anyway sorry let's go back again.
The templars led by Lord Basilisk a mountain of a man who I guarantee had absolutely no ties to House Slytherin is leading the Templars against Altair.
The gameplay of Altair's Chronicles attempts to bring the main game into a handheld format and fails spectacularly. The game tries to be 3D and yet has the camera of a 2D game, this isn't true 2.5D if it was it would control better.
I missed countless platforms, by falling short or leaping over them like a fucking idiot because it's hard to judge the distance between yourself and the platforms the game wants you to jump on. It doesn't help that the climbing controls are absolute ass.
It attempts to have the same controls for climbing as before, but either the game won't read what your wanting your table-clothed assassin to do, or it'll be so fucking picky that you'll fall to your death.
The game doesn't look very good either, hell the mobile phone version looks better than it does here, the DS wasn't a very powerful system I'm aware but it could do much better than this.
 |
| Oh god what happened here? |
Many of the character models in the game are recycled over and over with only Basilisk and Adha being completely unique. There were times I lost track of Altair when near other assassins.
Even if the controls were fine tuned and the game looked brilliant the gameplay here is extremely repetitive.
Platform here, combat here, stealth here, pickpocket here rinse and repeat. The main games have these same problems too I'm aware, but here they were much more prevalent. Maybe it's because I tried to marathon this game and get it finished as quickly as possible, but fuck did these drive me up a wall after two hours of it.
Oh yeah pickpocketing is here too, as well as interrogating certain enemies. This game is on the DS after all so it attempts to make use of the touch screen by giving you mini-games to complete these objectives.
 |
| This is fucking asinine |
More laughable than those is blowing into the microphone. There wil be times that you come across a chest covered in sand and you can blow into your microphone to clear it away and open the chest. I only came across two my entire playthrough, mind you I wasn't really looking for them but still these are so infrequent I wonder why they bothered.
I could say that for all of these mini-games though to be fair. Sometimes it feels like they forgot about them and tried to shoehorn them in where they could.
Inside those chests that you may unlock are most likely orbs, these are all around the game and once gathered can upgrade Altair, from his health to his sword.
 |
| You have to use the touch screen to switch weapons |
On top of the repetitive gameplay, forgetful gimmicks, poor graphics and terrible controls this game drops frames like an abusive alcoholic drops women. This fucking game would stutter and damn near crash from transitioning from one screen to the next, when there were a lot of enemies on screen. instances like that led to so much stuttering I could barely take it.
 |
| He looks like Simba fucked 80's Hulk Hogan |
Oh and the music is forgetful, as in I damn near forgot to mention it. So...
 |
| Sums up how annoyed I was. |
Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles receives my Order of Execution.
This game should be put through a goddamn wood chipper, it's boring, annoying to play, painful to look at. I'm just so done with Altair at this point is it too late to join the Ezio bandwagon?
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