Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines Review PSP

Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines is supposedly a game meant to tie the events of Assassin’s Creed and Altair, to the events of Assassin’s Creed II and Ezio. Unfortunately, the game fails to bridge the gap between the two games and instead creates more questions. The game takes place immediately after the events of Assassin’s Creed, with Altair acquiring the Apple of Eden and attempting to eliminate the remaining Templars on the island of Cyprus. Maria, the female Templar from the first Assassin’s Creed who Altair let escape, plays an integral role in Bloodlines and Assassin’s Creed II. The game is a great proof of concept that a console game can be ported to a portable and still retain the same amount of fun and novelty of the original without sacrificing much. Unfortunately, the game is absurdly short, easy, and buggy, which makes it more of a rental rather than pay $39.99.

Graphic and sound:

Graphically, Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines obviously does not look anything like its console counterparts. The character textures are blurry up close as should be expected from a portable device whose graphical abilities are between a PSX and a PS2, neither of which were ever nice to look at. For a PSP game, the environments are fairly large as a whole, but subdivided in sections to allow for loading. There are clipping issues where Altair will climb a wall and somehow disappear into it or other anomalies such as cutscenes where the characters have conversations with an invisible second character. Voiceovers are laughable at best, with Altair sporting a French accent trying to fake an Arabic accent.

Gameplay and controls:

Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines can be completed in less than 5 hours without wasting time on side missions. Side missions are divided between saving citizens, delivery missions, and synchronizing all of the eagle towers. Players can also collect Templar coins, which are divided between bronze, silver, and gold. Bronze coins are earned for killing enemies and completing missions, silver coins and gold coins are scattered throughout the cities. The game requires very little stealth, and the player will be able to kill most guards by just mashing the square button instead of bothering with stealth assassinations. There are 6 boss characters that consist of hand to hand combat where a health bar is instituted for the enemy. Most of the bosses have poor AI and pathfinding nodes, which result in the enemy getting stuck on pillars and allowing the player an easy kill. The camera can be horrendous at times, providing poor angles of view for the player to traverse complex jumps, but the controls are easy to use even without the use of a second analog stick.

Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines can be connected to the PS3 Assassin’s Creed II game and transfer coins and weapons acquired to the PS3 game. All 6 boss weapons can be transferred over and Templar coins are converted to Florins currency.

Overall thoughts:

Despite the obvious bugs in the game, I thoroughly enjoyed playing as Altair again for a few moments before Assassin’s Creed II came out and then having the bonus of transferring over coins and weapons to Assassin’s Creed II. The downsides of the game are the shortness of the game and lack of a story that engages the player. The story is non-essential to the continuation of the series since Assassin’s Creed II fills in part of the gap, which makes the game seem as an afterthought. This game is definitely just a rental or a purchase for $19.99 or less. $39.99 for a game that shows a lack of quality assurance is gouging game players.