PSP World

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines Review

When we first heard that Ubisoft was planning a pocked-sized Assassin's Creed game for the PSP, we were intrigued, to say the least. When the publisher confidently stated earlier this year that it had high hopes for PSP sales of the game, our ears perked up even more. The original console release was one of the standout titles for both the Xbox 360 and PS3, with gorgeous visuals and a truly amazing sense of freedom. How well could that expansive atmosphere and stealth-based gameplay translate to the smaller screen? The answer, unfortunately, is not all that well.

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines features the same protagonist from the first game, Altair. Leaving the holy land setting of the first game, Altair travels to the island of Cyprus, where he must hunt down and assassinate a remaining sect of evil Templars. Cities in the game are divided into districts, with short load times when moving from one district to another. While loading doesn't take very long, it still gets in the way of the immersive atmosphere, especially when traversing districts in short succession.

Assassination targets are generally boss characters which must be fought head-on in order to kill. It seems that the major focus of the first game on stealth has been replaced with a more combat-heavy experience on the PSP. The open-city concept of the first game remains in place, with the character free to wander around and accept side missions, or attempt to collect coins scattered around each of the districts. These can by saved up and traded in for health and skill upgrades, a nice addition which also features in Assassin's Creed 2.

Boss fights, such as the one against this unruly brute, play a big role in Bloodlines PSP.

The presentation tries very hard to capture the sense of scale delivered in the first game, and doesn't entirely fail. The areas where action takes place are still fairly large in size, but the detail has been scaled down considerably. When Altair climbs up to an observation point and the camera pans around him, it is easy to see that buildings in the distance are blocky and lack proper textures. Pop-in of enemy characters and citizens is common, as are clipping issues when the camera gets too close to a wall or another object. Clearly, the PSP hardware just wasn't up to the task of delivering the kind of impressive open-world environments we have seen on consoles.

Social stealth, the act of blending into crowds, was a big feature of the first console game. Here the tactic is noticeably absent, probably because the hardware lacks the necessary power to render large crowds of civilians.

The controls were one of the best features of the consoles game, because they enabled players to pull off cool-looking stunts with minimal difficulty. There are some opportunities for rooftop-jumping in Bloodlines, but the sense of total freedom is missing from the scaled-back environments. Often times, there are only one or two routes open to the player, as many buildings cannot be scaled. Jumping and grabbing onto ledges is still performed with the face buttons, but the action is sometimes interrupted by the need to adjust the camera, which is done by using the same face buttons while holding down the L trigger. This evidently curtails the flow of action, especially since the camera poses some difficulties in close quarters. The need for a second analog stick is strongly felt in this particular case.

Textures are not as sharp on the PSP, but overall graphics get the job done.

Combat plays a bigger role in Bloodlines, which might delight some players who enjoyed the tedious fights from the first game. Here, countermoves can be performed by pressing a button at the appropriate moment (the window of opportunity is smaller for more powerful weapons). Altair will then perform a bloody attack on his foe. It works largely the same as in the first game, so fans of the series won't be disappointed here. One disappointing feature of the PSP game is definitely the enemy AI, which sometimes fails to respond to blatant attacks by Altair against nearby guards.

Something must be said about connectivity between Assassin's Creed 2 and Bloodlines on the PSP. Players who own both titles can connect their devices together to score some bonuses for both the PSP and PS3 games. Completing Bloodlines gives you an infusion of cash on the PS3 (not that you likely need the money anyway) as well as some cool special weapons for Ezio's villa. If you play through the PS3 game first, you can get a bigger health upgrade on the PSP as well as the ability to launch throwing knives from your hidden blade hand. These perks are neat if you happen to own both systems, but they don't add anything substantial to gameplay. Assassin's Creed 2 is such a far superior experience to the PSP version, we can't imagine anybody wanting to play through bloodlines just to get the perks, but perhaps they are out there (stalking us from the shadows).

Overall, this is a game which tried hard to emulate its more successful console counterparts, but doesn't quite deliver the same level of thrills. Since most people who played the first game probably have a console or PC system, there is little reason to choose Bloodlines over Assassin's Creed 2.