Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles (Nintendo DS)

ASSASSIN'S CREED: ALTAIR'S CHRONICLES for the Nintendo DS is a prequel to last fall's Assassin's Creed released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game provides preamble to its forebear's dense and complex story by expanding upon protagonist Altaïr's quest to find and destroy a mystical object called the Chalice. The game itself is vaguely similar to its predecessor in that players once again get to explore beautifully recreated 12th-century Arabian cities by climbing walls, jumping from one rooftop to the next, and regularly getting into frays with local guards. However, while the original allowed players to explore the game world in whatever manner they wanted and complete missions in their own particular style, Altaïr's Chronicles is much more linear, forcing players to follow a set path through each level.

At the start, most players will likely be impressed by the striking 3-D environments and characters, which are easily counted among the best yet created for Nintendo's two-screened handheld. It's a gorgeous game full of detailed buildings and accurately scaled people who move with motion-captured fluidity and grace. Indeed, controlling Altaïr as he moves around city environments is like playing in a giant urban jungle gym -- a video game version of parkour. The problem, as is unfortunately the case in many action/adventure games designed for the DS, is that the system's minute screen is just too tiny for what the developers wanted to do. For starters, we can't really see more than about 10 yards in front of or behind of Altaïr, which means many of our jumps are made with blind faith that there will be a platform for our hero to land on.

Aside from jumping, climbing, and fighting, the only other activities in Altaïr's Chronicles are little mini-games that make use of the DS' touch screen. One sees players interrogating enemies by touching pressure points on a drawing of a human back, while another involves pickpocketing other characters by looking at a close-up of the contents of their bags and using the stylus to drag the desired item through a clutter of objects. Both are somewhat silly and unrealistic but can be surprisingly challenging. Still, they get a little tiresome after the first couple of times you play them.

Available on: Nintendo DS
Not available online
Genre: Action/Adventure
Developer: UbiSoft
Released on: February 5, 2008
Price: 29.99
ESRB Rating: T for Violence