Assassin's Creed is a great new game just out from Ubisoft's Montreal Studio. Most of the time, you play a twelfth century assassin named Altair (al-tay-ear) in the Holy Land. Jerusalem. Damascus. Acre. The rest of the time you play a confused bartender named Desmond in what appears to be approximately modern times.

There is a wrong way and a right way to play Assassin's Creed. If you play it the wrong way, you'll hate just about every minute of it. If you play it the right way, you'll love just about every minute of it and call it Game of the Year.

The story of Assassin's Creed appears (the date is never explicitly stated) to take place in modern times - maybe even just a little bit in the future. You play Desmond, a bartender that has been kidnapped, apparently due to the fact that Desmond's long dead relatives were assassins. In the story, Desmond is strapped onto a contraption called the "Animus" which allows him to explore his genetic memory. In this case, the genetic memory being explored is that of a 12th century assassin named Altair.

While the story and some very basic gameplay take place in the now - talking to the doctors, examining your cell, etc. - the real gameplay takes place in the past, in the space between the Animus and Desmond's mind. The fact that almost the entire game takes place as a combination of mind and machine has some profound and fascinating effects on gameplay.

In many games, the presence of a heads up display (HUD) is largely viewed as a necessary evil. As players, we need these things to interact with the game, but they are often "outside" the game. Your mage in World of Warcraft, for example, does not actually have a little device which tells him how much mana he has left. But we need it to know what's going on. In Assassin's Creed, the HUD is actually part of the universe that your character inhabits. This is highlighted by the fact that when you're controlling the "in the now" Desmond, you actually don't have any HUD at all.

But, whilst you're in the Holy Land whacking people, there's tons of information at your finger tips which all makes sense since it's a machine generated interface to Desmond's genetic memory. While the original Altair certainly had no magical map he could call up, you (as Desmond) do. This is because the Animus has full access to the memory being explored and makes the map for you. The Animus can also look into the memory and tell you which people around you are potentially hostile. It tell you how far away things and people are. It can even tell you where you need to go next. Yay for technology!

And this would all, of course, be worthless if the game was a steaming heap of crap. But it's not. While it isn't completely flawless, I consider Assassin's Creed to be something of a triumph in modern gaming.

The graphics are stunning. Every time I climb up the side of a building to snag a "View Point", I am amazed at how great the city looks. I am also amazed that I can look across the city and see the other landmarks which I have climbed. They are all there in a seamless, detailed environment.

The way Altair and the other citizens move is another thing which I quickly took notice of: they move naturally. When Altair walks, it looks like a person walking. When he stumbles, it looks real and kind of painful. When walking between people, he turns to the side so as to better fit. When he transitions from running to walking he does that weird trying to slow down thing that we all do when we run somewhere. And when he climbs, he looks as real as anyone else. He looks insane. But real.

And on a final technical note: the sound design is phenomenal. The ssshinnng of the hidden blade striking a target is a resounding metallic note needing a symphony. I love that sound. The music is largely middle eastern inspired ambient with some more aggressive music during fights and outdoor travel. And it's great. The voice work is generally very well done. The cities have a constant murmur of conversation over which you will hear town criers and evangelists. As you surprise civilians or anger guards you'll hear about it. And the Templars taunt you in what I can only imagine to be Latin. If you stop to listen, the sounds you hear will always tell you something about where you are.

The overall presentation brings a very strong immersive quality to the game. It's like watching a movie, except that your hands are very very busy.

In the story of the assassin, Altair is assigned nine targets over 4 missions. First one target, then two, then three and three. There are three main cities, each with a distinctive feel and three targets per city, each living in separate districts which become available to explore as needed. With each target, you must go to the district in question and perform "investigations" which provide you with much needed intel about the target: where he'll be, when, how to get in, how to get out, guard locations, etc..

These "investigations" are like mini games or quests and are broken down into 4 types: eaves dropping, interrogation, pick pocketing and informant. The first 3 types are always the same. To eaves drop you just plant your ass on a bench and listen to people. To pick pocket, you follow a guy and press the (B) key. To interrogate, you follow a guy to an alley and beat him up until he talks. Always the same.

The informants are a little different and have three variations (that I have seen). They are: kill some people quietly, kill some people quietly with a time limit, and collect some flags. Killing people quietly is pretty easy, you just follow them until you're sure you won't be seen, whack, job done. On a time limit, things are harder, and this is where you really learn how out in the open you can be with a careful assassination, because with 3 minutes and 3 targets you really don't have time to follow them to a secluded corner. The flag collecting is silly, but can be fun. The informant will place 20 or so flags around the neighborhood that you have to collect in three minutes. The only part about this that can be hard is that later on in the game, running around like a maniac is more likely to annoy the guards which will require you starting over.

Before you can assassinate your target you must do a few investigations (2 early, 3 later in game). Doing those few will convince the local assassin's bureau that you've got the intel you need for the job. But, only doing those 2 or 3 is one of the wrong ways to play this game.

The story of Assassin's Creed is a fantastic tale of greed, betrayal and world domination. Great philosophical questions are asked. Some answers are put forward by the various characters. The story cautions against both moral relativism and blind adherence to the ideal of absolute morality. It's a fantastic and fascinating journey. But it's not the reason to play the game. It's the excuse for making one.

The reason to play the game is because the gameplay is fun. You need to have a story for the actions in the game to have any meaning. You need a context against which you can measure your forward momentum. There need to be good guys and bad guys and missions. But even if the story was completely retarded, so long as there was one, this game would be fun. In fact, it is the excellent quality of the story and the writing which compels so many people to play this game the wrong way.

If you rush through this game with your eyes squarely on the prize of the story, you will hate this game. You will hate every fight. Every chase. Every investigation. Every view point. Every building you climb. They are all obstacles to you getting to the next chapter of the story. I know this to be true. Up until the last assassination I played Assassin's Creed the right way and loved every single minute of it. But, so that I could get this review done sometime before xmas, I cranked through the last half of the game in a single day and rushed through the final target and everything that followed. And I hated every minute of it. Don't do it.

The proof of how the developers meant this game to be played lies in the Xbox Achievements. Fearless: climb all viewpoints. Defender of the People (one for each city): save all of the citizens. Keeper of the Creed: collect all flags in Masyaf. There are 44 achievements in all and most of them relate to exploring the world and fully enjoying what the game has to offer. And only a few of them relate the nutty collection of every flag. Without going back to do cleanup, I've got almost 700 of the 1000 achievement points.

This is a game about exploration and quiet murder. Barring that, it's about crazy fights with impossible odds (which you win anyway). The way to enjoy this game is to take everything as it comes rather than to chase after the final goal. Explore the city. Try to find the 20 flags in Masyaf. Climb up to the top of each view point. Some of them are harder to get to than you might think. And some of them are breathtaking. Rescue each citizen. It's worth it. The vigilantes and scholars that come from those rescues are all potentially helpful. Do all of the investigations. You might actually learn something that you need to know, like the fact that you really need to kill all the archers before going after the target or that a certain gate will bar your progress.

All of these things are fun to do, and these are what the game is about. There are those that complain that this game is too repetitive. What about Mario and his quest for coins and giant mushrooms? All he does is run and jump. What about race car driving games? All you do is go around a track. What about Mortal Kombat? It's just two guys fighting. Over and over. And with each of those, the fan will respond with talk of nuances and level design and track layout and special moves. To which I respond: Assassin's Creed has all of these things and more.

Fighting in Assassin's Creed is fun and complex. If you mash buttons, you die. But, once you learn how to fight, it's beautiful ballet of death. The cities look fantastic and, more importantly, like actual cities with neighborhoods each looking different and having different classes of people. And jumping around rooftops like a monkey in these cities can be fun too, even if you're just collecting some stupid informer's flags. Figuring out that it is possible to assassinate someone even in a crowded marketplace and then to actually pull it off without detection is a rush.

I finish very very few games. And having finished this one, I still want to keep playing. And that makes this game something special. With the release of The Orange Box, Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, Rock Band, Mass Effect and Bioshock (just to name a select few), it's been an outrageously good year to be a gamer. Assassin's Creed, though, takes the cake and is therefore named SecretLemur's Game of the Year.