by: Steve Simons

March 07, 2008

Spying on conversations is nothing more than finding your target and a bench nearby to sit on. Once you are sitting down the camera will zoom in and you will hear their conversation. Pick pocketing missions start the same way; you listen in on a short conversation and then follow your target. Once close enough you attempt to steal something from them without being caught.

If you are caught you simply try again. In fact anytime you fail (any mission) all you need to do is walk a short distance away and then come back to restart the whole process. Stopping the guards from beating up citizens doesn’t net you any clues but it is a good method of practice to get your combat up to snuff and citizens will help you evade Guards. Interrogating is probably the least fun of all. You follow someone to a dark alley and then simply punch them until they talk. If you are seen by guards they don’t seem to care but if a thug see’s you beating on someone they will attack you. Informant missions are probably the most complex. You seek out the informant who gives you a small task. Sometimes you need to collect flags which are nicely placed through the city. You have a time limit but it’s always plenty of time. The other type of mission involves you killing someone for the informant, sometimes its multiple targets. These can get tricky later in the game as Guards get more and more worried in your presence. You also have to worry about the most annoying two NPC’s in gaming history. There are these beggar women who get in your face and demand money, they slow you down and can quickly alert guards. There are also crazy half naked men who will shove you and only you for no reason and again this will often alert guards. If a guard is alerted you need to start the mission over again. Once you have the required information you can assassinate your primary Target.

These are the best parts of the game and I wish there were more then 9. Most often there are a couple of ways to get at a Target whether it is with stealth or via a direct attack. However the game doesn’t let you solve the problem yourself. You can’t find a nice perch and just wait for the Target. You have to enter a zone and then watch a cinema which can kill any premade plan you may have had to quickly kill your target. After you kill your target you watch a brief cut scene and then you must escape back to your hideout. Sometimes this can be easy depending on the routes you choose and other times it can take quite a while to lose those in pursuit.

The biggest part of the game is roaming around the cities. It’s also more fun than you would imagine. No game before has made running on roof tops (or anything else) this enjoyable and its all due to the way the controls were almost flawlessly designed. Running up walls, climbing objects and jumping around is as simple as holding the Right Trigger and A button. Sometimes you will miss a jump or fall off something but these instances are few and far between. After completing an Assassination or any type of crime you need to evade the guards. The fastest and coolest way to do this is to climb up a wall and leap from roof top to roof top. You can also run and swing along beams and other objects. Words cannot really describe just how cool it looks and how easy it is to accomplish. Even if you are clumsy with the controls you should be able to evade the AI. They are not very smart and will lose sight you pretty easily. If you do happen to get trapped you can easily fight your way out.