Now that’s not to say the game is a total waste. The gameplay itself is classic first-person shooter. You have a wide variety of weapons to use and yes there are even melee attacks and RPGs to gib enemies with (right in the chest to blow him off the Golden Gate was my best shot). But the game then pushes you forward at a pace that does not allow you to truly appreciate the game and environment.
Speaking of the environment, I played on my standard gaming rig with an ATi Radeon HD 3870 at 1680x1050 and the game looked good, even though it’s really made to work best with an NVIDIA card. Since I didn’t have one handy in the office I made due with what was available. The graphics are gritty and at times seem like there is a forced level of detail in some textures which then appear flat and don’t look as good as I imagine they could.
The sound is extremely well done with each gun having its own unique sound which were so well done that I could almost feel the recoil when using some of the larger machine guns. Explosions has boom and the voice work is fairly good. Some of the dialog seems forced and ridiculous. Like while climbing up the tower to the deck of the Golden Gate bridge Connor states "shit, more stairs?" What the hell was he expecting an elevator to just show up out of nowhere?
The multiplayer offers a variety of things to do on many of the maps that you saw in the single player campaign though at first you might not recognize them. They do offer a good variety of environments and they have a leveling system of unlockable gear and skills. The game also uses a very Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood multiplayer-like mechanic where you are assigned a target. A killing streak will get more people assigned to take you out, much like what happens in the ACB multiplayer, mostly because you become a highly dangerous opponent and need to be taken out. I can see that backfiring over time where a team has one or two really good players who are constantly being targeted allowing other players to achieve objectives like capturing control points etc without being harassed.
