By Jason Nimer

I feel the most adequate way to begin this review for the highly anticipated Assassin's Creed (360, PS3) is to take you, the reader, to a magical fantasy land. In this imaginary world, you and I are just hanging out, wasting away the afternoon talking about video games. After we finish freaking out about just how awesome Contra 4 (DS), Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) and, to a lesser degree, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (Wii) turned out, the chat turns toward Assassin's Creed. Here is how that conversation would break down (and no, there are no spoilers):

You: So, uh… I heard you were going down to the shore to buy some Motley Crue t-shirts.

Me: What? No! We were talking about Assassin's Creed (props if you picked up the reference)!

You: So how was it? People have been talking about that game for a while now…

Me: I'll answer your question with another question. Did you ever see that movie "White Noise" with Michael Keaton?

You: Yeah… so what?

Me: Remember how the movie was really good until the last half hour?

You: Yeah… the ending sucked. Ruined the whole movie.

Me: Yeah. Assassin's Creed is the exact opposite. "White Noise" was ruined by it's last half-hour, Assassin's Creed is ruined by it's first half-hour. The first part of the game and the "twist" (finger quotes) really sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of an otherwise excellent game.

You: That's too bad.

Me: Not really. The game is still great; you'll just wish you had that machine from "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" so you could erase the memory of what could be the dumbest set-up in the history of video games.

You: Oh, that's not so bad, I guess.

Me: No, not really. But from here on out, people will describe things by saying, 'Yeah… that was dumb, but not Assassin's Creed dumb.'"

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