Assassin's Creed: Altaïr's Chronicles is the direct port of the Nintendo DS title Assassin's Creed. The game features a fully realized 3D world in which players will travel and battle through eight cities of the Crusade's Middle East, using acrobatic moves and exhilarating combo attacks with mixed sword skills.

Assassin's Creed made its first debut back in late 2007; developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released worldwide in November of 2007 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 systems. Gameloft released the first port of the successes title on February 5th 2008 for the Nintendo DS. It seems that the Nintendo DS port couldn't really find support from critics and even the fan-base, and ended up to be mostly a disappointment. But Gameloft assures that the iPhone port is much more improved in regards to graphics and gameplay, citing a recent IGN review:

“This game looks better on the iDevices that it did on the Nintendo DS,” the review reads. “The models are crisper. The textures are brighter and cleaner. The animation seems smoother. (…) The cutscenes are fluid and detailed. Gameloft also added a lot of voice to the game, too, adding an extra element of character to Altair.”

Player movement in the game, like attacking, jumping, and stabbing is accomplished via touch screen buttons. The touch-pad is very responsive and overall works well for movement. There still needs to be an update on movement; however, because there are a few situations that require a little bit more precision. I found that Altair got stuck a couple of time in some random spots on the map. During combat, he would sometimes get stuck against the wall, become unable to defend himself or even move. So the pad can get a bit frustrating sometimes but isn't that all that bad.

»Attacking Scene

What brings a nice change to the game-play are things like the mini-puzzle games, like pickpocket and interrogation. Pickpocket is basically a puzzler requiring Altair to take an object (use your finger to tap on the screen for drag and drop) without touching anything else in the bag or the sides. Interrogation is time-based, just touching multiple pressure points when they turns green.

»Pickpocket Scene

Overall, the game has great voice over, wonderful 3D Graphics & animations. The game still has a few bugs but mostly in the player control, which I think could be fixed with one update. I personally really enjoyed the mini-puzzle games, which gave the game a nice change of pace once in while. I filmed the entire 4th level, which includes most of the game-play features and should give you a feel for what the game is about.

»Entire Level 4

Jerusalem, 1191 AD. The Third Crusade between the Crusaders and the Saracens is tearing the Holy Land apart. You are Altair, a Master Assassin sent by the Order of the Assassins on a quest to find “The Chalice”, an object of such power that it can end the Crusades, depending on which camp owns it. Steal The Chalice from the Templars before someone offers them the right price for it. The fate of the Holy Land depends on you…

[AppStore Link]