Assassin's Creed Identity For Mobile Stays True To Its Roots

Mobile adaptations of popular game franchises haven't always yielded good fruit. Hitman GO is practically a board game and the first Assassin's Creed mobile game was all about un-stealthy naval battles. Ubisoft may have just redeemed itself with the unexpected Assassin's Creed Identity, which gives mobile gamers a true AC experience on their smartphone or tablet.

Unlike Pirates, Identity sticks to the AC gameplay of controlling a single character in third person view, open world maps, stealth, and, well, of course, assassination. And it also sticks to the AC tradition of gorgeous visuals. That's not to say that Pirates lacked beauty, but there is really something different when you see it from another perspective, literally.

Gameplay wise, AC Identity is pretty much like any mobile RPG, except with a slant towards stealth instead of outright bursting into action. You get to choose from 3 characters classes of varying abilities and get to dress up your chosen player with loots and treasures. You can, however, actually develop two Assassins of your own. The game plays out over a dynamic world, complete with dynamic crowds, night/day cycles, weather, and open sandbox levels where you get to try out your character's skills.

Unfortunately, the game also inherits AC's basic controls, which means swiping around with a virtual d-pad for some actions, though there are tap-to-move or tap-to-kill actions as well. That might be the price to pay for having a game that plays out in the same way as the original Assassin's Creed designed for consoles and PCs.

For the richness of the content and the graphics, Assassin's Creed Identity is surprisingly free to download from the iTunes App Store, compatible with both iPhones and iPads running iOS 7.0 or higher. That it has in-game purchases,however, isn't surprising at all. The game is still in a soft launch stage, available only in New Zealand and Australia. An Android version is promised to come soon as well, though no date, week, or month has been given yet.