Hanging Around In Jerusalem

So today's the day that Assassin's Creed hits the PC, and I still can't make my mind up whether I'm going to buy it or not.

This month's PC Gamer dropped through the letterbox a couple of days ago, featuring a four page Assassin's Creed review. Now that I've read the review I'm in two minds whether I want to actually play the game or not, never mind whether or not my gaming rig can handle the Assassin's Creed specifications.

PC Gamer rated the game at 80%, which isn't a bad score to get and was the third highest review in the mag (behind two Sims expansions, surely that should serve as a warning).

Update - the PC Gamer review has been published at GamesRadar.

However, it sounds very much like it's a game of two halves, one brilliant, one less so. Apparently the cityscapes are huge, the scenery stunning, and the gameplay is great when the action starts with a clever game engine that allows you to make the most of Altair's ability to run, jump and climb. But there's too much faffing around in the build-up to each hit, trying to find information on the target through the missions which are a drag.

To make it worse, the ending apparently turns into a hack'n'slash affair that abandons all of the stealthy gameplay that has gone before it. As Tim Edwards so eloquently puts it in his review, 'it's a betrayal of everything the player has learned so far'.

Part of the problem is that I was going to buy Assassin's Creed on Steam, which means no refund and no chance of flogging the game on eBay.

The thing is, I'm a sucker for games like this. Sneaking about, hunting down your target in a heavily defended fortress and then timing the kill to perfection ... sounds like fun to me. But am I just going to end up disappointed if I buy Assassin's Creed?