Assassin's Creed: Recollection: Phone-y Goodness

Here's some old stuff from my 1UP blog that I'm trying to keep track of. YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT.

There are two things that I have found I only have passive interest in: Assassin’s Creed and card games. Maybe not “passive,” I suppose. Half-hearted, maybe.

Fine; I have a half- interest in Assassin’s Creed and card games. On the one hand, running around rooftops and diving into haystacks sounds like a snazzy way to spend a hangover, which, on the other hand, I usually get by playing cards with people. Since hangovers mean queasiness, AC’s parkour-enabled killing sprees generally don’t aid the road to recovery. Plus, they’re monotonous. You can see why I gave up this vicious cycle.

Behold my surprise on how my two half-interests’ coitus birthed Assassin’s Creed: Recollections, and successfully blended them together. Something of a card-based real time strategy game, AC:R turns out to be a very addictive and competitive multiplayer battle, and definitely worth eyeballing now that’s out on the iPhone as of yesterday.

A complex game that basically forces you to study the tutorial and in-game glossary, two players melee over control of two out of three areas of a playing field. Control is given to whomever scores and maintains ten points in a given region, and this is accomplished by either playing Agent cards that can battle other Agents, or by location-type cards that score over time.

Time, though, is the great equalizer here. Everything happens in a real time countdown which lasts roughly 30-45 seconds. All cards take roughly half of this time to be usable after being played from a user’s hand, and about the same amount of time (with a few exceptions) to reconcile when placed into one of the fields. Players draw another card and earn a higher cap for gold (that which allows you to do anything. See: any government in the world, ever) at the beginning of each round. It takes a bit of adjustment before it all clicks, but the clock ticking compared along with cards played certainly lends to some nail-bighting fights.

It will also keep you pretty busy. The game comes pre-loaded with 20 story missions that will teach you the ins and outs of its systems, and has a good variety of AI opponents that use differing tactics to force you to rethink your own maneuvers. It shines with a fairly user friendly competitive multiplayer, though, with plenty of people online ready to play.

The best part is that new cards are easy enough to come by without having to shell out real cash to acquire them. The story mode will pay you a modicum of currency to buy booster packs (which hold random common, uncommon, and rare booty), but playing online bouts will net you up to $500 per day. Depending on your patience, this will either get you up to five packs of low-level swag for a day’s worth of work, or one pack of higher-tier stuff for two. While the option is certainly available to shell out the coin for quick currency, this system never made me feel as though I was forced to do it to be competitive; something I find pretty rare in cases like these.

The game looks great as far as card games go, though iPhone gamers might find the lack of real estate that iPad players have enjoyed for the last couple of months a little cramped. Just a heads-up.
As a package, it’s also got a lot of extra goodies from the full AC: Embers animated short to an art gallery. Plus, I can play it pretty well hungover. It doesn’t make me a better general, but it still helps.