Review by: Brandon "Templar Coin" Cackowski-Schnell

If you were one of the people who signed petitions, lit up forums and raised your voice while clamoring for Assassin's Creed to be brought to the PSP, well allow me to say…thanks for that. For your next trick why don't you build up a movement to bring back the bubonic plague?

Despite being told in Assassin's Creed II that you can't go back and revisit Altair's memories any more, here we are reliving Altair's memories. Truth be told the Animus is used in this game namely to provide a link to the original and not much more which makes you wonder why it was used in the first place as gamers looking to enter the Creed series with this title will be left wondering just what the heck is going on. Sadly even if you played the first game and know all about Altair you'll still be left confused as the story is a jumbled mess of conversations and philosophical ramblings. The main idea is that Altair wants to kill more Templars, this time in Cyprus. And away we go.

The game takes the tedious side mission structure from the original and thankfully throws it right out the window. You can still climb to various high points in the game's two cities and synchronize your view to find side missions however these side missions are entirely optional. Doing them nets you more assassin points, or whatever they are, which allows you to upgrade Altair, an entirely silly notion given that traditionally the simple act of remembering someone to be better doesn't actually make them retroactively better. Anyway, if tracking down thieves or battling groups of harassing soldiers doens't do it for you the main missions are always available.

Unfortunately sometimes your main missions are on the other side of the city meaning you have to free run to your destination, a hit or miss affair made all the more complicated by the PSP's lack of a second analog stick. To make up for this the game uses the console's face button with the left shoulder to move the camera about, however it also uses the face buttons with the right shoulder for free running making it impossible to move the camera and run across the rooftops at the same time. This, combined with Altair's penchant for ignoring your requests to drop down and his love for randomly running up trees makes the free running a hit or miss approach that's cool when it works but maddening when it doesn't. Given that the success of some missions is directly tied to your success at free running the maddening parts show up far more often than the cool ones.