While the sound is nothing more or less then average, Assassin's Creed has marked itself in the pages of video game history mainly because of its superb graphics.

Don't get me wrong, for the most part the sound is great. The dialogue is written very well, and the way that the characters carry out that dialogue adds to the overall strength of the story.

The sound effects are also done well. The clanging of swords and knives sounds realistic, and the aspect of sound that impressed me the most was the general chatter and sounds of a medieval society. Ubisoft did an excellent job of bringing the aspects of sound together for a solid product, however there are some minor annoyances that I feel necessary to mention.

Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed is a huge game. Its timeline spans and covers four ancient cities during the Crusades. During all your traveling, the games sound starts repeating itself, especially when you save a person being harassed by guards. For example, in each section of a city there are around a dozen civilians that need saving. Add all the sections from the three cities where assassinations take place and you end up with quiet a large sum of saved civilians. Well, all of those civilians say one of three [maybe four] things after you rescue them.

As much as part of this game can be played on mute, the game does not offer subtitles of any kind, and the storyline part of the game is so sound dependent that if you can not hear it, the rest of the game comes close to being ruined. So the people with broken soundcards or speakers, or anyone with hearing problems may want to stay away from this game since they won't be able to hear the story, and the story is what drives this game. Besides the game's length which indirectly forces us to put up with repetitive sounds time and time again, Assassin's Creed does a good job in regard to sound, and I can't really think of anything else to point out.

The game's graphics are just amazing. Whether you end up liking the game or not, Assassins Creed's graphics alone are a reason for giving the game a try.

Before I go any further into the graphic aspect of the game, I want to emphasize that Assassin's Creed is one of the few games that takes advantage of DirectX 10. DirectX 9 users don't have a reason to panic; the game works just as well under Windows XP.

When it comes to the graphics, everything stands out in Assassin's Creed, and I do mean everything. First of all, the player models as well as all other NPC characters are rendered superbly. The detail of the characters look is exceptional, and while this is a huge game visually, (there are 4 cities to explore), it manages to remain fresh time and time again.

The very well rendered characters are stuck in an even better visually created world. The environment is, to put it simply, spectacular. Assassin's Creed is probably the best visually available game to purchase up to date. As a reviewer, I usually have to push through games fast so you guys get to read the review in a timely manner. In this game's case, sound got redundant fast, but the graphics still don't cease to amaze. This game is pure eye-candy.

Another spectacular feature found in Assassin's Creed is found in its special effects. The blur effects, the light/shadow effects and the smoke/dust effects individually are done well but when combined in the way that this game does it, they become awesome. But that's not all folks; to compliment all these great features Ubisoft created the game from a third person perspective and gave us (the player) a fully adjustable camera to view our character and his surroundings. As far as I'm concerned, Assassin's Creed has raised the bar for video game graphics; so far they are the best around.