Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

I’m going to have to agree with the Gamers With Jobs crew and say the ancient world in Assassin’s Creed is much more interesting than the other, intertwined storyline. I’ll even go so far as to say that the computer voice talking to you, teaching you the controls, and speckling items of interest with Matrix-style characters weakens the immersion that the breathtaking graphics and movement mechanics work hard to establish.

The game’s plot, though, starts off much too slowly for my taste. It is an interesting setup, but I’m sending my rental back because of some things that are irritating to me. With a big glut of Fall games still to be finished my gaming time isn’t best spent being annoyed and what I experienced didn’t motivate me in a major way to learn what the game expects of me.

Faith No More
When the computer voice told me I could make a leap of faith off of a building after using the excellent climbing system to scale it, it didn’t tell me how. Cue Alta’ir (I love the ancient pronounciation of his name, by the way) flopping around, falling to his death, scrabbling down the building and taking damage instead of gracefully leaping. I even climbed up and tried a couple of other things, all while the guards nearby didn’t seem to think anything of my antics. A laugh track would have helped.

After getting to the top of that vantage point I was happy to see my map get populated with points of interest. That first vantage point was fun to climb. I’d like to climb another one! I hopped on the excellently-animated horse and trotted off to find it, only to be greeted by a glowing wall. Ok nitwits, why are you suddenly revealing a dozen points on the map, opening up my world to me, and then blocking me from reaching them? Could you fade out those points as inaccessible since this is all an in-game computer interface, anyway?

While I did want to find out what happened to Alta’ir and the interesting mission of killing important figures to cause peace by ending the Crusades, I don’t have the patience for something that gets started so slowly and encourages you to move slowly from place to place to avoid suspicion.

Maybe I’ll rent you again, Alta’ir, but until then you can go it alone at a snail’s pace across the map, hands folded, with the modulated voice in your ear and digital overlays fluttering across your vision. I’ve got more fun games to play for now.