Welcome to our CHEATfactor Game Review of Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China. We review the game and then factor in how the available cheats affect the overall game experience. For better or worse, our reviews will help you decide whether or not to use cheats when playing the game.

Hey, remember Klei's game Mark of the Ninja? No? Well Ubisoft sure does. Chronicles: China, the publisher's latest take on the long running Assassin's Creed series borrows heavily from the highly underrated game but unfortunately it plays it way too safe for me to recommend it, regardless of how different it is for the franchise. Chronicles is enjoyable thanks to it's smart level design and fresh ideas (in terms of the franchise) but it never really challenged me throughout my entire time playing the game, and worse yet, it failed to create it's own identity.

Chronicles' story fits right into the Assassin's Creed mythos, or at least I think it's supposed to, I never really understood why any of the characters were really doing, well...anything. This could be because the game doesn't really do a great job explaining things, but it also could be because I ended up skipping most of the cutscenes midway through thanks to some of the worst voice acting I've heard in quite some time. I know that you play as an Assassin who has sworn revenge against the Templars but I don't know why really. It's not like I need an answer to take out the Templars but some context would be nice. As far as the voice acting, I've never seen a group of Assassin's take their profession so nonchalantly as nearly every character in the game sounds like they just woke up when reading their lines.

Much like Mark of the Ninja before it, Chronicles is a side-scrolling action adventure game that rewards your ability to stay in the shadows over your ability to kill. Each room feels like a puzzle and you're given the tools as to how to solve it best. You'll have to learn how to sneak past guards, stick to the shadows and hide the evidence of those you do have to kill in order to pass each area with the highest ranking. The game gives you a ton of fun little tricks to use to give it your best shot, like noise makers and some pretty cool acrobatic moves that are all pretty easy to use in the right situation. That's part of the game's biggest problem though.

While there were points that challenged me and made me think, they were few and far between and the game almost refused to take any chances with the formula it sets for itself. A great stealth game gives you the tools you need and then let's you figure out the best way to use them - Chronicles does the opposite. It may not directly come out and tell you how to get past each area but it implies it pretty heavily. You never really have to guess as to which weapon or tool you have to use to get past a certain section since once you played through a few sections of the game, you'll be able to get through pretty much any section of the game. I was disappointed with just how safe Ubisoft kept things as there were moments where I truly enjoyed what Chronicles offered, but once the drama was gone, so was most of the appeal of the game itself.

Credit must be given though to the developers for the way that Chronicles stages play out. While the majority of the game plays out on a flat side-scrolling style world, there are times when you have to take paths that extend either further back or to the front of the normal play area and it goes a long way in making sure that that each stage feels like an actual world, and not just a designed area for the game. In truth, the vast majority of the game looks great, and runs even better. The cut-scenes are filled with great drawings that  bring what story is here to life. The color scheme is pretty much what you'd expect for this type of game but it handles itself well.

Chronicles feels like a unique way to handle the usual Assassin's Creed gameplay, even if we've seen it before in Mark of the Ninja. Despite it's predictability and how much it plays it safe, I enjoyed my time with the game, even though I always found myself wanting more. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I have a copy of Mark of the Ninja installed on this computer somewhere...