Assassin: Enough Ass for All of Us

Altair pisses me off. I'm going to kill this Sinbar guy, who just happens to be staked out on a giant ship docked in the harbor. Okay, so he's cornered himself in and I just flit my nimble assassin body over to his ship and slice his fucking throat. Easy peasy.

Wait, no, unbelievably difficult because Altair--the greatest assassin alive, who can take out 25 guards in a single fight and jumps off 8-story buildings into a three inch bale of hay without a scratch--can't swim. Not just can't swim, but drowns the minute he touches water deeper than his ankles. And not just drowns the minute he touches water deeper than his ankles, but purposely throws himself into such puddles without any warning.

So I'm going to kill Cinnabon, and my maps tell me to take the longest way around possible--which means I have to jump on about 80 wooden stakes sticking out of the water, and guide Altair from stake to stake without letting him get distracted by his inherent desire to die as soon as fucking possible. For some reason, after about five solid jumps, he will always turn the sixth jump into a manic dive toward the deadliest item nearby. I arrange him on his wooden stake, turn his head to face the only area he could possibly be jumping toward in a giant sea of death, lightly tilt the analog stick toward that one shining bastion of life, and hit the...

And Christ, if he doesn't jump eight feet in the other direction, straight into the ocean of "You're screwed."

"What am I aiming for here?"

So after about 20 attempts to kill Sinbad by way of massive-maze-of-suicide-pegs, I say Fuck it, and dive straight into the group of guards stationed to keep you from running along the docks straight to his ship. Okay, those guys are dead and no one seems too upset. Run down the docks, jump on to 2--not 80, but only 2!--pegs, climb the front of the ship right under Sinatra's nose, up over the railing when his back is turned and ssswip, slice his throat open to receive the "Blade in the Crowd" achievement for killing someone like a true assassin.

So, a true assassin has to disregard all of the information he's spent hours gathering, kill a bunch of people in plain sight, knock a bunch of drunken sailors to their watery graves, and avoid touching any water deep enough to drown a puppy in? Assassins suck.