Kill The All

a huge brawl in Assassin's Creed

Bring out your dead.

I've just spent 30 minutes clearing the parapets of archers. I see my target William of Somethingorother, working at a desk in a big courtyard. I check my weapons one last time, take a deep breath, and leap down to the ground, right behind Mr. Dead Soon.

I'm not quick enough to prevent him yelling a warning as I slash his blade out of the way and move in with a heavy blast from my sword. I bash him a few times and he's goes down in a heap of regrets, excuses, and blood. This is only the beginning, however, as the entire castle's garrison comes charging into the courtyard. I back into a corner so I can't get hit from behind and set up my one-man butcher shop.

The first wave of guards are really aggressive, so I wait for them to strike, and parry their strokes with well-timed counterattacks. Three of them go down in just a few seconds. The odds are still against me as the entire courtyard seems to be full of men, but the ferocity of my defense has them wary. I take the initiative and hammer my way out of the corner with perfectly timed sword hits that demolish their defense and allows me to kill four guards in only eight strokes.

I continue this pattern, set up in a corner, counter a few attacks, then bash my way through the crowd to another corner until I've run out of opponents. There's so many bodies I have to climb up above the courtyard to see it clearly. Twenty guards lay sprawled across the courtyard, most of them heaped in the two corners where I had my most successful butcher shops set up.

It's taken some work to start getting the hang of the swordfighting in this game, but the rewards are great. This fight was so exciting my heart was pounding by the time I was done. So far, an excellent, if somewhat repetitive, game.