Assassin's Creed (mobile)

Assassin's Creed came out on Java and Symbian in 2007, the same year as the first console entry in the series, and Gameloft wrote a separate side story for it set during the Crusades. The player once again becomes an assassin who sneaks past guards, performs silent takedowns and climbs buildings - motifs the mobile version carried over, though on a much smaller scale than the open cities of the console original, whose scope the phones of the time couldn't even remotely match.

The setting was assembled from more enclosed levels instead of a sprawling open world, because the memory and performance of phones at the time weren't enough to simulate an entire medieval city. The stealth mechanics worked on the principle of hiding in shadows and waiting for the right moment to strike, controlled with the d-pad on the numeric keypad and a single action button, which demanded patience for the right timing from the player rather than quick reflexes. Visually, the game relied on a darker palette and simple but legible character models meant to evoke the atmosphere of the original despite the display's sharply limited graphical capacity.

Like a number of other Gameloft licenses, this game too was sold through carrier portals as a paid download, usually tied to a specific carrier and its app catalog. Today it's among the titles that officially disappeared along with the end of the Symbian and J2ME era - it remains available only through archives or emulation.

Why play it: Interesting for fans of the series who want to find out how the open-world stealth action shrank down to enclosed missions controlled with a d-pad on the keypad.