Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines is a spin-off of the famous series that Ubisoft released not on the major consoles but directly for the portable PlayStation Portable. The story follows on from the events of Assassin's Creed II, taking place shortly after them — Ezio Auditore pursues the Templar Lucia Zenovieva de la Serre all the way to Cyprus, where the Templar Order has resettled after the fall of Jerusalem. Along the way he encounters characters players know from previous entries, and the game thus functions as a bridge between the second entry and the upcoming Brotherhood — its ending leads directly into Brotherhood's opening scene and wraps up several side plotlines that would otherwise have remained unresolved.

Since this was a PSP-exclusive title, the development studios had to adapt the series' action system to the handheld's limitations — a smaller open world split into several areas of the island, shorter missions, and simplified controls for both combat and parkour, handled with a single joystick and buttons instead of two analog sticks. Despite that, the game manages to preserve the brand's key mechanics: free climbing across fortresses and port towns, the hidden blade, poison blades, and stealthy eliminations of guards within a crowd. A new weapon type was also added — a pair of swords, which the main series didn't yet offer at the time — along with several side activities typical of handheld open-world design, such as shorter delivery and exploration tasks scattered around the island.

For series fans, this is the only way to experience this part of the story, since the title never came out on any other platform, on PC, or in a later remastered form, unlike many other Assassin's Creed entries.

Why play it: Bloodlines will appeal mainly to Assassin's Creed fans who want to know Ezio's full story and don't want to miss the connection to Brotherhood — and who are also curious to see how the series' open world and combat system fit onto a pocket console without a second analog stick.