Assassin's Creed continued

I'm still ploughing through Assassin's Creed, I had a free half-hour so I tried to complete one mission. Now although you need only two information gatherings to be completed I try and do them all and too an extent this is where the repetitive nature creeps in.

In this mission though a couple of Informer missions threw me for a loop. Normally you get two types - collect the flags within a time limit, or stealth kill a couple of enemies. This time I had to stealth kill three enemies within a 3 minutes, and the very next Informer mission was stealth kill five enemies in 5 minutes.

This might sound easy, except they were slightly spread out, the targets had a habit of lingering near guards; a couple were on rooftops; and, in a couple of instances, were surrounded by madmen or beggars. Add in that if you bump into anyone at speed while under scrutiny you're spotted and chased thus blowing the stealth part of your assignment and that the beggars will block your way while the madmen will actively shove you (and just you mind) if you get too close and just performing the stealth part becomes a chore; add in the time limit and I started swearing every time I'd completed the kills made my way almost back to the informer and then got shoved by a madman into a guard.

As well as completing all available tasks per mission I'd hoped to complete the Additional Memories section by offing Templars, and finding all the flags dotted about the map; hah! There are 60 Templars for the whole map including the city areas, there are 20 Masyaf Flags in Masyaf, 100 King Richard Flags in the Kingdom, 100 Saracen Flags in Damascus, 100 different ones in Acre split 33/33/34 between the districts and 100 Jerusalem Crosses in, well, Jerusalem.

That's 480 collectables to unlock the special memory and your reward for this - nothing. Oh you get an achievement in the XBox version and apparently you get some goodies to unlock in PS3 Home; but as part of the game itself nothing, no different ending, secret ending, extra weapons, different costumes - nothing. Now hey I'm all for collectables as the next gamer, but 480 with no reward - that's painful.