When it's cold, wet and generally pretty glum outside, don't you occasionally wish you could be whisked off somewhere warm, dry and a bit exotic? If you do, forget those last minute flight deals and have a sit down with Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles.

It's a 3D action adventure from Gameloft that takes you off to far-away sun-baked lands accompanied by strange eastern-sounding music. You play as accomplished thief Altair as he leaps and thieves his way through cities, castles and sewers in search of your fortune. As is inevitable when tangled into the fortunes of a criminal with a heart of gold, you get embroiled into a much larger plot concerning mystical artefacts.

Aside from the gradually escalating story, Assassin's Creed is otherwise a linear action plat former headed up by a particularly acrobatic front man. You can run up walls, slide along ledges and jump gracefully between the tiniest platforms.

You move Altair around using an analogue-style pad that sits in the bottom left of the screen, while jumping and lunging with your sword are managed with buttons on the other end. Although you're occasionally forced into it, combat doesn't play a huge role in the game, generally being a punishment for messing up some acrobatic manoeuvre. A hefty chunk of the game takes place on rooftops, where falling down often means falling into a gang of guards.

Altair may be slick, but his movements bring about the only real problem we have with Assassin's Creed. Filled with precarious jumps, whose failure to execute perfectly generally leads either to death or some significant re-treading of ground, you're left feeling like Altair may be smuggling a limp underneath his flowing garments.

This issue only comes to a head a few times in the game, where you're left re-trying a short passage of the game a good few times over before avoiding falling into some form of abyss. It only sticks in the memory because Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles is otherwise a top dollar production. The visuals are impressive, there's surprisingly good voice acting throughout and it lasts longer than the majority of iPhone games that burn as brightly as it does.

Altair's Chronicles follows in the heritage of Gameloft games, alongside titles like Hero of Sparta and Terminator Salvation that try to push the iPhone envelope in terms of presentation and scale of experience. Based on the DS game of the same name, this iPhone port proves its worth pretty much instantly just by virtue of the fact it costs a fraction of the price.