Assassin's Creed 2 review

Assassin's Creed 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to the third-person-assassination game, Assassin's Creed. It follows the protagonist Desmond Miles as he dives into the memories of his ancestors; a well connected assassin's who fight against the Templar's. Desmond's latest ancestor is a young Italian man named Ezio who lived in the Renaissance.

A bit about our main character, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, this means, "Ezio Auditore from Florence." I'm not sure why Ezio's name has the addition of "From Florence", but the game does make mention of Leonardo Da Vinci and explains, "Like many destined to be superstars, he had no surname, Vinci being the town in which he was born." Further research explained that there weren't such things as last names so people who attach their profession and birthplace onto their names.

Ezio is the newest member of Desmond's family tree, as he is the latest ancestor Desmond possesses. Ezio is a complete ladies man, even if he throws off a bit of a gay vibe. Within the first 15 or so minutes, you've already quick-time evented with a very pretty young lady, and as you progress further, you make friends with a madam who obviously wants to do naughty things to Ezio (free of charge, of course.)

Gameplay is very similar to Assassin's Creed 1 with high profile fighting and low profile socially acceptable moves. High profile is still amazingly frustrating and makes you want to snap your controller into a thousand tiny pieces in some of the more intricate parts of the game (Assassin's Tombs, etc) and this ancestor still suffers from "I don't want to go around the object, I want to run up the object" stupidity.

Ubisoft listened to the criticism of the first Assassin's Creed game and took out the mandatory "do these missions to get information on your target" bits, but the game now seems to be a bit lax without them. The first game seemed to be stealthier with some of the mandatory missions, and now it's just "Raaagh! Ezio want revenge!" There are side-missions to do, but without the need to do them, I rarely felt bothered to do them. Some of the side puzzles are interesting and insanely infuriating. Although it was fun trying to figure out the link between Joan of Arc and Attila the Hun with my mum, who found the puzzles as find brain teasers. She's the show off who figured it out in 5 minutes after it took me 20.

Enemies come in varying levels of difficulty. From the common foot soldier, to the big blokes in the huge suits of armour with swords and axes the size of a large dog which make you go, "Welp, retreating is always a good plan." But with the new arsenal of weapons like duel wrist blades and upgradeable swords and daggers, they enemies become easier to deal with as long as you know where everyone is. But the combat is still very shallow and boring, like in the first game. Hopefully a little variation in the next game will be a great, and much needed improvement.

Assassin's Creed 2 also offers very limited customisation which is an improvement from Assassin's Creed 1. Synchronisation isn't gained by learning new abilities like in Assassin's Creed 1; you upgrade your armour and your weapons with money which, by the time you get half way through the game, you'll be rolling in it, but it's still not enough to upgrade to the best armour. Start saving now.

The game contains interesting titbits about the area Ezio is exploring, which somehow makes me relate to the game more. I've always been interested in history, and in a game that tries to make fiction in a non-fictional place, it makes you believe that something like this could have happened. There is always information available on characters and places which is fun to read.

The script for Assassin's Creed had a small case of the gremlins in my opinion. Everything seemed very... generic, script wise. Assassin's Creed 2 is much different. The characters are very well written and the game makes some amazing jokes. Ezio tells one of his enemy's that his sister, "didn't mind the handling he gave her last night" after said enemy accuses Ezio of getting others to handle his dirty work. Ezio's mother is also a delight. She says one of the funniest things in the entire game and it had me giggling for quite a while, but maybe I'm just immature. The NPC's also have their quips about why you're running up a wall, ("Why, it must be a drunken wager or something!") and the merchants will only but enjoying telling you that you only appeared to be poor when you buy something from them or sarcastically mutter, "No, I didn't think so" when you don't buy anything.

Assassin's Creed 2 continues the tradition of looking amazing like its predecessor. The game is bright and wonderful to look at, which is an improvement over the Assassin's Creed 1 Climbing up towers to gain viewpoints is still fun, and some towers are more difficult than others which makes the view from the top more exciting. There seems to have been more focus on detail in the buildings and surrounding world which makes it incredibly fun to explore.

Personally, I adore this game, even with its faults. There has been a lot of negativity about the game, and I don't see it. To love something truly, you accept the good with the bad. It's why I think that Psychonauts is the best game I've ever played. Even with the kind-of-bad controls, the game had a charm that I think was fantastic. This is the same reason I think Assassin's Creed is a great sequel. It's not the best executed game, it suffers from middle child syndrome (kind of like Empire Strikes Back - It was busy explaining more of the story) but it still serves a purpose and is great to play.

Honey, I'm home!

After a suggestion from my friend, Seth, I decided to start a blog to improve my writing skills. What exactly I'll write about is a mystery, but I'm tossing up between a run-down of my week, a or a "This week in gaming news" blog since games are a huge part of my life and despite the bad rap they get, are incredibly interesting. Even a gaming review blog since I'm writing a review for Assassin's Creed 2, so look out for that, Internet!

And speaking of Assassin's Creed 2, who here has heard about the absurd DRM that Ubisoft has come up with? For those who haven't (although, if you haven't, you should probably crawl back under you internet-less rock) Ubisoft require new PC games like Assassin's Creed 2 to be connected to the internet while playing and if your connection drops, the game will pause until a connection can be re-established to a Ubisoft server then the game will continue. While I think that the idea is crazy, bonkers backwards, the problem can be easily rectified - Don't pirate. Although, I think the people who are working on a crack for DRM like this find it as a challenge, they're not doing anything to help the problem.

Anyway, I think that's enough from me for this evening.

~Rade.