Assassin's Creed Review by Hangman
Assassin's Creed 2: Hurtling through the air cross renaissance Italy’s rooftops has never been more fun. With Assassin’s Creed 2 almost all the flaws that were so present in the first game have been rectified and have made the second iteration of the franchise on the major platforms and the second game of the trilogy a smash hit. This one, much more than the first is worth the valuable little time most of us have for games.
Assassin's Creed 2 Official WebsiteAs with any game on Consoles, the graphics have started to lag behind those of the PC. Now some of you might say, “But wait, look at Uncharted 2 or Halo 3” or really any game singled out for its great looks on today’s consoles. Yes you are right, but even those games have nothing on PC games like Crysis. Sure, PC games like crisis need to be run on rigs most third world countries could not afford but even so, the graphics of current consoles in my belief are starting to show age.
This by no means implies I am saying this game does not look good. Far from it, this game looks amazing on consoles given their abilities, but gamers used to the power of modern PC games, like myself who can run Crysis Warhead on every singe thing maxed in DX10, will notice a difference.
On my HD TV though I don’t really care how the graphics compared because they still looked amazing. Especially the care given to the world inhabited by Ezio and his marry band of Assassins.
The first game really suffered from some of the blandest textures I have ever seen in a game for the 360. Everything was in some shade of grey brown or grey green. This time around though the colors are vibrant and bring to life Italy in the late 1400’s.
to compare, the top is the first game and the bottom is the second game:
To match the new beef up in the graphics department, Ubisoft has also really upped the gameplay element. At its core is still the idea of killing Templers but other than that things have really taken a turn for the better in AC2. No more endless amounts of the same horribly repetitive missions that you needed to complete. This second game is all focused on the story. Side missions have become exactly that, side missions. No more need to do a certain number of side missions to progress. Doing side missions has become completely optional.
And the missions of the main story are not just the same rehashed versions of missions from the first game. These missions require a lot more thought and are much more enjoyable to complete. My favorites, though there were only two or three of them were the tailing missions. These missions consisted of following a target around. Of course it’s not that simple. The target would often run through restricted areas you could not directly follow him through. This meant getting on roofs and using all your climbing ability not to loose sight of the target for too long. And of course once you’re on the roofs the roof guards weren’t just going to let you go scot-free. Though these may not seem fun, I truly enjoyed them, especially once your targets became more agile and started using the roofs too.
But even so, many of the side adventures that can be had are well worth adding to the list of things to do when playing AC2, especially the tombs of former Assassins that allow you to in the end receive a very special gift. These tombs harkened back to the days of real puzzle solving platformers and are amazing fun to play through.
Another great part about the gameplay was the real lack of cut scenes to drive the story. Most of the story was told through gameplay. Cut scenes really only came into play as short intermissions that never felt too long or drawn out. This to me was one of the best aspects of the story telling, the missions you did really pertained to the story and were not just mainly irrelevant tasks meant to get you too the next cut scene like in many other games.
And, as for all the irritating intermissions from the first game that involved aimlessly walking around as Desmond, those have all but disappeared. There are only three times that you play as Desmond. Right in the beginning, once in the middle of the game and then during the end credits. And each time you play as him it is essential to the overall story of the trilogy.
As for the controls, this is where it can get a bit tricky. I found them fairly easy to use, but my girlfriend was pretty much incapable of controlling Ezio, which was sad because she really wanted to play and she loved the story. One time she even made me play so we could find out what happens. Most of the complaints from her and from around the net seem to focus on the sensitivity of the controls. Most people say they are too twitchy. I don’t find so but I am used to games that have very twitchy controls like Forza 2 (I don’t have a wheel so I have to put up with the controllers massive amount of steering input for the tiniest movements).
And then there is combat. The combat in the first game was ok but nothing too stellar. If AC2 forgot to fix anything from the first game it was the combat. It is still the same one button attack of the first. Thankfully though your assassin blades can now be used as a real weapon and not just to sneak up on people for behind and kill. If anything, I think if the one button system had been kept but buffed up with optional combos the entire system would have been better. It would have allowed the combat to play as complexly or as simply as the player would have wanted.
And how was the sound? Surprisingly good. The background music was never obtrusive but clearly matched with the surroundings and the action happening on screen. Unlike a game like CoH that has been heralded for its amazing sound design, AC2 is nothing special in that department. But the sound design of the game is not detrimental to the overall enjoyment so I think the overall score is not impacted either positively or negatively by it.
Now is the replayability of this game? Honestly, I don’t know. The game clocks in at around 15 hours if you just storm through the main story but with so many other things to do this time can easily be pushed up to 25-30 hours. But once I played through it have I had a yearning to replay it? Not right now. But I think maybe in a year or two when I am looking for a good game to play with nothing interesting new coming out, I might well just pick AC2 up again.
Final Summary and Rating: Over all this is one of the best games I have played so far this year. And it was the first game that actually exceeded expectations. Most games are so over hyped that they become a total letdown. Can anybody say MW2 single player? This game had a good deal of marketing behind it but it never got to the level that it made me feel that the game could never be as good as they said. And it’s true, I really love this game.
The game was fun to play and entertaining and has a story that wants to make you learn more. Something that I think has been missing from games in the last few years. Given all of that, and some of minor miss steps I would say a solid 4.5 stars out of 5. I recommend anybody with a 360 or a PS3 to pick this up. And if you have to wait for the PC version, it's out in January 25th, 2010.
