OneMetal.com REVIEW:
Assassin’s Creed 2

Ubisoft Montreal’s third person action-adventure title Assassin’s Creed was released in November 2007. Despite being critically well received, it was frequently noted that the game was not without its faults. Although the core gameplay elements, combat free-running etc, were fantastic and very well developed, the repetitive nature of the game lent it to ultimately become boring. There just wasn’t enough ‘game’ in there. There were suggestions that the delivery date was brought forward and perhaps the game was brought to market before it was ready.

Now we have the release of the second instalment in what was always promised to be a trilogy. One of the few titles that were brave enough to go head-to-head with the mighty ‘Modern Warfare 2′ with a November 09 release date; Assassins Creed 2 had a lot to do.

The story so far

Assassin’s Creed 2, as with its predecessor, is set in the future. During the first outing the games protagonist, Desmond Miles, was kidnapped and made to re-live the genetic memories of his ancestor Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad during the Third Crusade in the Holy Land in 1191. It becomes apparent that there has been a long struggle between two factions, the Knights Templar and the Assassins, over artefact’s known as “Pieces of Eden”.

The ending of Assassin’s Creed had a few people a little disappointed. Its focus was to set up a trilogy, and so not all the questions raised were given satisfactory answers and players were left feeling a little short changed.

Assassin’s Creed 2 picks up immediately after the events of the first title, and once again Desmond Miles finds that he needs to revisit the memories of his ancestors to unlock the secrets of the present.

The Italian connection

This time around the player assumes the role of a young nobleman-turned-assassin named Ezio Auditore da Firenze in the late 15th century in Italy, during the Renaissance. The story of Ezio begins with the seeking of revenge on rival families that conspired to murder his father and brothers. The objective is to help train Desmond to reach his potential as an Assassin, and also to help find the mysterious Pieces of Eden.

Ezio’s story and character are much richer then Altaïr’s. The plot stretches out across an immense amount of Italy, through Florence to San Gimignano, Forlì, Venice and eventually to Rome. Along the way, he encounters several allies that assist in his pursuit, including Leonardo da Vinci who helps build you weapon upgrades.

The plot is mostly Ezio’s with only the occasional elements set in the ‘present day’ with Desomnd, The story is interesting and, for the most part, engaging. Occasionally towards the end I started not to care about the story, and felt it lost its way with a few too many repetitive ideas. However they learned there lessons, and the game ends well enough. A nice, if not slightly predictable plot twist gave way to enough answers to satisfy you, whilst leaving it ready for a sequel.

Gameplay

Freeruning feels much faster and smoother this time around. Ezio responds to the merist suggestion from the controller with impressive accuracy, and its all executed with stunningly beautiful character animations.

At no point do you feel that you have to ‘try’ and climb something, if it looks like it can be climbed, it can be. If it looks like you could grab a ledge, you can. So many games have gotten this wrong in the past, and forced players into frustrating experiments with the environment. Only vary very rarely would Ezio fling himself into a hopeless void as a result of a miss understood controller movement.

Combat is equally smooth. Once the basic mechanics had been learnt, Ezio could easily hold back large numbers of angry enemies, and with timing and a little co-ordination take them all out with a bewildering array of stunningly cool combat moves. Again the merist suggestion from the controller would have Ezio react as desired, and the reward for well timed attack or counter is a brutal and quick death for your enemy.

There are whole bunch of weapons that can be bought or earned, and taking an enemies weapon from them adds even more options. Each weapon has specific combat and kill moves, all incredibly well animated. The combat mechanic is such that if you get your timing wrong, you are going to be in for a long scrappy fight, but get it right and its over in seconds.

Occasionally you get the feeling that the enemies are just waiting around to get hit. And when there are so many of them you have to wonder why the don’t just rush you.

Assasination moves are in another league of cool however. Calmly walking towards three guards that stand between you and your objective, they don’t know you, they are not alerted. With a quick step forward you take two out at the same time with wrist blades to the head, as the second one step back in shock.. you step forward and take him out with a blade to the stomach. Its over in seconds and you quietly walk away into the crowd. You feel like a super cool assassinating machine, which is exactly how the game wants you too feel.

All this is based on your position and timing, get it wrong and you could end up only taking one out in the first move, and then find yourself in a costly sword fight, with as the surviving guards calling for re-enforcements. The real genius of this game is that you know when you are going to get it right, you instinctively know how to tell the game what you want to do, and its all very satisfying.

The game seems a little easier then the previous incarnation, with upgraded armour and lots of ‘medicine’ to constantly replenish your health mean you are rarely in danger of falling in combat. Money is also never in too short a supply for upgrades. You can even invest in art and renovations to your own Villa which will provide you with a steady stream of income from ‘tourists’. If you do this early on, there is soon so much money about that there is little need to take on many of the games many side missions or hunt treasure. Infact you begin to wonder why you don’t’ just hire an assassin to do your job for you.

Environments, Art Style And Graphics

It takes a fair bit to impress me these days. Games are looking better and better, and the days of persistent fog to hide short draw distance are long gone. But even with my cynical blase attitude Assassin’s Creed 2 made me stop and think ‘damm that looks good’ more then once. The maps are huge, the detail and texture maps are stunning the draw distance emence, the technical achievement is nothing short of breathtaking. Nothing looks out of place, nothing felt false or artificial, and everything looked beautiful. Running over the roof tops sometimes felt like a waste, when walking around the streets was such an immersive experience.

The games isn’t just pretty, the voice acting is excellent. Every characters, even minor ones, are all delivered with excellent performances.

Not quite perfect

Way back in the day (1998 to be exact) Eidos Interactive (now part of Square Enix) published a PC game called ‘Thief: The Dark Project’ created by the excellent, but sadly doomed ‘Looking Glass Studios’. It was the first stealth game to use light and sound as gameplay mechanics, and it was a stunning game. You can’t help but feel that Assassins Creed is the 2009 equivalent of that title but Ironically, I think that it could well have learned some lessons from its ancestor.

Thief had a great sense of stealth which I felt was oddly lacking in Assassins Creed. A lot of what you were doing was rather overt for an Assassin. There was no hiding in shadows, no real need to hide the bodies of your victims. The guards didn’t tend to follow any behaviours that you needed to pay attention to much, maybe following the same short path around in circles, pausing occasionally for no real reason, other then to let you assassinate them. There was no opportunity to swap clothes to infiltrate a room as in another Eidos’s Classic the ‘Hitman’ series. With such a rich and impressive game, these kinds of elements felt strangely missing.

Somtimes the motivations of the charecters seem a little uncertain. Ezio seems to regularly form alliances with people he just met in a manor that seems somewhat at odds with the treacherous and uncertain world in which he lives.

You no longer need to complete a set number of side mission in order to progress the main story, which was a minor frustration of the previous title. Mostly because the variation of the side missions was so minimal. Despite this Assassin’s Creed 2 is a long game (at least 20 hours for the main quest) and it frequently adds new ideas into the mix, or new places to explore to keep it from becoming monotonous. However because of the length of the game, the increase in variety and activities still begins to wear thin towards the end.

There is still a fair amount of repetition, and no matter how spectacular the view you do become a little tired of climbing the games 66 viewpoints and hunting the 30 codex pages. The later are needed to complete the game I might add. And frankly I couldn’t have cared less about collecting the games 100 feathers, but apparently there are some completionists that like that kind of thing.

It would have been nice if such a beautifully rendered stage could have put on a better and more varied performance.

See it in action

Gallery