Review: Assassin’s Creed 2
Game: Assassin’s Creed 2
Format: XBox 360
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
In the world of entertainment there is an unwritten rule that sequels tend to be much worse than the original; the latest album from your favourite band is not quite as good as the previous album, your favourite author’s latest book just does not quite measure up to the last one, and the latest blockbuster sequel in the cinema comes across as being a bit samey and naff. Fortunately for those of us that play video games that same rule rarely applies, in fact you could easily say that the opposite is true. A prime example of this is Assassin’s Creed 2.
It is through playing this game that I have come to realise that just how bad the original Assassin’s Creed was. The original was a repetitive experience with a clumsy, cluttered, and incoherent narrative, full to the brim with pointless side missions and aimless flag collecting. It is almost like the developers thought of a series of ‘fun’ things to do with their impressive free running mechanic, but could not think of an actual reason to do any of those things. I am pleased to report that the team behind the sequel appear to have taken these criticisms to heart and have managed to make a far better game, with a wide variety of missions, and a beautiful open world to explore.
To set the scene, Assassin’s Creed 2 begins right where we left off at the end of the original; playing as Desmond Miles who has been captured by the modern day incarnation of the Knights Templar, and has been forced to relive the memories of his ancestors through a machine called the animus to discover the location of powerful ancient weapons called Pieces of Eden. As the game opens, Desmond is rescued by a small group of Assassins, the enemies of the Templars, and taken to their hideout and placed in their version of the animus in order to help them discover the secret of the Pieces of Eden. Fortunately the game opens with a flashback to the first game letting the player know the basics of what they need to know from the original’s story. This time, rather than controlling Desmond’s ancestor Altair during the Crusades, you control another one of Desmond’s ancestors Ezio Auditore in 15th Century Florence, Italy. Ezio is a young noble man when the game begins, but before long his family are betrayed, causing his father and two brothers to be hung for treason. Ezio retreats in to the mountains of Tuscany with his mother and sister where he meets his Uncle Mario, who trains him in the family business in order to get revenge on those who wronged his family.
During your travels you will venture to other cities, such as Venice and Rome, and the countryside between them. The mission structure of old – go research your target, return to the Assassin’s Bureau, go kill target – is gone. Now the game features a more dynamic and expansive mission structure with numerous types of missions, ranging from simple assassinations, to horse and cart riding, to prison breaks. There are a series of side missions that revolve around solving platforming puzzles to discover secret assassin tombs, and discovering hidden glyphs that have been hacked in the environment through the animus. When examining these glyphs you must solve a series of puzzles which are mainly picture hunt mini games with various key figures in history using the pieces of Eden. Other side missions include races, courier missions, and assassinations.
The controls have had a number of little tweaks made to improve them
Unlike the original you are able to blend in to any crowd of people just by standing in the middle of them. When you have successfully blended your character and the characters that shield you turn black and white. If you find that there are not enough civilians in an area to blend with, then you can hire prostitutes, mercenaries, or thieves in order to create some cover. Your hired help can also be directed at guards in order to create a distraction allowing you to sneak past unnoticed. As with the original you have a notoriety metre which determines how visible you are to guards – with a full metre guards will attack you on sight. In the original you only had to hide for a few moments to become inconspicuous, however in the sequel you have to try a lot harder to become anonymous. In order to become anonymous you must either assassinate an official, bribe a herald, or find wanted posters and pull them down. Amusingly these wanted posters tend to be high up out of the view of ordinary citizens, so they are actually very impractical as a means of identifying wanted criminals.
If you are forced in to fighting the guards you can now disarm enemies and use their own weapons against them, and the countering is a lot more forgiving.
There are a number of new enemies, including large armoured guards armed with either long swords, axes, hammers, or spears, all of which you can take from their dead bodies and use. While the weapons you loot from dead bodies cannot be kept for very long, you can purchase a number of various swords and knives, each with different properties from blacksmiths located all around town. Your armour can also be upgraded and repaired at the blacksmith. Every item you purchased can be accessed from your uncle’s villa in the hills if ever you feel the need to change equipment. Speaking of your uncle’s villa, you can invest your money in the town it is located in with the aim of making it more prosperous and improving the daily income the town will provide for you as it’s patron. There are a number of collectible items in the game, and unlike the original, these collectibles actually contribute towards unlocking items, and improving your town’s economy.
There are 30 pages of the Assassin’s Codex hidden around the world which when translated can be used to upgrade your equipment and increase your health. The most important Codex entries are earned by completing missions, so you will not be able to miss out on the best upgrades. It is worth noting that in order to access the final level you must have all 30 Codex pages, but that should be no problem by that point.
One of the new upgrades is a second wrist blade, meaning you can kill two targets at once.
As with the original, Assassin’s Creed 2 features real life historical figures as characters, such as the translator of your Codex entries, Leonardo Davinci, and people like Niccolo Machiavelli and Pope Alexander VI. Each city has a number of famous landmarks, and while I cannot attest to the accuracy of the city design, the cities have a very authentic look to them, especially Venice. The story takes place over the course of about 15 years and while the city does not change very much over that time they do a decent job of making each period of time fairly distinctive, such as the section of the game that takes place during the Venice carnival. A day and night cycle has been added to the game, and the guards change shift at dawn and dusk, which can give you the chance to sneak in easily. However you would need to either be incredibly fortunate to stumble upon this realisation, or just a very patient person, especially when you can just hire a group of people to distract the guards, or even just chuck a handful of coins on the floor and sneak in during the commotion. Still, I guess it is nice to have the option.
The depiction of Venice in particular is very impressive
It may seem as if the entire purpose of this review has been to criticise the original, but at the time I enjoyed Assassin’s Creed a great deal despite it’s flaws. I make the comparisons between the two games, apart from the obvious reason, because the sequel truly improves upon almost every issue that any one could have had with the original. The only real issue with the game is that at times during combat the camera angles can be counter productive, often obscuring your view behind a tree or a crate, when in tight spaces. Other camera issues can occasionally cause you to veer off in the wrong direction, which can be frustrating when in a situation where you need to have precise control over your character. There may also be a slight issue with accessibility with the story, as if you have not played the original then it may come across as being a little confusing at first. Considering the fact that the game has a lengthy story with dozens of side missions and collectibles to discover, and so few substantial flaws, it is hard not to recommend to everyone.
REVIEW ROUND UP:
GRAPHICS: 4/5 The environments are incredibly detailed and some of the character models are very detailed. However there are a few characters that look very bad in comparison to the others.
SOUND: 5/5 The music, while being subtle, is very good and suitably dramatic when needs be. The voice acting is impressive.
GAMEPLAY: 4/5 There are a wide variety of mission types spread out through the main story, with a number of side missions. Improvements to the combat and general mechanic of anonymity make the game a lot more playable than the original.
LONGEVITY: 5/5 Including collectible feathers, crests, codex pages, and statues that actually unlock special items can keep you playing after completing the lengthy story mode.
OVERALL: 5 Assassinations out of 5 – A nice long single player experience that does not outstay it’s welcome, featuring a nice mix of missions, and collectibles that are actually fun to search out.
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Just started playing this and already I feel like saying “THANK FUCK THIS IS BETTER THAN THE FIRST ONE”. Shall get a review up of the first one soon but by god this one is great.
I really want to play this. I loved the first game, even though it had a big problem with repetition and there should have been more customization. But looks like they’ve fixed all that so I’m going to love this one even more methinks!
As you can no doubt tell, I really enjoyed it.
This may be a bit of a spoiler, so I shall leave a bit of space…
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You have a fist fight with the Pope at the end of the game!
Such a good game, completed it, got 1000GS and now I’m playing it through again in Italian for that extra air of authenticity
I aim to get all 1000gs in this too, but I’ve been so busy recently with Left 4 Dead 2, Lego Rockband, Modern Warfare 2… URGH!