REVIEW: Assassin's Creed II (Xbox 360)

Ubisoft Montreal is back with their second installment of the video game that created some buzz back in 2007.  Assassin's Creed II hit stores last week, and the fact that I'm reviewing it so soon will either tell you it royally sucked, or royally kicked some assassin ass.

Care to take a guess?

Seriously.  Take a guess.

I'm not telling you until you guess.


It rocked the shit man, it really rocked the shit.  Let's break it down.

This game is a sequel to the original Assassin's Creed through and through.  I will go into more about the game's details in a bit, but for me, one of the greatest reasons this game is a success is because the best elements from the original were retained almost verbatim, and the worst elements from the originals were almost completely worked out.  It's truly amazing how much thought was put into each and every segment of this game.

The 2007 Assassin's Creed tells the story of Altair, a member of a clan of Assassin's around the year 1200.  The group of Assassin's are mortal enemies of the Templar Knights, whose influence is widespread, and you, Altair the Assassin, need to find locations of Templar's and kill them.  Each assassination attempt began by starting the mission at your home town, acquiring new weapons and intelligence, then jumping on horse, going to the city, finding more information through mandatory side missions, and then making the final assassination.  One mission, one assassination.

The 2009 version of Assassin's Creed (AC2) tells the story of Ezio Auditore da Firenze told in the late 15th Century.  Ezio is born to a noble family in Florence, Italy and learns his Assassin abilities as he goes.  The 12th Century versions of Templar Knights (both in real history and in the game) have long since disbanded, but maintain their organization through hidden factions across the world.  Instead of each mission feeling like a disconnected "level" of a video game, each memory sequence feels like individual events that are woven into a larger story.

You are playing as Ezio, and learning things as Ezio learns them.  Whereas the original takes a hackneyed beginning (start as a bad ass dude, and lose your abilities to learn them back and then some) you literally start the game as Ezio when Ezio is born, and you need to "fight" for your survival from birth.  While playing the first game I literally played it on a volume level of Zero.  The dialogue was worthless, and for every minute of dia/monologuing there was about 0.5 seconds worth of actual information.  It was actually an art the way they talked in circles for the first game.  AC2 on the flip side was a game that had me playing louder than other games, and hanging on every word.  Let's get to the details.

GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is cribbed almost literally from the first one.  Walking, running, jumping, climbing and fighting.  It is an almost 1-for-1 carbon copy.  99 times out of every 100 this is never a good thing in my eyes.  I'm still very critical of the PS3's controllers as not having changed from the PS1 design - I don't care if it's good, enhance the damn thing!  This is one of those times where it really works.  AC1 had a lot of problems, and the "walking, running, jumping, climbing and fighting" was so good in the first game that it made its play worth while.  In AC2,  the genius's at Ubisoft Montreal managed to change almost nothing, add a few tweaking pieces, and in the end enhance the experience.  You will read about slight difficulties with the controls, such as jumping to an undesired location, or not being able to do exactly what you'd like to do.  The motions and the engine used are so complicated that I can forgive these issues.  As a quick note, I found myself holding back a bit more while going through the cities so that I could have more control.  To run in the game you press and hold Right Trigger (RT) while moving the Left Analog Stick (LS), and to sprint and perform parqour-like motions you add the A Button to the equation.  While running along rooftops I found myself releasing A much more to continue a somewhat quick path, without leaping off to the ground accidentally.

Oddly enough, that enhanced my appreciation of the game.  AC1 allowed you to just plow through and scale up any wall, but in AC2 I found myself forcing myself to think about every single move made.  Scaling walls has been made much more difficult.  Although the engine remains the same, the location of scalable objects (hooks, windows, and ledges) have been placed so that you need to circle around most buildings and towers.  It's really genius, as it forces you to tactically scale these vertical surfaces, and you gain a true appreciation for the climbing and running engine.

One criticism I've heard was regarding to the fighting, how when fighting multiple enemies only one will attack at a time.  That isn't necessarily true, because I was definitely in fights where I was attacked from three NPCs at once, but this isn't a completely inaccurate criticism.  My method of fighting was to equip the hidden blade weapon, and make attempts at counter attacks (which with the hidden blade were instant kills for all "killable" characters - some characters and bosses cannot be killed at certain times, equip the sword at this point), which at times became somewhat repetitive.  Fortunately, the repetition that plagued AC1 ended here.

PLOT
Similar to the original, AC2 allows for side stories, and side missions - very similar to the