Assassin’s Creed 2 Review (PS3)

Potential game of the year

What happens when game companies listen to their supporters? Something as solid as Assassin’s Creed 2, that’s what. Despite being a great game, the original Assassin’s Creed was heavily criticised for becoming bogged down in repetition far too quickly, and a fantastic premise eventually became something of a grind fest. Thankfully, Ubisoft were prepared to invest a good amount of time into strengthening these foibles, and have produced a strong contender for game of the year.

Assassin’s Creed 2 starts (quite literally) at the end of the previous game, with the player controlling Desmond, a man with Assassin’s blood who can access memories of his ancestors using a machine called an Animus. Some knowledge of the previous game really is required in order to follow the story, but the basic gist is something as follows: Powerful artifacts exist in the world called Pieces of Eden. Most have been lost throughout time, being used to shape the destiny of the world at key moments (The Crusades, Civil Wars, etc.). A shadowy organisation of people (represented in this game by a giant corporation called Abstergo) have been pulling the strings of world power for centuries, and require these lost pieces in order to continue their reign. The key to finding them resides in the hidden ancestral memories of Desmond, who is recruited to search through historical worlds to find clues to the locations of the Pieces of Eden. However, Desmond is secretly recruited by the Assassin’s, a group dedicated to stopping Abstergo at every turn.

Confused? Basically, it boils down to you playing a different ancestor in each game, with this game taking place in Renaissance Italy. You take command of Ezio Auditore di Firenze, who through a string of circumstances ends up joining the order of Assassin’s in his own time, and coming into contact with further information regarding the Pieces of Eden along the way. Ezio is as agile as Altair from the first game, and is able to run, jump, climb, swing, swim, fight, hide and kill in even more ways than before. Thankfully, all these moves are necessary, as Ezio is required to assassinate, race, deliver mail, find hidden images, fight, protect, and much more in an even more detailed world than the last outing.

I just want to write a quick paragraph here to really draw attention to how truly stunning AC2 looks and moves. All the animations are fantastically fluid and smooth, character detail is tremendously high on both player and NPC models, and the scenery is amongst the best I have ever seen in a game. As you run from rooftop to tower, climbing and acrobatics are easy to perform and beautiful to behold. Ubisoft have also spent a considerable amount of time researching the cities as well, as all of the important buildings are correctly depicted, and stunning to behold. The art department certainly deserve all the acclaim they are receiving for their sterling work.

You never run out of interesting things to do, and at no point does playing feel like a chore.

This also allows for a great array of combat moves, with wonderfully flowing fight sequences becoming the norm, as Ezio battles angry guards in ever increasing groups. The only slight let down to this is that fights become very easy after a few basics moves are learned (I’m looking at you, counter attack!). However, this game really should be played using stealth and tact, and the options available are staggering. Guards blocking your path? No problem, hire some prostitutes to distract them, and then slip by unnoticed. Or wade in with your own group of fighters, starting some impressively large street fights. Perhaps you might climb over the rooftops instead, or poison one of the guards into going berserk, and attacking his comrades for you. The options are fantastic, and really allow you to feel in complete control of the proceedings.

The big issue with the original Assassin’s Creed was that fantastic visuals, a great story and compelling combat were wasted on a game determined to repeat the same old stuff for the whole game. By the time you were about 25% in, you had seen all it had to offer, and it became tired very quickly. AC2 loses this problem by a combination of slowly introducing new moves and techniques, and employing a far wider array of mission types. The maps show far greater variety too, and it is possible to navigate your way across a city without using your mini map after a while, such is the scenery on offer. AC2 also adds in a large variety of side missions, from villa management to Prince of Persia style plat-forming in hidden tombs. You never run out of interesting things to do, and at no point does playing feel like a chore.

So, any bad points? Well, the game is extremely easy, and this can put off a lot of hardcore gamers. I would argue that the point of this game is the journey, not the difficulty, but I could see where many people would consider the lack of a challenge detrimental. This is further worsened by a poor grasp of economics too. The game throws money at you from the get go, and it doesn’t require a lot of effort to build a palatial villa, stock the best weapons and armour, and still carry cash in voluminous quantities. This only really serves to lower further the already laughable difficulty level of the game, but since so much of the game is about exploration and discovery, I personally feel that this isn’t as big a deal as many others do.

One more big point I would like to make is regarding DLC: the game ships with two of the fourteen chapters locked (12 and 13 to be precise), to be released as paid for DLC in the New Year. This is (in my opinion) another example of an increasingly bad trend in gaming, as it appears that we are not getting a full game for our money. I have no qualms with DLC, and the idea of expansion packs is a great one (TES: Oblivion: Shivering Isles is a great example of good DLC), but it seems more and more companies are locking portions of a game to increase profit margins, at the expense of the player. The big issue here is, during the course of the game, you unlock a city which has very little to do besides a few side quests. This is the location for the two expansion packs, and it really does feel like blatant profiteering on the part of Ubisoft, as all the expansion data ships with the retail game. I hope this idea proves as unpopular to others as it does to me, and I will not be buying the content as a protest.

So, overall, AC2 is a fantastic game, with a big thumbs-up from me for all gamers. It really offers a great package with a large amount of playability, only slightly marred by a low difficulty. Anyone who played the first game should really have a copy already, as the overall tale is greatly enhanced with this chapter, and a new level of depth and polish is added to great effect. For newcomers, I would recommend playing the first game beforehand in order to follow the story, as it is an integral part of the world of Desmond, and the struggle against Abstergo, which to detail too
closely here will spoil the tale. I hope many people follow my example and refuse to follow the DLC model, in order to show our dislike of such milking tactics, but I also appreciate that I may just be a bit of a miser (age does bring on a new level of stinginess sometimes!). Action gamers will love it, puzzle and exploration gamers will love it, and people with an eye on aesthetics will love it too.