Where there’s honor amongst theieves there is brotherhoods amongst assassins
A brotherhood amongst thieves, I’ve heard of that, but of assassins? Never thought such a thing existed, but Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood shows us all that it does. The sequel that no one would have expected has arrived, and it in some ways is a pretty pleasant surprise. The gameplay is basically the same as the other two games in the series, but of course they’ve been refined and slightly fixed for even smoother gameplay. The combat now runs really smooth, instead of struggling to kill like ten enemies at once, you can get rid of them all with little effort. After killing an enemy you can pull off what is called an execution streak, to pull it off you need only push the directional stick towards an enemy and press the attack button and it’s an instant kill, unless they block of course. It makes you no longer dread combat when forced into a corner by tons of enemies.
An addition to the gameplay is the brotherhood. Before you even have a brotherhood you have to recruit assassins, you do so by finding spots on the map that have a certain mark or you accidentally get to a spot where a potential recruit is in trouble. To recruit them all you have to do is kill the guards harassing them. After you have a recruit you can then start to send them on missions to give them some experience to increase their level and in turn either increase their armor or health, which would be a very wise thing to do.
What the recruits also do is help you when you’re in trouble or want to eliminate guards without drawing any attention to yourself. Right under your health there are symbol like markings depending on how many recruits you have, each one of these spaces causes you to call two recruits to aid you or just stealthily get rid of some guards. They’re tons of help later on if you want to get full sync on the missions.
One little annoyance in the game is the full sync and 50 percent sync thing they do for each mission. You can either just complete each mission without doing this certain task and only achieve 50 percent sync or you can go for full sync. The thing that’s very annoying is that if you don’t care about getting full sync there is no way to get rid of the message that appears that tells you that you’ve failed full sync. It’s just a real pain being told you’ve failed something you weren’t even trying to do.
So unlike the previous two games you are not required to play as Desmond besides the beginning and end of the game. It’s kind of a shame the game doesn’t force you out of the animus at points because the parts with Desmond have always been my favourite parts of the game. You can of course leave the animus at any time and play as Desmond anyway, but there isn’t too much to do or figure out if you do, but there are some sort of things you can find that are slightly related to the overall story of Assassin ‘s Creed.
You’re talking about Assassin’s Creed right? How can there be multiplayer?
Next up, the story. I wasn’t really a fan of Altair’s story in the first game, but I was quite a bit more of a fan of Ezio’s story. Unfortunately this time around I’m stopped being a fan of Ezio’s story. It doesn’t really impress me nor does it really have any real relevance. Ezio’s part in Brotherhood could have easily either not existed or could have been a couple of cutscenes or missions as DLC for Assassin’s Creed II. Early on in the game the apple is stolen from you and you just have to get it back. It seems like it was just made as an excuse to have Desmond’s bigger part in the story held off until Assassin’s Creed 3 proper. The things making me want to continue playing were the fact that I was still having as much fun as I’ve had in the previous games and to find out what happens with Desmond.
At almost any time in the game whilst exploring Rome you can destroy Borgia towers, towers occupied by the enemy. After doing so you can then purchase stores, stables, and landmarks. Doing so is helpful in earning money in the game, although you won’t really need the money it’s still fun to do. How does it help earn money you ask? The more property you have, the more income you gain, you gain this income every 20 minutes and it is put in the bank. Be careful though there is a limit on how much money you can have in your bank, so don’t just leave all the money in there throughout the whole game.
There is another sort of disappointing factor in this game. The graphics of the game don’t impress, they look exactly like last year’s game. It’s not a huge disappointment or something I was expecting them to change, but it would be nice if they at least tried to amp up the graphics in this game. Also, the voice acting does the game just as much justice as it has in the past, which is a good thing and something they don’t need to change.
Now I’ve talked quite a bit about this game right, and I bet you’re ready to hear my verdict on the game, well hold on there. There is still more to talk about, the multiplayer. You may be thinking, “Wait a second, you’re talking about Assassin’s Creed right? How can there be multiplayer?” Well it does seem a bit unorthodox, but Ubisoft decided to add in a multiplayer component to it. It may be hard to comprehend, but it works just as well as the multiplayer in Halo or Call of Duty, quite possibly even better.
First off, the multiplayer is really great and fun, but it takes forever to get into a match at times, it seems like not many people are playing Brotherhood for the multiplayer as they should be, which is a real disappointment.
The multiplayer works really simply and it’s kind of beautiful how it works. You are assigned a target to assassinate and someone is assigned to assassinate you. Now whatever character you are, there are tons of the same looking NPCs as you and same goes for your target and everyone else. This multiplayer is one of patience, you have to blend in with the crowd and act like an NPC if you want to survive long enough to assassinate your target. But if your opponent is really good at blending in then it’ll be a huge challenge to find them.
Once you start playing with the people that have some experience with the multiplayer you’ll notice everyone in the world is acting like an NPC and you start to notice the finer details of what NPCs do. The multiplayer might create a sort of paranoia within itself, but that just makes the game more fun.
There is a lot to this game, definitely more than the previous Assassin’s Creed games and even enough to put it on the scale on Grand Theft Auto or Saint’s Row. It shocks and amazes me how many great things are in this game with the little time it took to develop this game. If Ubisoft can do this kind of game in a year, it would scare me what they could do with Assassin’s Creed 3 if they decided to hold off the release date by a year. But you’ve probably figured out this game is a definite buy,
especially for fans of the Assassin’s Creed series and newcomers. But with that, beware newcomers, you may not fully grasp the story without having at least played Assassin’s Creed II.
The Bad: Ezio’s story is too simple and uninspired