Never Not A Nerd

A lot of people really liked the first Assassin’s Creed.  Some journalists went completely crazy over it and named it their game of the year for 2007.  For a while I was one of those people who liked it.  That was because I played it over the course of two years.  When I realized Assassin’s Creed 2 was going to be coming out soon I figured I should finish the first game. That became the first time I played it for extended periods of time, and I HATED a lot of it.  There was only about seven things to do in the entire game.  Sure, getting around the game world was fun,  but it didn’t excuse that ending.

So here we are.  The second Assassin’s Creed was released two years after the first (sorry I waited so long to write and post this review of it), and many people are having even better reactions to it than they did the first.  Has this praise been well-deserved or is Assassin’s Creed 2 going to make people who felt suckered by the first game say “shame on me” ?

Assassin’s Creed 2 is the continuation of the story of a man named Desmond Miles.  Desmond is not an Assassin at all, but is supposedly the ancestor of, what is now, a couple of great Assassin’s.  When you start in the animus as your ancestor Ezio Auditore, he’s not an assassin.  He is merely a 15th Century Italian playboy with a wild spirit.  Once his father is betrayed and he and Ezio’s brothers are hung,  Ezio vows to avenge them and bring everyone involved to justice.  This equates to him becoming an assassin and you, through Desmond, controlling him all the way through it.

YAY :

• Combat, while fairly easy to get a hold of, is fun.  They added the ability for you to parry with your hidden blade, which is a big plus when fighting with that equipped.  The counter kills are still as fun. The arsenal has also expanded giving you two hidden blades, a pistol, a poison-tipped hidden blade(which can only be used stealthily), smoke bombs for escapes, and the ability to counter with your bare hands to steal enemy weapons. These weapons include spears, two-handed swords, and axes.  This is all aside from the weapons you had access to in in AC1 like the main weapon you carry with you, your dagger, and your throwing knives. You also now have the ability to, through money you have gained, purchase different types of weapons and ‘ammo’ (throwing knives and bullets).  Some of the weapons you can buy range from Arabian looking swords to battle hammers, and even heavy mauls.
• The game world is open, but separated into different cities.  The larger cities missions take place in are Florence, Tuscany, Forli, and Venice. The mission structure is also set-up a lot more like Grand Theft Auto.  There’s no more ‘complete 4 of these 6 tasks in order to unlock the assassination mission’. The majority of the missions have nothing to do with assassinations and some of them don’t even involve killing.  It’s a nice change of pace from the first game. They also included a nice side mission system where you can do completely optional things that include delivery missions, beating up unfaithful husbands, racing to beat a thief’s time through the city, or assassination missions you get from pigeon coups.
• They did a good job of using real historical figures and locations and weaving them within the plot.  There’s a database system where you can access information on buildings in the cities and the real stories of some of the game’s characters.
• The Truth puzzles are one of the best reasons to play through this game.  They kind of have a Da Vinci Code feel to them, but they mostly consist of you selecting paintings that match a theme, rearranging paintings, or solving a sort of number/image puzzle. When you solve the riddle you get a video clip that is around 2 seconds long and out of sequence from the rest.  If you solve all 20 you can watch the whole video in sequence for a big revelation pertaining to the story.
• The environment, as in the first game, is one of the best aspects of this sequel.  Climbing to the top of building’s to get an Eagle eye view is great and one of my favorite parts of this franchise.
• You get a city to call your own, Villa Auditore, where you can spend money to make money, so to speak.  The more you upgrade the buildings the more they are then worth.  You get a percentage of your city’s total worth every 20 minutes. So, if you put some money into it in the beginning having enough money for things doesn’t become an issue later in the game.
• The cities are also much more alive than in AC1.  As I alluded to before there are blacksmiths who sell weapons, armor, and ammo.  They also fix standard armor, because it gets damaged as you use it. Doctors sell health potions and poison, because apparently too much medicine becomes poison (then why can i carry an insane amount of health potions? See the Nay section).  Tailors will dye your clothes and sell you larger pouches for knives and potions. Art merchants sell maps with the location to treasure boxes and paintings for your home base, Villa Auditore.
• There are also many other ways to use the cities to your advantage.  Unlike in the first game there is no button to blend. You simply blend by walking within a crowd of townspeople. If you feel like sneaking into an area  like a true assassin, instead of killing the guards and making a loud entrance, you can hire a group to help you out.  There are thieves, mercenaries, and courtesans. Thieves and courtesans will lead the soldiers you highlight away by either stealing from them or taking them by the hand and leading them away, respectively. Courtesans will also help you get around the city while notorious, as walking with them makes you virtually unseen to guards. Mercenaries will fight any guards that are trying to fight you or that you tell them to, making them excellent allies in missions where stealth isn’t really necessary.
• The money system is also used to add more variety to just walking around a city. Money can be used to reduce notoriety level by paying off town criers, and it can be thrown on the ground to attract townspeople and slow guards during chases.  If you’re low on money you can loot it from the bodies of dead guards, or just pickpocket it from people you bump into it.
• Falling into water doesn’t equal an instant death, or I guess desynchronization in this game world.  You can actually swim to reach certain destinations more stealthily.

NAY :

• Like I said in the ‘Yay’ section the combat is fun, but a lot of the time it feels too easy to dispatch a ridiculous amount of foes and not even come close to dying. As I mentioned before, you now have the ability to buy and carry health potions that refill your health bar (earlier in the game it refills entirely, later on it refills it about half-way).  You can also buy better armor and a larger pouch for health potion as the game progresses and you amass more wealth. By the end of the game I had it to the point where I was wearing the most resistant armor, which increased my health bar to the maximum level and I had a pouch that carried fifteen health potions.  Yes, FIFTEEN health potions.  I think I died three-four times throughout the entire game, which I played for around a total of 39 hours, and each time was because I either fell off of a building or I misjudged a jump.  I never died due to fighting an enemy in the game. Not even once.
• This kind of has to do with the combat in a sense, but the A.I. is very dumb.  While they sometimes block your counter attempts, which they didn’t in the first game, you can use your hidden blades to kill all four soldiers in a group walking around a city.  The guys in front pay no attention to the fact that you just offed a guy walking right behind him.
• I know they improved the graphics during the cut-scenes, which in the first game looked like ass, and in this game still don’t look that great for a game of this caliber; but don’t change the characters attributes themselves.  If you finished the first game you might remember that the Lucy character proved she was an Assassin by showing you how the top half of her ring finger was missing to accommodate a hidden blade. Well, Ezio’s buddy Leonardo Da Vinci figured out how to modify the blade to work without removing your finger, and suddenly in the present Lucy has her finger back on her hand again.  This is kind of a minor and nit-picky gripe, but do you really think I’m the ONLY person that notices things like this?
• Regardless of what I said about the history and locations the story is really dumb at times.  Do you want some examples? How about the people who help you escape from the Templar run Abstergo (the setting of the first game) also have an animus and it’s supposedly better than the one the highly funded corporation had? How about the ending? Whatever it is you think is the ending in the game, because I thought it could have been over at a couple of points. All of those points of the plot are ridiculous.

If you hated the first Assassin’s Creed you’re probably not going to be swayed by the changes made in Assassin’s Creed 2. Because even though there are many changes, none of them feel completely game changing.  If you’re someone who liked the first game a good amount, but were annoyed by the flawed mission structure and the overall repetition found in it (like I was), than this game is probably for you as the slight increase in variety will most likely satisfy you enough to play through the entire game.