Assassin's Creed II

The Good
The Original Assassin's Creed game was a good start; it had a unique and fascinating story and Ubisoft's Scimitar engine is arguably one of the best engines created but not just for the pretty graphics - it perfected platforming controls. No other game with platforming elements that I have played in recent memory has had such tight and natural controls. Regardless - AC1 was flawed. When playing as Altair, he had a strange American accent. The ending was oblivious and bizarre, making no sense at all and was somewhat infuriating and as fun as the game was at times it got repetitive with only a small handful of samey missions to do before you actually got to the assassinations.

Ubisoft clearly had an ear out when making this spectacular sequel. It takes the good elements from the first game, including the beautiful and fluent Scimitar engine, brushes away most of its flaws and injects the game with all new ideas and gameplay twists. Although you will still do side missions of the same type, they will actually be different each time rather than just repeating. The most fun side missions are the races in which you have to race across roof tops to beat someone's record, and as a majour platformer fan these games are exciting and exhilarating; and then of course there are Assassination side missions! So you'll actually feel more like an Assassin with a wide variety of fun and diverse assassination missions that take place inbetween actual story missions.

The story picks up right where the first game ambiguously left off. In case you missed the first game, here's the gist of what happened: A man named Desmond Miles was kidnapped by a corporation called Abstergo, who created a machine that can access the memories of ancestors and Abstergo used this machine to reveal the memories of an assassin named Altair to find an object known as The Apple - a "Piece of Eden." Turns out that Abstergo are the remnants of the ancient order of the Templars, and Lucy, an assassin spy at Abstergo whisks you away to meet a few other Assassins and once again place Desmond into the shoes of an ancestor - this time to train him to become an assassin to fight the Templars in the future.

This new ancestor is Ezio Auditore De Firenze, and the time period is now renaissance Italy!! Yes, those exclamation points were purposeful. I friggen' love Italy, particularly the language. I also love History, and Ubisoft has put in an incredible amount of detail into the historical elements. Many key cities are recreated accurately and you'll meet numerous people both fictional and real. Probably the most hyped historical figure is Leonardo Da Vinci, and as a freak for history, talking to Leonardo Da Vinci, seeing him decode codex scrolls and invent new tools was downright awesome. The game has a database that keeps track of people and locations, and you might just learn something you probably didn't know. I sure as hell learned a lot, and as a history freak, that's a good thing.

The gameplay is much faster paced and varied this time around. You no longer have to walk two inches per minute to fool guards and there's a nifty fast travel system that really comes in handy when you don't want to run around the country side forever. The game has a steady pace, its not blazing fast but its not sluggish either. It always keeps a steady pace allowing the player to acclimate to their surroundings, which is truly key when planning assassinations. The game itself also eases the player into the role of their character better than the first game did. Hardly any history was given to Altair, you just started as an Assassin and the only progression given to his character was re-earning his rank. Ezio's story begins when he is a teenager and you grow attached to the character and the game leads into a logical reason for him becoming an assassin, as well as actually teaching you the ways of an assassin throughout the course of the game.

There's a larger variety of weapons this time around, from poison blades to the kickass double hidden blades advertised on the cover which can down two enemies at once. Slowly dropping behind two marks and then ramming your double blades into their skulls is satisfying and fun. You can also use weapons that enemies drop temporarily, which is useful against tougher enemies sometimes. You can also buy new permanent weapons, as well as new armours and other items such as medicine and poison for a special poison tip blade.

As always, platforming is a joy. You can still climb towers if you want to challenge your vertigo and sometimes all you want to do is race across an entire cities roofs and find various nooks and crannies. Ubisoft has created the most impressive sandbox game world since Grand Theft Auto IV Like GTA IV, this world feels alive. There's an incredible attention of detail to all the cities, from Florence to Venice you'll see lots of beautiful architecture and locales filled with crowds of people and guards just living another day in their life. You can hear the sound of life going on, people conversing, heralds shouting the latest news, etc. The world is so inviting and detailed you'll forget you are holding a controller. There were times that I literally felt like I was sucked into the screen and was truly controlling Ezio through the Animus. I also wasted about 8 hours of my time running around, exploring crypts, performing assassinations, looting, beating up adulterous husbands and having a bucket load of fun. Even though most will consider it a menial task, I even had fun renovating my villa and seeing it expand and become more and more lively.

The game's world also monitors your notoriety. Being a thief or loudly assassinating/hurting people will gain notoriety and people will be more wary of you and guards will become more uptight, and you will have to bribe bad mouthed heralds, track down corrupt officials attempting to frame you, and pull away wanted posters to reduce it and become incognito yet again.

The graphics are wonderful. I've already mentioned the extreme detail on the architectural design, but I don't know if I've mentioned the fluent animations, expressive facial expressions, or the enticing and beautiful art design. Every piece fits together, once again the all important immersion is enhanced by the fact that this is as close as you will ever get to seeing 15th century Italy in person. The animation is life like and beautiful and just as alive as the people and objects that use the animation. It's just as fun to watch Ezio's platforming as it is to have him perform it. His cloak freely flaps in the breeze as he realistically grasps ledges or leaps across a gap and everything is fluid and natural.

There are 20 puzzle sections hidden around the world, and they are very well thought out. Although it does cross into Dan Brown territory a little (Okay, in fairness to Dan Brown his ideas are great; its just his inability to write that is a nadir of the literary world) they are all clever and bring true historic together with the fictional aspects in order to create a bridge between the historical elements and the futuristic/fictional elements. It fills in a lot of gaps and enriches the universe, while challenging and tantalizing the brain and setting up some more mysteries for the future.

The Bad
As great as the game is - it still has flaws. For one, while the new monetary system helps draw you in and is a welcome addition, you'll barely ever have to watch your wallet after a certain point. Once you get to your Villa you can rob every civilian and since you own the place no guards will come down on you for stealing and no notoriety is gained. When you get a special cloak, some of the cities will not increase notoriety and guards will be more lenient so you can once again go back to picking pockets and walk out of a town with more gold than El Dorado. You also gain income from renovating your Villa, money will be stored in your chest every 20 minutes and although there is a cap on the chest as you increase the Villa's worth the overall income will increase and you'll very quickly be getting over 9000 (Yes, I did that on purpose - but I'm actually being serious too) Florens every 20 minutes so you can practically buy all the best armour weapons and other objects without ever worrying about your funds.

The guards are also a little too lenient at times. There was a time that I lept off a roof and landed on a guard, and slit his throat and somehow his buddies just barely started getting suspicious rather than immediately reacting. It's also easy as hell to shake them because running and climbing roofs no longer alerts them (Just the archers) and sometimes its a bit anticlimactic to get a take down and not have a following chase or battle.

Swordplay, while at times fun, is still a bit too easy. All you really have to do is block and do counters, the only time swordplay is really any interesting is if you are brave enough to use your hidden blades as a weapon rather than a sword or if there's a big brute in armour with a giant axe that can't be countered.

The story, while fascinating, does get a bit hard to follow as things progress. Around the 60% mark you'll be baffled and unlocking "The Truth" doesn't really give much truth, and it is a lingering question that follows the game way past the ending and other things only raise more questions; and while the ending isn't as ambiguous or ridiculously vague as the first games ending was, we get yet another cliffhanger and a big bucket of questions that I kinda don't want to wait 2 and a half more years to learn about.

The graphics do have some issues; mostly regarding pop in. Just about every object pops in at some point, grass grows and shadows wobble into existence shakily, and sometimes even civilians pop up out of nowhere. There was one time I was in an intense guard chase while freerunning, and I had the chase camera on so the camera was much farther back behind Ezio than it would normally be and I saw a ledge to grasp but only seconds before I thought I would grab the ledge a group of civilians popped up and blocked me. There are also problems with the PS3 version of the game, which is the version I own. There are various glitches, freezing issues, and a very annoying white screen of death that plagued me for about 2 weeks before finally letting up.

You only get to use Leonardo's flying machine once or twice :(

The Bottom Line
I wrote this review on New Years eve, so it's most likely this won't be up until the year has started, but it being the end of the year its that time where everyone has to name a game of the year. I had missed out on many games this year but recently caught up, and many of them entered my contenders list but when I delved into Assassin's Creed II I barely had time for them and I realized there was no competition.

AC II was the best game of 2009. Even if you didn't like the first game, this is worth a look. Like any great sequel, it expands and nearly perfects what its predecessor set out to do. For history and speculative fiction fans, this is also worth a look. I'm serious when I say it actually has educational merit. But most importantly its engaging, fun, technically impressive, and there's a lot of people speaking Italian. Sorry, I really, really like Italian. It sounds great, it looks great, it plays great and its one of the most immersive and mind blowing games in a long while.