Assassin's Creed II review

Desmond Miles, the unwilling hero of the first Assassin’s Creed installment, returns in this sequel to show us the story of Ezio Auditore de Firenze. Is the Creed of the assassins as strong as it ever was or is it starting to grow a little stale? Find out here in my review for Assassin’s Creed II!

Teh Pwn Shop presents

A Greyarch Entertainment review of:

Assassin’s Creed II

We begin this fantastic tale where the first game ended. After a few revelations in the first few scenes, we find ourselves in a whole new location with a few new people. They introduce Desmond Miles to the Animus 2.0, an improved version of the machine that allows people to relive past lives. It’s most notable feature is that people can stay in the machine longer.

Enjoy these first scenes folks because that’s all the Desmond you’re going to get for quite a while. Needing to be trained in the ways of the assassin, they send him back to one of his ancestors in Italy. His name is Ezio Auditore de Firenze, son of Giovani Auditore, star of the live action prequel movie of the game: Assassin’s Creed Lineage. We follow him through a decade of his life as he embarks on a journey of revenge. Wanting the people that killed his father and brothers dead, Ezio finds himself being pulled deeper and deeper in to a conspiracy that stretches its branches far and wide. Though it’s quite ridiculous to see Ezio thrust some people from the word: “hi”, it’s still a story that keeps you sucked in to the game at all times.

The already infamous scene involving Uncle Mario is but one of the many humoristic events in the story. Some might come at you from left field, whilst others are a tad more obvious. Still, it’s a welcome addition to a story that has so many dark, sad and plot twisting moments.

Besides the main story arch, you also get a few other ones to discover. Scattered throughout the cities are pages of a Codex, which belong to a journal written by Altaïr after the events of the first Assassin’s Creed. Some of these pages contain nothing more than pictures, but most of them have several paragraphs to plow through.

For all you historical nuts, there’s also a database that has a lot of information on all the people you meet and places you discover.

Which brings us to the world itself. Information about these places is all fine and dandy but how does it all look. Abso-fucking-lutely amazing.

The outside plains of Italy are barren for the most part, with a few towns and landmarks scattered about where you can collect a viewpoint or treasures. There’s not much there that is remotely interesting, besides a few locations like a monastery or historical ruins.

Now, it’s the cities themselves that are the main draw for this game, as expected. On the ground level, the cities are very details and beautiful. In a lot of games you can figure out where you are quite easily because a lot looks the same with a few landmarks in place to help you. Not here though. Not at all. There’s so much variety and detail that it’s easy to just get lost and roam about the city, gently pushing people aside to not let anything hinder you in admiring the view from down below. As the game is built with parcours in mind, all of the buildings have objects on which you climb such as banisters, windowsills, bars in front of the windows, bricks in the wall, beams on the rooftops and … ladders, though I barely use them. Ladders are for pussies, you see.

What really made my jaw drop on the floor, costing me a few hundred bucks for the dent it left, were the major buildings across the cities. Though liberties were taken with the rest of the city, these buildings are as accurate as it gets. Climbing them in the game or in real life would be the exact same experience. They are that well done. Combining the city’s regular streets and buildings with these landmarks, you have an experience that’s as close as a replacement to actually traveling to these cities as its going to get.

As far as the characters go, some are very well done whilst others are a bit dodgy. You’d think that this only goes for minor characters, but a member of the Auditore family itself looks really, really off. Scarily even. Clothingwise however, it’s all good. Some things are astounding whilst others are plain and simply, but believably simple.

As with the rest of the world, Italy knows a night and day. The environment is very beautiful by day. But the night is sometimes to dark and you will not be able to enjoy as much of it as you wanted to.

The effects of the Animus were a bit disruptive at first but once you got over it, you barely notice it and just focus on the wondrous Italy that slowly opens up all it has to offer as you progress through the story. Although I really started to hate Venice after like twenty minutes. Here’s how it went: I ran, I jumped, “Ffffuuuuuuuuu- water!”, I splashed. I ran, I jumped, “ffffuuuuuuuuuuuu- water!”, I splashed. Fuck it, I’m walking. I ran, I turned around the corner, “Ffffuuuuuuuuuu- water!”, I splashed.

Jesper Kyd once again returns to helm a 30-piece string ensemble and 13-person choir at Capitol Records in to recording compositions which he created for the game. Though Genesis from Justice isn’t quite in the game, there’s still a tune in there with a little hint of the song. Because let’s face it, the trailers for Assassin’s Creed II blew our collective socks off with that song.

As with most games of the current generations, voice acting is present. With unbelievable talents behind the modern setting such as Nolan North and Kirsten Bell, the voice actors for the characters in the past are up to snuff as well. Some have said that English doesn’t do the game justice and that Italian voices are the way to go, but the English voice actors do their very, very best and deliver a great performance. And besides, Mario’s joke would have been lost to those who use a different language setting.

The rest of the sounds are quite adequate and sublime even. From the swords to the footsteps, it’s all good. However, I did find an annoying glitch that really annoyed the piss out of me. Because I use a headphone when playing games, I presume that I moved it around too much when the sound is dampened and that I just need to secure it again. So when the horse’s sounds suddenly become muffled, I start widgeting around with my headphone with no luck fixing it. At long last I realized that its only the horse that’s muffled. Not sound related, but the horse tended to warp from one spot to the next if it gets stuck following Ezio on foot.

Before I get to the gameplay, I have to talk about everything that you can do in this game. As previously mentioned, there are a lot of landmarks in this game. Many of these landmarks have glyphs on them, which, when scanned, open up a puzzle for you to solve. Once all glyph’s have been found and solved, you have all the pieces of the video called: The Truth, of which a piece is given to you each time you solve one. This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds though. As you progress, you’ll encounter the most difficult puzzles that you have ever encountered. Because not only do you have to be intelligent, but you also have to guess as to what the puzzle wants you to do. Like for instance, one where you have to turn a wheel to match up numbers with symbols. You do this by finding a symbol and a number in the puzzle. But what is a symbol and what’s just part of the pictures. What’s a number and what’s a letter? Was that a one or an L? I don’t know it’s too small!

Many of these landmarks also serve as viewpoints. Other viewpoints are around as well, often found on top of towers or larger buildings. Viewpoints are needed to clear out the white spaces on the map. Each viewpoint opens up a section of the map which in turn reveals locations of interest like shops and others.

Two of these locations of interest are Assassin’s Tombs, which are regular old dungeons that you need to plow through for a nice reward in the end. And the other are the Codex Pages I mentioned before.

So now you already have to collect Glyphs, viewpoints, tombs and codex pages. But that’s not all my friend. Oh no, there’s one more thing that needs collecting. One hundred feathers are scattered around the entire world that you need to collect as well. Not just for a trophy, but for in game items as well. These however, aren’t shown on the map. And believe you me, even though you can check how many are left per district, sometimes you only get to know that you have one feather left in an entire city with the surrounding farmland and ruins. Oh yes, there will be searching.

Besides all of this collecting, there’s one more thing to add to the to-do-list. And these are the side missions. You can do assassination quests, messenger quests, races and beat up quests where you have to beat the living snot out of an adulterous husband. Some of these side missions are easy, some are not. It all depends on the requirements like a time limit or if you can be seen or not. It’s quite fun though to do it as spectacular as possible, using many of the gameplay elements to deliver an assassinations that would be mentioned in the history books if it had happened that way.

Now let’s get on to the final part of this review, the gameplay.

First of all, let’s talk about the one thing that brings my piss to a boil in a lot of games, the camera. And yes, it hurts like living hell. What did you expect, my piss is boiling. The camera is not very helpful in close quarter situations. Like for instance, inside one of the Assassin’s Tombs you will more than likely have to make your way through close quarters. Or you will find yourself close to a roof and walls but the point is, sometimes the camera either locks itself in a certain position when it’s where you can actually leap towards the next part of the parcours or it can’t be moved to where you want it to be. Of course, aiming and jumping is like trying to drive straight when you’ve got more alcohol in your veins than blood if you’re not jumping straight backwards. I mean, come on. It’s that typical thing where you need to think about what the game wants you to do. Does it want you to jump in the direction that the character has to jump or does it want you to steer to where the character is going to jump according to the camera.

This only happens on rare occasions but it’s still quite annoying when it happens.

It’s been mentioned a few times now so let’s get on to the parcours. Easy enough, all you have to do is press two buttons. The run button and the legs button (more on that after this) will do all the work for you. If you only press the legs button, you’ll be slow as hell so I advice against it.

There are four buttons on my PS3 controller that have shapes on them. You have triangle, square, circle and cross. The top button is the triangle button. It acts as the head button. You can go in to eagle vision mode with it and you can head but someone. The square and circle buttons are for your arms and the cross is for your legs.

This rag doll system makes combat very easy. As you will quickly associate the location of the button with Ezio’s anatomy. It makes for an easier adjustment. So now that we’re at the combat, let’s look in to that shall we.

Starting with unarmed combat, you can either go in to a fist fight or unarm an armed NPC. After you either draw or obtain a weapon, all you need to do is wait for your opponent to strike and simply counter that attack. There’s a lot of cool looking animations to go with that. But it’s not all you can do. You can also throw sand in their face, sweep their legs with a spear, use a smoke grenade or attack without countering.

Stealth is where all the fun is at though. Which is where it’s supposed to be, Ezio being an assassin and all. As you unlock Codex pages through the story, you can have Leonardo Da Vince decipher them and give you new toys to play with like a dual hidden blade, poisonous hidden blade and a pistol attachment for your hidden blade. The origins of these items is quite intriguing though. As, let’s say the pistol, is already way ahead of its time for Ezio, the origins make it even more intriguing.

And yes, I did say Leonardo Da Vince. And truth be told, if there’s any reason for you to buy or rent this game, this is it. As a gamer I have commanded armies, conquered worlds, found lost treasures and exploded mythological locations but meeting Leonardo Da Vinci is definitely something I’ll remember for a very, very long time.

Now, many have said that the combat is still repetitive and that the A.I. is pants on head retarded. But I don’t think that’s the case. The enemy NPC’s are quite skilled swordsmen if you think about it. They wait out for an opening and then strike. They don’t just go and attack hoping for the best, but they actually use strategy. Which is something most people tend to forget.

One final thing about gameplay involves the notoriety system. Where every one of your illegal or impressive actions will cause its gauge to fill up. Once it’s filled up, you go from anonymous to notorious, where the guards will attack you from practically the moment they see you. To empty this meter, you need to either tear down posters or bribe a city clerk.

To further aid Desmond in his adventure, Ezio has access to different shops where he can repair his armor or buy things to make it easier for him to do his thing. There’s a tailor where you can buy pouches and knife belt upgrade. You can also dye your clothes there. There’s a blacksmith where you can buy armor, weapons, ammunitions and repairs for your armor. There’s also a medic that can not only heal you, but who also sells medicine vials and poison.

And finally you have the art salesman where you can buy maps to find treasures in a certain location or paintings for your villa. Did I forget to mention that there’s also treasure chests to collect? I did? Oh, well, there’s just so much to do in this game! A man can easily forget right! Like how Uncle Mario looks like. But who can forget that It’s a him! Mario! (You had to know I’d work this in somewhere …)

Once again mentioned before, let’s talk about the Villa of your dear uncle Mario. The villa and the surrounding town are all yours to refurbish and expand. The more people live in the town, the more taxes you receive and the more money you get.

Through the shops and side missions, you will obtain weapons and armor that add to the city’s value. And of course the beautiful paintings collected at the art shop. Every feather and Codex page you collect and bring there has that effect as well.

Mainly though, restoring the city’s hot spots like the thieves guild and the whorehouse alongside with leveling up the shops will get you enough money eventually to buy the Vatican.

As for going from city to city, you have transportation. Horses are used for traveling from city to city but once you get there, you can use a fast travel option that zips you right to another fast travel shop in another town. Then there are mission specific vehicles like Da Vinci’s wings, a chariot and a boat. The first two you get to control yourself but the boat is like the fast travel option.

Lastly, to traverse the waters by yourself you can use gondolas at your disposal. Just don’t jump on them when you’re escorting someone or they’ll jump out like the good NPC’s they are.

Final notes:

To answer that question I asked in the beginning: Yes, the Creed is just as strong as ever. Two years is a long time and that time was spent well.

The story is deep and complex, far more fleshed out than in the first game. Visually this game is equally as impressive as the first game, even more so with the most beautiful Italy as our host this time. The music is so good that it makes your ears orgasm and the gameplay is quite intuitive once you have it in your fingers. Adding the villa to the mix was a good idea as well, but it’s like with other games. It’s easy to get rich fast. Newer gamers should avoid it though.

Clocking in under: “Ohmygodwhatthefuck look at the time” hours, this game has earned every single penny. Especially if you’re a pack rat like me and want to collect every single item in the game.

Now, if you’re a fan of the original you’ve already bought this game or are saving up to buy it. If you’re not a big fan, here’s my recommendation:

Rent it!

This game might not be your cup of tea. Plowing through the main campaign is always a good experience but this can easily be done over a weekend.

This has been Puddle Jumper with a review of Assassin’s Creed II, available on the PC, Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.