Assassins Creed II review

Assassin's Creed 2's plot is just as contrived as the last one. In case you're unaware, you play as Desmond Miles, a man whose ancestry is riddled with notorious assassins. When strapped into a magical chair known as The Animus, Desmond can replay the memories of his ancestors for wonderfully convoluted reasons. Having escaped capture by Abstergo Industries, Desmond meets up with some modern day assassins who put him in a new Animus so he can relive the life of Ezio Auditore da Firenze and train to become a killer in a matter of days.

As usual, the rather embarrassing Animus stuff seems tacked on, pointless and totally unnecessary. Most of the game is set in Ezio's time period of 15th Century Italy, and players will control Ezio as he attempts to foil a plot that seems ripped right out of The Da Vinci Code. While the story is mostly forgettable, a few of the characters threaten to be likable, and the scripts humor occasionally hits the mark. It just would have been so much better without the pretentious sci-fi stuff. It's really nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is.
There is no denying that Assassin's Creed 2 is a far bigger game than its predecessor. However, Ubisoft has most definitely cheated in this regard, employing some of the cheapest time-wasting methods in the book to drag the game out to tedious lengths. So many of the new missions are pure filler, with a number of them literally consisting of walking around town with nothing else to do. You just follow a character slowly around a portion of the city and that's it, mission done. Some missions consist of climbing up a building and climbing back down again, all in order to find out something that could have been explained with half a minute of dialogue.

Thankfully the modern day part of the game does not interfere to much, unlike the orignal game where you were dragged back into modern day fat to often with nothing to do in those little interludes. For the few times that you are brought back to the modern world it's for good reasons and some nice gameplay touch's. Desmond is less of a useless lump and now seems to have toughened up, making for some interesting changes in his character, as the game progress's Desmon also becomes an assassin thanks to the bleeding effect, which see's him learning the same skills Ezio does. This opens up many interesting possibility's for the next game.

While the core mechanics of combat remain the same, Ezio is by far a superior fighter that Altair ever was. Thanks to a massive increase in the range of weapons, you can now fight with mace's and massive two-handed swords and axes now as well, making for some brutal kill animations. The new Disarm move is fantastic, by fighting unarmed you can now counter and attack and steal your opponents weapon and get an insta kill on him. It's fantastic to watch as you disarm a massive armoured Knight and bring his huge two handed axe swinging down into his shoulder. Combat is improved by new enemy types as well, such as the Brute who is a massive armoured foe, and is best fought with your dual hidden blades or using the disarm technique. Other enemies wield massive pikes or spears and can attack you from a good distance and are best taken out from combo kills.

It's just a shame that the enemy AI is absolute crap. Enemies will gather round you and do nothing for a very long time, simply content to stare at Ezio's ridiculous clothes. It's also hard to employ stealth in the game and make use of Ezio's various assassination kills, thanks to the unpredictable opponents that will sometimes be oblivious to your movements, and sometimes have the perception of a telepathic owl.

There is also plenty of pop-up and textures that appear out of nowhere. While the draw distance is superb at long distances, it's terrible for short ones, and as far as I'm concerned, being able to see everything that's close to the player character is slightly more important than seeing stuff ten miles away. The game simply looks sub-par and unpolished in so many areas, which totally undoes the otherwise bright scenery and impressive vista visuals. Oh, and every single time Ezio performs an important assassination, the camera zooms in close to show his hand completely clipping through his victim's head. So much for impact.

But it's still a playable game. Graphics are still amazing, and cut scenes are now present in the game, however the facial animations can sometimes be a little ugly. Attention to detail is still staggering and this is by far the best looking sandbox game yet. Venice and Italy as a whole look amazing as this game takes you through these beautiful cities and landscapes. Animations are once again a joy to behold, Ezio moves, climbs and leaps with precision and grace and the combat animations are brutal to behold.

The counter-attack system works terrifically, with Ezio able to pull off some pretty slick finishing moves when timing the attack correctly. He can also dodge, taunt, grab enemies to throw them or slit their throats, and disarm enemies to use their own weapons against them. Ezio can throw dust off the ground into an opponent's face, or he can get behind an occupied foe to finish him off with a brutal back attack. There is a lot of variety in the combat, and quite a few different enemies that require their own tactics to beat.

A raft of smaller additions also make there way into Creed 2, such as driving boats, faster climbing and extra equipments such as smoke bombs. You can now pick up dead bodies and either hide them or use them as distractions and the new smoke bombs add a nice extra tactic to your arsenal. Poison is introduced as well, you can now prick any person with a small needle to deliver this poison, which drives the victim mad and they will begin attacking people around them. Use this on something like a Brute and he will most likely do some major damage to his allies as well as cause a great distraction. However the game does not make use of these items well enough, they get introduced but after that the game never forces you to use them, so many people will forget these abilities exist and never use them, as such the game should of had a mission or 2 after each item and skill is introduced where the player could get used to using these items and abilities. The hidden gun is a neat new feature as well, allowing for some nice long range kills, as well as your new Double Hidden Blades which allow for some satisfying kills.

I rate this game a 8/10

PC Recommended System Requirements:
Hard Drive Space: 8 GB free hard drive space
Operating System: Windows 7/vista/XP
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.6 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
Video Card: GeForce 8800 GT or ATI Radeon HD 4700 video card
RAM: 1.5 GB (Windows XP)/2 GB (Windows Vista - Windows 7)
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0 -compliant sound card
Peripherals: Keyboard, mouse, joystick optional (Xbox 360 Controller for Windows recommended)