Assassin’s Creed II Review

The Assassin’s Creed series is back with the sequel to 2007’s smash hit. This time the player ventures to 15th century Italy (or rather the memory of it) for some first class parkouring and assassination – renaissance style.

Just like in Assassins Creed the player takes on the role of a modern age man who has been locked in a facility by an organization calling themselves the Templars, who have discovered a way for people to relive their ancestors memories. By doing so these people learn everything their ancestors did, making them extremely valuable resources for the Templars who are doing some rather shady deeds around the world.

Assassin's Creed 2 Boxshot (X360)

Again the player takes control of Desmond, one amongst many that has been thrown into the Animus by the Templars. Instead of an introduction containing the usual ”who, what, where, when?” the player gets thrown straight into action during an escape from the Templar facility. It might be a bit overwhelming for those who didn’t play the first game, but you get the hang of the whole back-story as you go along – which is a very smart move since you get more attached to the story as a whole and it also keeps everything fresh, even for the old players.

Ubisoft has also listened to a lot of the criticism of the first game where players felt there was too little freedom. Sure you could climb just about any building, poke innocent citizens with pointy sticks and take occasional suicidal leaps from high towers, but you were still limited to the whole assassination deal. Which to me felt very very dull since they all felt the same. The process usually looked like this: Eavesdrop → Scale a building → Kill the guards → Assassinate the target → Repeat.

Assassins Creed 2 has the similar base – you still need to assassinate the evil guys – but the route to it is more interesting. Not only are there a ton of excellent side missions (assassination, beat up, courier, timed races to name a few), but there’s also quite a few more interesting things that unfold as you trot along the main plot. The good ole conspiracy theories are still there with their great historical hints, as well as some completely fresh things. There’s even something in the Animus’ menu called The Truth. Once you discover the first bit of this puzzle, you simply cannot avoid chasing after all of the pieces which will undoubtedly keep you busy for a while. There’s also a few more twists and turns beside the main storyline, I won’t spoil them here, but they most certainly add extra flavor to the main storyline. The developers have also added an economy to the game, making it feel more alive. Needless to say, this also helps you in your quest for revenge which takes you through a couple of areas, with Florence, Venice and Rome being the main sites of the plot. A few other areas are included as well which aren’t critical to the story, but they too have their secrets. Travelling in-between the hubs are really smooth with the Fast Travel Stations which are basically caravans that can take you to any area in the game, as long as you have discovered at least one of the stations in that area first. The horseback riding is still there, but you don’t have to spend tedious minutes on your steed unless you choose to, which gives us impatient bastards a chance to go straight back to the fray should we choose to.

The assassin's have now mastered the art of swimming!

Game play-wise the controls are as excellent as before, making it a breeze to scale even the tallest building and then leap from rooftop to rooftop while being chased by guards trying to kill you. Even though Ezio (Desmond’s ancestor) can do the most breathtaking stunts without blinking, you still don’t get the immortality feeling of… well being immortal – there’s still occasions where you think you’ll be able to jump across a rooftop to grab hold of a pole and then swing yourself to the next rooftop without any trouble, only to shortly thereafter lose your balance and crash down to earth like a wing-clipped bird. Admittedly the game is very forgiving when you do screw up, since you can always hold B and hope Ezio will be able to grab a ledge further down (if that fails you can always congratulate yourself for inventing the pizza).

Combat plays out similar to the ways of the first game, but thanks to the freshly implemented economy of the game, players can now take slightly different approaches. Blacksmiths offer you various pieces of equipment, including armour upgrades in the form of shoulder pads, greaves, chest pieces and so on, as well as offering an impressive amount of weaponry. This gives the player an opportunity to go on a mad dash, smashing enemies left and right with his war hammer or take a more tactical approach and swiftly take out important targets with the dagger before anyone can react. Ezio’s friend Leonardo Da Vinci (yes, that Leonardo) will also give Ezio a couple of gadgets that will aid him in combat, this includes the ability to wield two hidden blades. Not only do you get a sense of accomplishment and WOW!! factor when you shove them into two enemies at once, but it also looks absolutely fantastic. The Italian assassin also has another important trick up his sleeve – pun intended; the art of disarming. Instead of simply thrusting your blade into a guards eye, you can now wait for him to lunge at you and swiftly disarm him and beat him senseless with his own weapon! Excellent!

Federico quickly learned to have a firmer grip of his pike.

Animations are a story of themselves, they’re simply brilliantly made. Even the most outrageous acrobatic stunt has an animation attached to it, making the overall feel of them very fluent and realistic even though not even Jackie Chan could pull them off without losing a limb or two. This also includes the climbing – which you will be doing a lot of, I have yet to come across a place where Ezio places his foot or hand on an invisible ledge. Simply put: If you can’t reach it, you can’t climb it.

Graphics in this game looks even better than the first one and the level designers has really brought the good stuff to this one, every piece of the scenery seems to match the overall theme and you don’t get the sense of something being placed there for the obvious purpose of you using it to do your acrobatic stuns. The textures looks sharp and the lightning is right on the spot. This really shows in the day and night cycle– yes there is a day and night cycle, that really looks amazing when you climb to the highest points of Venice to watch the sunset in the horizon. The field of depth gives you a feeling of just how big one area is and you can’t really see where it begins and ends which adds to the overall immersion. No unexplainable fog in the distance or obvious painted scenery, it all blends perfectly to give you the illusion of a massive 15^th century metropolis. The only thing that disappointed me slightly is the look of the NPC’s in the game, they don’t look just as good as they could have up close. Surely they get the job done and you really won’t notice the odd low-texture on them unless you actually look for it, but I still feel they could have improved them a bit more. Other than that their animations looks just as good as anything and their reactions when you leap down a rooftop to assassinate a guard feels right on as you watch the masses of people first trying to figure out what the hell just happened and a second later run away in panic when they realize some guy in a black cape just brought a world of pain to poor Mr Alberto.

Overall I’m very pleased with Assassins Creed 2, it gives you all the good stuff from the first game and also vastly improves them. The new things added fits perfectly in this already polished diamond as well as improves the overall value by a ton. It feels very well planned and thought through and just keeps growing on you, even after a couple of hours you still get the feeling that there’s something new going on. The main storyline is stupidly good and feels fresh throughout the game, with the new side missions to keep you busy should you want to take a small break from the breathtaking main story. There are some glitches in the game, but they are very few and mostly restrict themselves to some cut scenes not working out the way they were meant to (usually due to player input) as well as a handful of windows being placed in the wrong place. So nothing really game-breaking.

Scores

Game play: 9/10
Graphics: 8.5/10
Value: 9/10
General (Sounds, Animations, etc.): 9/10
Total score: 9

Author’s note:

My eyes were glowing with anticipation when I first started this game and I enjoyed it throughout. Even though I kept waiting for the disappointment in the form of rinse and repeat missions, or some awkward turn of events that would put me off completely (I’m looking at you Call of Duty), it never happened. Hence I dare say that this game was without a doubt one of the top five games to be released during 2009.  The only bad thing about it would be the fact that the sequel to this game would need something… Extreme. It will be very hard for Ubisoft to top this, but I’ll patiently wait for the next release in the Assassin’s Creed series.

If you like action-games, this is a must have.

By: Jens Albonius for Total Oblivion Gaming Community, 2010