Assassins Creed 2 Review

A Story by Matrix

Felt weird being a member without any works of my own. So I'll post some reviews I do for my school newspaper.

Assassin’s Creed 2

“Assassin’s Creed 2” is a textbook example of everything a sequel should be; changing the bad parts, keeping the good parts, and adding new and original ideas to enhance the game play experience. The game comes to us from Ubisoft creators of the revolutionary “Sands of Time” trilogy which centred around the parkour-esk acrobatics of the main character. An idea which Ubisoft has held onto into the Assassin’s Creed series.

The games main character is Desmond Miles who had been captured in the previous game but is now rescued from the clutches of Abstergo. But not really as 99% of game play is with the real main character Ezio Auditore. Ezio dons the assassin robes after his father, an assassin himself, is betrayed and murdered along with his two brothers. Ezio flees his hometown of Florence to his uncles villa where he learns to art of the assassin and takes up arms against his father’s killers who turn out to be the assassins age old enemy, templars.

The first thing that should be noted about this game is the in game world. It’s huge and it is gorgeous. Ubisoft realized that no one ever went into “kingdom” in the first game so that idea has been scrapped in favour of added a fairly sizeable field outside of every city, the contents of which are unique to the city in question. And while I’m on the subject of unique a major complaint in the original game was that all the cities felt alike. In the sequel is this no longer the case as each city has its own unique feel and look. By the end of the game I could tell which city I was in by just looking at my surroundings. There are 5 cities now instead of 3, and while 3 of them can best be described as large towns the main cities Florence and Venice are MASSIVE with Venice being 2-3 times larger than any of the original games stomping grounds. Also a huge tip of my hat to the level designers in charge of building Venice as I can’t remember the last time I had as much fun as when I was in that city. I would assassinate a target then proceed to make a very epic superman dive off a tower into the canal below as Ezio, unlike Altair, can swim. You uncles villa plays a fairly major part in the game as your primary source of funding. You bring money to the villa to buy new shops for it, in return it makes more revenue which you collect and use to upgrade some more. It might sound complicated but don’t worry, it’s not. Even though you do amass far more money then you will ever need quite quickly.

Overall gameplay has improved in every area that counts and my respect for Ubisoft has gone through the roof after playing this game and witnessing how much attention to detail they put into it. Several little things have been added to make it feel like you ARE Ezio not just controlling a simulated version of him and the extra polish really shows. You can now move dead bodies, running really fast won’t alert the guards and walking really slowly won’t confuse them, you actually have to be in a crowd of people to blend now. Also you can walk faster, which is always nice. Fighting has also had some additions with the biggest being the ability to counter when unarmed, which not only makes you look like batman but also makes Ezio do this really cool “oh you thought that was your weapon? Now it’s mine and oh look you’re dead” kind of thing. Lastly there are tons more weapons and items in the game. You now have money with which to buy things including various weapons and armour all which you get from your villa, and even though swords are still the most common weapon there are several kinds of swords as well as hammers, maces, axes, and spears.

This game is far more of a spiritual sequel to prince of Persia as through the course of the game Ezio explores assassin tombs which give Ubisoft a chance to flex their PoP level design muscles, which is a pleasant treat. Ubisoft also added “the truth” in the game, where the player must find 20 glowing barcodes in the game world then solve puzzles to unlock to truth of what happened to subject 16, (Desmond being subject 17)

My issues with this game were few and far between. Other reviewers have complained about slight problems with how Ezio controls but I can honestly say I went the entire game without a single problem. Maybe it’s because I beat the original 11 times... Also unlike in the original game you cannot replay memories. You CAN replay side missions but not story memories. Though there is a fairly sizeable online petition to change that. Anyway my only other quibbles were tiny story related things. Like how did Ezio learn how to counter? And I noticed in this game to be an “Assassin” was more a state of mind to the guild like feeling in the last one.

All in all “Assassins Creed 2” is a phenomenal game. It’s clear this is the game Ubisoft wanted to create from the beginning and they really knocked this one out of the park.
5/5