Will Assassin's Creed 2 be voted Game of the Year? If it were up to me it would be, because it is that good.
Starting off, for those of you who didn't play the first game, you might feel a little lost in the story, they do a brief introduction explaining the events of the first game, but you still might feel a little lost in some of the details. You are Desmond, a descendant of assassins, captured by a corporation named Abstergo run by templars. You were forced to enter a machine called the Animus which broke down your genetic code and pulled out your ancestors memories from deep in your DNA (I love sci-fi). In the first game you explored the Holy Land in the times of the Crusades. This time its a little different....
The first few scenes of the game actually revolve around Desmond this time as he and Lucy (a friend from the first game) escape from Abstergo. He actually does a little bit of fighting, and eventually you escape to an unknown location where new assassins have developed the Animus 2.0. The purpose of diving back into the Animus to relive your ancestor's memories is now to help teach you the assassin skills of your ancestor through the bleeding effect, essentially the fact that by reliving these memories you retain some of the actual knowledge/skills that your ancestor learned.
This time you get to relive the life of Ezio, a young man growing up during the Renaissance in Italy. Ezio seems to be a bit of a cad, but is respectful of his family and does do the bit of odd work for his father. Early on in the story (and for the first few DNA sequences - or chapters if you will) most of your missions are training missions. You learn to explore and get used to some of the controls, but they didn't feel too silly, no mission felt out of place from the story, there were just a lot of things to learn especially if you did not play the first game. Unfortunately for Ezio early in the story
Having played the Assassin's Creed 1 I must say I enjoyed that game immensely, but found there were a few things in the game that were just a little frustrating and I wish they would have been fixed. First was the jumping from ledge to ledge, in the first game if you were not dead on precise you would fall - no big deal except that in AC1 you couldn't swim. AC2 fixed this in multiple ways - first Ezio has the magical ability to swim! Second the system for jumping and climbing is a little more forgiving, if you aim in the general direction of a ledge and jump or if you press the left stick in the general direction of a crevice to climb up a building, the game assumes you want to go that way. The only downside to this being if you are purposely trying to jump of a building (say to escape guards) and end up jumping to a nearby ledge, however this problem is few and far between.
Another improvement was the hiding, this time being a bit more interesting. In the first game you could hide from the guards by praying with a group of monks (or something of the sort) that wore similar outfits. This time you can hide from guards with nearly any group of people just walking down the street. You can also hire prostitutes to walk around with you to hide amongst or even to send over and distract a guard or four with their, uh, charms. You also have the ability to hire groups of thieves do distract guards and mercenaries to help you fight them. The other side to the hiding is that now even if you have escaped the guards' line of sight and find a hiding spot, some guards are considered to be "seekers" and will look for you even in these spots - more than once I got stabbed while in a stack of hay.
Another addition to this game is the fact that you can earn/steal/spend money. Money is earned by completing missions, pickpocketing pedestrians, treasure chests hidden around the city or from income from your family villa (taxes and tourism). You can upgrade said villa with all the amenities, a well, a brothel, a church (for repenting after the brothel of course), and shops at which you receive a discount depending on how much you have invested in said shop. Money can be spent on upgrades for you villa, new weapons, new armor, you can now BUY throwing knives instead of stealing them from one type of NPC (thank goodness), or you can spend it on a treasure map giving you the location of the random chests around each town or on paintings which help upgrade the tourist status of your villa.
In the first game as well there were MASSIVE amounts of collectables which really added nothing to the story. This time there are only a few things to collect - the aforementioned treasures (no achievements!!) - there are 8 statues in your family villa to collect which reward you for each set of 2 you find, and 100 feathers through all the cities. These feathers do have an achievement tied to them but this time the developers allow you to see how many feathers you have found in each city and each district in each city and the total in the area. This makes it much easier to collect in the long run for the achievement but once you collect all the feathers it actually adds to the story and you get a new weapon to purchase and a new cape.
One other interesting side-quest was Ezio's search for Assassin's tombs, when a seal from all 6 are found you actually unlock Altair's armor (the main character from AC1). The interesting thing about these side-quests was what you actually did to get each seal. There were some enemies in some of these areas, but most of the gameplay in these areas had a Prince of Persia feel, you would pull a lever opening a gate or door and only have a certain amount of time to swing/jump your way to said gate and get through it. I personally found this to be a bit of a break from running around each city and found it to be very fun, in fact when I found one of these places (also marked on your map) I would generally do these first before any other missions.
Although this game is still a bit linear, the variety of the missions is mixed up a lot more than the first one. You still had to "find" each of your targets, but how you do so is different every time, no more "perform 3/6 of these missions and you will unlock the target." Although at a few points you can choose one of two or three missions to do next, each mission continues the story and flows until you get a mission to assassinate your target. There is also no more jumping out of the Animus every time you kill a target either, with one exception the game continues from Ezio's standpoint and you immediately jump into the next DNA sequence/chapter.
Fighting in this game is improved as well with the addition of more than one weapon, different enemy types, DOUBLE hidden blades (oh the stories I could tell you of double kills), new skills that can be taught by the trainer in your villa, different weapon types, smoke bombs, poison, a GUN, and the fact that you can disarm enemies or pick up their weapons off the ground. Although the counter attack is still the best way to go in this game (if you can get the timing down), you are deadly no matter what you use.
There are side-quests a-plenty in this game including the tombs to explore, the upgrading of your villa and also races, assassination side-quests and courier side-quests. These can be a fun distraction from the story and can keep you busy for hours, however you don't have to do a single one of them to continue the game. There is also additional content for this game through Ubisoft's U-Play but if you don't have them it does not in any way detract from the game.
The long and short of the game is this: beautiful graphics, excellent story (I totally totally did not see the twist at the end coming), incredible gameplay (improved gameplay to boot). I personally loved it, felt I got a complete game and really really want Ubisoft to come out with DLC, this game is that good. 9.8/10 just because I can't give anything a 10/10.
For the achievement junkies out there, this game is a LOT easier to 1k than the first game. Most achievements are story related, a few fighting related which are fairly simple, there are 6 for getting each assassin's seal, and there are 3 for collectables - 1 for feathers, 1 for statues and 1 for wearing the cape obtained by collecting the feathers. All in all Ubisoft did what they said they would - improve every aspect of the game that people didn't like previously. Wow....just wow.
Starting off, for those of you who didn't play the first game, you might feel a little lost in the story, they do a brief introduction explaining the events of the first game, but you still might feel a little lost in some of the details. You are Desmond, a descendant of assassins, captured by a corporation named Abstergo run by templars. You were forced to enter a machine called the Animus which broke down your genetic code and pulled out your ancestors memories from deep in your DNA (I love sci-fi). In the first game you explored the Holy Land in the times of the Crusades. This time its a little different....
The first few scenes of the game actually revolve around Desmond this time as he and Lucy (a friend from the first game) escape from Abstergo. He actually does a little bit of fighting, and eventually you escape to an unknown location where new assassins have developed the Animus 2.0. The purpose of diving back into the Animus to relive your ancestor's memories is now to help teach you the assassin skills of your ancestor through the bleeding effect, essentially the fact that by reliving these memories you retain some of the actual knowledge/skills that your ancestor learned.
This time you get to relive the life of Ezio, a young man growing up during the Renaissance in Italy. Ezio seems to be a bit of a cad, but is respectful of his family and does do the bit of odd work for his father. Early on in the story (and for the first few DNA sequences - or chapters if you will) most of your missions are training missions. You learn to explore and get used to some of the controls, but they didn't feel too silly, no mission felt out of place from the story, there were just a lot of things to learn especially if you did not play the first game. Unfortunately for Ezio early in the story
Spoiler: Click here to toggle spoiler
This is the whole premise of the game with Ezio hunting down members of the conspiracy that his father was trying to bring to light.his father and both his brothers are killed - with Ezio now choosing to get revenge on the former friend of the family responsible.
Having played the Assassin's Creed 1 I must say I enjoyed that game immensely, but found there were a few things in the game that were just a little frustrating and I wish they would have been fixed. First was the jumping from ledge to ledge, in the first game if you were not dead on precise you would fall - no big deal except that in AC1 you couldn't swim. AC2 fixed this in multiple ways - first Ezio has the magical ability to swim! Second the system for jumping and climbing is a little more forgiving, if you aim in the general direction of a ledge and jump or if you press the left stick in the general direction of a crevice to climb up a building, the game assumes you want to go that way. The only downside to this being if you are purposely trying to jump of a building (say to escape guards) and end up jumping to a nearby ledge, however this problem is few and far between.
Another improvement was the hiding, this time being a bit more interesting. In the first game you could hide from the guards by praying with a group of monks (or something of the sort) that wore similar outfits. This time you can hide from guards with nearly any group of people just walking down the street. You can also hire prostitutes to walk around with you to hide amongst or even to send over and distract a guard or four with their, uh, charms. You also have the ability to hire groups of thieves do distract guards and mercenaries to help you fight them. The other side to the hiding is that now even if you have escaped the guards' line of sight and find a hiding spot, some guards are considered to be "seekers" and will look for you even in these spots - more than once I got stabbed while in a stack of hay.
Another addition to this game is the fact that you can earn/steal/spend money. Money is earned by completing missions, pickpocketing pedestrians, treasure chests hidden around the city or from income from your family villa (taxes and tourism). You can upgrade said villa with all the amenities, a well, a brothel, a church (for repenting after the brothel of course), and shops at which you receive a discount depending on how much you have invested in said shop. Money can be spent on upgrades for you villa, new weapons, new armor, you can now BUY throwing knives instead of stealing them from one type of NPC (thank goodness), or you can spend it on a treasure map giving you the location of the random chests around each town or on paintings which help upgrade the tourist status of your villa.
In the first game as well there were MASSIVE amounts of collectables which really added nothing to the story. This time there are only a few things to collect - the aforementioned treasures (no achievements!!) - there are 8 statues in your family villa to collect which reward you for each set of 2 you find, and 100 feathers through all the cities. These feathers do have an achievement tied to them but this time the developers allow you to see how many feathers you have found in each city and each district in each city and the total in the area. This makes it much easier to collect in the long run for the achievement but once you collect all the feathers it actually adds to the story and you get a new weapon to purchase and a new cape.
One other interesting side-quest was Ezio's search for Assassin's tombs, when a seal from all 6 are found you actually unlock Altair's armor (the main character from AC1). The interesting thing about these side-quests was what you actually did to get each seal. There were some enemies in some of these areas, but most of the gameplay in these areas had a Prince of Persia feel, you would pull a lever opening a gate or door and only have a certain amount of time to swing/jump your way to said gate and get through it. I personally found this to be a bit of a break from running around each city and found it to be very fun, in fact when I found one of these places (also marked on your map) I would generally do these first before any other missions.
Although this game is still a bit linear, the variety of the missions is mixed up a lot more than the first one. You still had to "find" each of your targets, but how you do so is different every time, no more "perform 3/6 of these missions and you will unlock the target." Although at a few points you can choose one of two or three missions to do next, each mission continues the story and flows until you get a mission to assassinate your target. There is also no more jumping out of the Animus every time you kill a target either, with one exception the game continues from Ezio's standpoint and you immediately jump into the next DNA sequence/chapter.
Fighting in this game is improved as well with the addition of more than one weapon, different enemy types, DOUBLE hidden blades (oh the stories I could tell you of double kills), new skills that can be taught by the trainer in your villa, different weapon types, smoke bombs, poison, a GUN, and the fact that you can disarm enemies or pick up their weapons off the ground. Although the counter attack is still the best way to go in this game (if you can get the timing down), you are deadly no matter what you use.
There are side-quests a-plenty in this game including the tombs to explore, the upgrading of your villa and also races, assassination side-quests and courier side-quests. These can be a fun distraction from the story and can keep you busy for hours, however you don't have to do a single one of them to continue the game. There is also additional content for this game through Ubisoft's U-Play but if you don't have them it does not in any way detract from the game.
The long and short of the game is this: beautiful graphics, excellent story (I totally totally did not see the twist at the end coming), incredible gameplay (improved gameplay to boot). I personally loved it, felt I got a complete game and really really want Ubisoft to come out with DLC, this game is that good. 9.8/10 just because I can't give anything a 10/10.
For the achievement junkies out there, this game is a LOT easier to 1k than the first game. Most achievements are story related, a few fighting related which are fairly simple, there are 6 for getting each assassin's seal, and there are 3 for collectables - 1 for feathers, 1 for statues and 1 for wearing the cape obtained by collecting the feathers. All in all Ubisoft did what they said they would - improve every aspect of the game that people didn't like previously. Wow....just wow.
