pwnophobia
12-03-2009, 05:22 AM
Title: Assassin's Creed 2
Platforms: Xbox 360 / PS3
Platform Reviewed: PS3
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal (http://www.ubi.com/enca/default.aspx)
Publisher: Ubisoft (http://www.ubi.com)
MSRP: $59.99
Writer: Matt 'BalekFekete' Ford
Assassin's Creed 2 Review
Nothing is real, everything is permitted.
In the entertainment business sequels are made by and large for one reason alone - to make more money off of a successful piece of intellectual property. However most sequels drop the baton and tend to suck when compared to the original. They either rehash the initial release with little change or they inadvertently change a part of the original that made it great in the first place. However, every so often, we're treated to a sequel that does it right and not only meets but exceeds the splendor of the original. Terminator 2. Diablo 2. Aliens. It's a list of the elite but make room for one more name - Assassin's Creed 2.
Assassin's Creed 2 picks up immediately where the first game left off with kidnapped bartender Desmond Miles staring at a sequence of glowing code in his cell at Abstergo Industries. By utilizing the Animus, Desmond enters into his memories of ancestors in a Matrix-esque fashion to participate in the war between the Assassins and the Templar Knights. The catch is Desmond's distant relatives are primarily the former whereas Abstergo is founded and funded by the latter. Fortunately for Desmond, one of the employees at Abstergo is an Assassin plant. He is freed from his captivity and delivered to a new safe house where he continues the journey into his past, this time during the Renaissance in late 15th century Italy.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/ac2-1.jpg
A quick warning - the escape from Abstergo will make you want to turn the game off and shelf it. Not because it's poorly scripted or has game crashing bugs but because it is simply butt ugly. The textures in the 'real world' are bland and the models for your fellow rebels are poorly done. Character's skin seem to be stretched over rough wooden skeletons and your girlfriend from the previous game seems to have had a severely botched BOTOX procedure done since you last saw her. However after about 20 minutes you will be re-introduced to the virtual world. As bad as the initial presentation is the primary portion of the game more than makes up for it. It is simply...breathtaking. If you have never been to Italy then this is the cheapest substitute available in our modern world. Florence teems with activity, with people running their daily errands, shopkeepers hocking their wares, or minstrels begging for your donations. Venice is perfectly recreated, complete with the canal highways filled with gondolas ripe for the borrowing. Finally, you will encounter people from history throughout the game, including the opportunity to befriend a young Leonardo da Vinci.
The graphics are great and will get you drooling for a few hours however if the game play and story are not up to snuff a game will soon find itself regulated to the back of the collection pile and eventually even to the status of trade-in fodder. The main criticism of the initial game was the lack of variability in the missions throughout. Visit a few viewpoints, talk to a couple of people, and assassinate a target. Rinse and repeat 9 times, game over. It was a completely legitimate gripe with the title. Gamers complained, and you know what? Ubisoft listened! Assassin's Creed 2 is totally story driven, with little to no repetition between missions...at least none that you will notice. Instead of haphazardly throwing together different missions just to add variety, Ubisoft has woven these new missions into a coherent chain of events that keeps the story moving along while holding the gamer's attention. I won't say the story is Academy Award winning material, but it was certainly solid enough to have me wanting to know what happened next.
As if the primary story isn't enough the developers have included a secondary storyline for those who want to search for it. As part of your escape from Abstergo memories from another captive has been interjected into your world. As a result of too much time in the Animus, Subject 16 was able to access restricted Abstergo information, finally uncovering The Truth. Hidden throughout your world are hidden glyphs which you uncover using your Eagle Vision. When you find one, it launches a series of mini-games in order to view short 1 or 2 second clips of video. Once you find all 16, you can watch them uninterrupted and see some background that supports the game's final conclusion. Its well worth the effort to find and like the viewpoints, you will find yourself saying "just one more glyph..." often.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/ac2-2.jpg
Another aspect of the initial game that Ubisoft addressed handily was the limited weapon variety that Altair had at his disposal. If it wasn't a sword, your hidden blade, or a set of throwing knives, he was out of luck. However, Ezio has many more options open to him. There are blacksmiths located across all the cities which sell a multitude of swords, knives, mauls, hammers and daggers for you to buy and use. Each one of the weapons is modelled very nicely in the game, and will be present hanging off of your belt as you move from one weapon to the next. The weapons are rated on attributes including damage, speed, and deflection capability. Which you use will depend on how you want to play. Do you choose a massive war hammer and beat the city guards into submission? Or do you opt for a smaller dagger to counter your attackers blows and kill them in a single parrying stab? It is wholly up to you. The reward for experimenting is that each weapon has a series of simply awesome execution-style moves that makes you cringe each you dispatch a guard.
You all know the saying 'the suit makes the man'? In Assassin's Creed 2, this adage is confirmed. Instead of owning a single set of robes, you now can purchase several sets of armor from the same blacksmiths who set you up with your weaponry. Your health will vary depending on the armor you wear instead of being a magical function of how much of the land you have explored. Each armor set is made up of four individual pieces which can be mixed-and-matched as you purchase them. Each piece will show up in wonderful detail on your character in-game as well. You are even able to search for hidden Assassin's Tombs throughout the cities and recover a series of assassin's seals to unlock the armor of Altair, still strong and supple even after centuries in storage.
In addition to the new weapons and armor, Ezio has several new powerful items available to help send his targets to their grave. Smoke bombs envelop you in a choking haze of white powder incapacitating everyone around you for several vital seconds. During this time you can dispatch the most dangerous of your foes with your hidden blades, and then take the remaining targets out at your leisure. Another addition to your tool belt is poison vials for your hidden blade. With a simple flick of your wrist, you can deliver a lethal dose of poison to your target and walk away unnoticed. The toxin will send your victim into a hilarious death dance where they strike out, with weapons if they have them, at anyone around them in frantic agony before they finally drop to the ground quivering to die. These new tools, along with several others, add a whole new dimension to the game.
Other new features include small but not inconsequential changes to the mechanics of the game. No longer will you need to ride on horseback for several minutes to get from one city to the next. There are now vendors offering cheep trips between cities, instantly transporting you to the gate of your choice. Additionally, if you recall, Altair never learned to swim. Fortunately, Ezio is completely comfortable in the water. Taking the high dive off a tower into a pile of hay is great but taking the plunge down into the canals of Venice is simply spectacular. Finally, if you find yourself in a bind or need a set of guards out of the way there are thugs, thieves, and whores set in the streets that you can hire and use to help divert the guards attention.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/ac2-3.jpg
With all that has changed, some aspects of the original game has remained the same. The stellar parkour still remains the best in gaming. In other games with a vertical component, the developers feel the need to artificially highlight where handholds are to be found. It really has been something that has bugged me for quite a long time, as it tends to break the immersive quality of a game. However, in Assassin's Creed 2 everything is built into the environment. If it looks like you can climb it, you can effortlessly, and with catlike fluidity. Even newcomers to the series will find themselves effortlessly scaling even the tallest towers in Italy in no time. What makes it even more impressive is how well the character modeling is while you move around the virtual world. As your character climbs, it looks like it's not entirely easy (matched with various grunts and groans that made my wife giggle at from time to time). The only downside is that it does takes a little suspension of disbelief to get over the idea that anyone could move, climb, and jump like Ezio does and survive to see another day.
We all know too well that we are in the middle of the most significant economic downturn of our lives. Money is short as a whole, even more so for discretionary spending. Add to that another very solid autumn line-up of AAA titles and gamers have to give serious thought of how to spend their gaming dollars. To earn that money I look for a few things. First, it must have an engrossing story to tell. If you don't want to stop playing, that is a good sign. In the 30 or so hours I spent on the game, I never once wanted to stop but instead caught myself saying "It's tomorrow already??" over and over. Then the mechanics need to make playing the game a matter of fact, and not something you need to concentrate on. Once you are in the game proper, moving and fighting are both effortless and extraordinarily rewarding. Finally, I'll admit it - I'm a bit of a graphics snob. While visuals won't fix a game that lacks a solid story or good mechanics, Assassin's Creed 2 doesn't have that problem. It is easily one of the most visually stunning games of the current console generation.
So what are you waiting for? Assassinate someone today!
Score: 4.5 out of 5
http://evavhost.com/public/45.gif
The Good The deep, engrossing story we were all looking for in the first game. Graphics good enough to reduce short term tourism to Italy. More ways to dispatch a guard with bloody, gory goodness than we deserve.
The Bad The camera can be problematic at times, especially during large fights in crowded areas. Weak AI produces Italian guards that don't understand the value of superior numbers in a street fight.
The Ugly Nobody at Ubisoft seems to have heard about the value of first impressions.
Platforms: Xbox 360 / PS3
Platform Reviewed: PS3
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal (http://www.ubi.com/enca/default.aspx)
Publisher: Ubisoft (http://www.ubi.com)
MSRP: $59.99
Writer: Matt 'BalekFekete' Ford
Assassin's Creed 2 Review
Nothing is real, everything is permitted.
In the entertainment business sequels are made by and large for one reason alone - to make more money off of a successful piece of intellectual property. However most sequels drop the baton and tend to suck when compared to the original. They either rehash the initial release with little change or they inadvertently change a part of the original that made it great in the first place. However, every so often, we're treated to a sequel that does it right and not only meets but exceeds the splendor of the original. Terminator 2. Diablo 2. Aliens. It's a list of the elite but make room for one more name - Assassin's Creed 2.
Assassin's Creed 2 picks up immediately where the first game left off with kidnapped bartender Desmond Miles staring at a sequence of glowing code in his cell at Abstergo Industries. By utilizing the Animus, Desmond enters into his memories of ancestors in a Matrix-esque fashion to participate in the war between the Assassins and the Templar Knights. The catch is Desmond's distant relatives are primarily the former whereas Abstergo is founded and funded by the latter. Fortunately for Desmond, one of the employees at Abstergo is an Assassin plant. He is freed from his captivity and delivered to a new safe house where he continues the journey into his past, this time during the Renaissance in late 15th century Italy.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/ac2-1.jpg
A quick warning - the escape from Abstergo will make you want to turn the game off and shelf it. Not because it's poorly scripted or has game crashing bugs but because it is simply butt ugly. The textures in the 'real world' are bland and the models for your fellow rebels are poorly done. Character's skin seem to be stretched over rough wooden skeletons and your girlfriend from the previous game seems to have had a severely botched BOTOX procedure done since you last saw her. However after about 20 minutes you will be re-introduced to the virtual world. As bad as the initial presentation is the primary portion of the game more than makes up for it. It is simply...breathtaking. If you have never been to Italy then this is the cheapest substitute available in our modern world. Florence teems with activity, with people running their daily errands, shopkeepers hocking their wares, or minstrels begging for your donations. Venice is perfectly recreated, complete with the canal highways filled with gondolas ripe for the borrowing. Finally, you will encounter people from history throughout the game, including the opportunity to befriend a young Leonardo da Vinci.
The graphics are great and will get you drooling for a few hours however if the game play and story are not up to snuff a game will soon find itself regulated to the back of the collection pile and eventually even to the status of trade-in fodder. The main criticism of the initial game was the lack of variability in the missions throughout. Visit a few viewpoints, talk to a couple of people, and assassinate a target. Rinse and repeat 9 times, game over. It was a completely legitimate gripe with the title. Gamers complained, and you know what? Ubisoft listened! Assassin's Creed 2 is totally story driven, with little to no repetition between missions...at least none that you will notice. Instead of haphazardly throwing together different missions just to add variety, Ubisoft has woven these new missions into a coherent chain of events that keeps the story moving along while holding the gamer's attention. I won't say the story is Academy Award winning material, but it was certainly solid enough to have me wanting to know what happened next.
As if the primary story isn't enough the developers have included a secondary storyline for those who want to search for it. As part of your escape from Abstergo memories from another captive has been interjected into your world. As a result of too much time in the Animus, Subject 16 was able to access restricted Abstergo information, finally uncovering The Truth. Hidden throughout your world are hidden glyphs which you uncover using your Eagle Vision. When you find one, it launches a series of mini-games in order to view short 1 or 2 second clips of video. Once you find all 16, you can watch them uninterrupted and see some background that supports the game's final conclusion. Its well worth the effort to find and like the viewpoints, you will find yourself saying "just one more glyph..." often.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/ac2-2.jpg
Another aspect of the initial game that Ubisoft addressed handily was the limited weapon variety that Altair had at his disposal. If it wasn't a sword, your hidden blade, or a set of throwing knives, he was out of luck. However, Ezio has many more options open to him. There are blacksmiths located across all the cities which sell a multitude of swords, knives, mauls, hammers and daggers for you to buy and use. Each one of the weapons is modelled very nicely in the game, and will be present hanging off of your belt as you move from one weapon to the next. The weapons are rated on attributes including damage, speed, and deflection capability. Which you use will depend on how you want to play. Do you choose a massive war hammer and beat the city guards into submission? Or do you opt for a smaller dagger to counter your attackers blows and kill them in a single parrying stab? It is wholly up to you. The reward for experimenting is that each weapon has a series of simply awesome execution-style moves that makes you cringe each you dispatch a guard.
You all know the saying 'the suit makes the man'? In Assassin's Creed 2, this adage is confirmed. Instead of owning a single set of robes, you now can purchase several sets of armor from the same blacksmiths who set you up with your weaponry. Your health will vary depending on the armor you wear instead of being a magical function of how much of the land you have explored. Each armor set is made up of four individual pieces which can be mixed-and-matched as you purchase them. Each piece will show up in wonderful detail on your character in-game as well. You are even able to search for hidden Assassin's Tombs throughout the cities and recover a series of assassin's seals to unlock the armor of Altair, still strong and supple even after centuries in storage.
In addition to the new weapons and armor, Ezio has several new powerful items available to help send his targets to their grave. Smoke bombs envelop you in a choking haze of white powder incapacitating everyone around you for several vital seconds. During this time you can dispatch the most dangerous of your foes with your hidden blades, and then take the remaining targets out at your leisure. Another addition to your tool belt is poison vials for your hidden blade. With a simple flick of your wrist, you can deliver a lethal dose of poison to your target and walk away unnoticed. The toxin will send your victim into a hilarious death dance where they strike out, with weapons if they have them, at anyone around them in frantic agony before they finally drop to the ground quivering to die. These new tools, along with several others, add a whole new dimension to the game.
Other new features include small but not inconsequential changes to the mechanics of the game. No longer will you need to ride on horseback for several minutes to get from one city to the next. There are now vendors offering cheep trips between cities, instantly transporting you to the gate of your choice. Additionally, if you recall, Altair never learned to swim. Fortunately, Ezio is completely comfortable in the water. Taking the high dive off a tower into a pile of hay is great but taking the plunge down into the canals of Venice is simply spectacular. Finally, if you find yourself in a bind or need a set of guards out of the way there are thugs, thieves, and whores set in the streets that you can hire and use to help divert the guards attention.
http://evavhost.com/i/reviews/ac2-3.jpg
With all that has changed, some aspects of the original game has remained the same. The stellar parkour still remains the best in gaming. In other games with a vertical component, the developers feel the need to artificially highlight where handholds are to be found. It really has been something that has bugged me for quite a long time, as it tends to break the immersive quality of a game. However, in Assassin's Creed 2 everything is built into the environment. If it looks like you can climb it, you can effortlessly, and with catlike fluidity. Even newcomers to the series will find themselves effortlessly scaling even the tallest towers in Italy in no time. What makes it even more impressive is how well the character modeling is while you move around the virtual world. As your character climbs, it looks like it's not entirely easy (matched with various grunts and groans that made my wife giggle at from time to time). The only downside is that it does takes a little suspension of disbelief to get over the idea that anyone could move, climb, and jump like Ezio does and survive to see another day.
We all know too well that we are in the middle of the most significant economic downturn of our lives. Money is short as a whole, even more so for discretionary spending. Add to that another very solid autumn line-up of AAA titles and gamers have to give serious thought of how to spend their gaming dollars. To earn that money I look for a few things. First, it must have an engrossing story to tell. If you don't want to stop playing, that is a good sign. In the 30 or so hours I spent on the game, I never once wanted to stop but instead caught myself saying "It's tomorrow already??" over and over. Then the mechanics need to make playing the game a matter of fact, and not something you need to concentrate on. Once you are in the game proper, moving and fighting are both effortless and extraordinarily rewarding. Finally, I'll admit it - I'm a bit of a graphics snob. While visuals won't fix a game that lacks a solid story or good mechanics, Assassin's Creed 2 doesn't have that problem. It is easily one of the most visually stunning games of the current console generation.
So what are you waiting for? Assassinate someone today!
Score: 4.5 out of 5
http://evavhost.com/public/45.gif
The Good The deep, engrossing story we were all looking for in the first game. Graphics good enough to reduce short term tourism to Italy. More ways to dispatch a guard with bloody, gory goodness than we deserve.
The Bad The camera can be problematic at times, especially during large fights in crowded areas. Weak AI produces Italian guards that don't understand the value of superior numbers in a street fight.
The Ugly Nobody at Ubisoft seems to have heard about the value of first impressions.