Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

A quality of many great video games is there ability to make the player feel like a total bad-ass. Assassin’s creed II is one of these rare games that had the ability to make you feel like a bad-ass and therefore when the time to pick up the sequel came around just a year after its predecessor it was inevitable that I would pick up a copy.

The beginning of the games starts with Ezio right were he was at the end of the last game, deep inside the Vatican. A quick recap of the controls with your uncle Mario as you fight your way out get you back into the swing of things, before you head back to your villa. Here Ezio enjoys some flower arranging, some cannon practice and then the company of a lady friend. However just before Ezio gets to enjoy the fool extent of life as a retired assassin the villa you penny pinched for last game gets blown to itty bitty pieces and he loses all of his armor. This sets up a nice metroid style, you’ve lost all your stuff you ponce go and find it. Ezio rather miffed and several degrees more vulnerable by this point decides to go to Rome to fight back against the Borgia, the family that now run Rome and and love disturbing assassins during there quality time with their lady friends.

Once in Rome the game opens up into the usual stabbing all the dudes between you and and the main target, the head of the Borgia family, Cesare. To help Ezio avenge the destruction of his villa, he will now have the help of the entire Assassins guild, however you first have to build it up from scratch. This new mechanic works by finding civilians in the world that are being harassed by guards ,helping them, and then having them join you. Then with the help of messenger pigeons you send them on missions to get them trained up. The best bit of having the assassins guild is being able to call them at any time to help you out in battle. This is particularly effective when wanting to stay unnoticed by guards, you call your young padawans by whistling and having them fly out of the nearest window and kill all of the soldiers in the area. This is something that really adds to the feeling of being a bad-ass in the game. The ability to get rid of several guards at a whim is incredibly satisfying. The down side is that I became a little too good with them and found myself not using them so that I could get my hands dirty.

To replace the the hole in his heart after the loss of his villa Ezio decides to set himself a new renovation project, the whole of Rome!!! While traversing the the world you will be able to purchase shops that will boost your income that will allow you to buy new armor and weapons. However to buy these shops you have to burn a nearby Borgia tower that has locked the shops out. This works by killing the Borgia captain and then setting the top of the tower on fire. obviously only Borgia captains know how to put out fires. Also thoughout the world there are fast travel points, tunnel entrances, that can be renovated. These are necessary because unlike the first game you spend almost all of your time in Rome, and its big, really big. This I feel gives Brotherhood less character than 2. Rome feels too large and faceless apart from a few well know land marks, where as AC2 had several locations that felt varied and new.

Within Rome there are all of the side trappings of the second entry into the assassins creed franchise are here with a few new ones as an additional distraction from your main objective. Subjects 16’s devilish puzzles are still as frustrating even though there aren't as many this time round, and the Assassin's tombs return just under the name of the Followers of Romulus's treasure. The new side missions consist of courtesan missions and other faction missions that will have you performing a variety of tasks.

The biggest addition to Brotherhood is that of a multi-player component. The main mode is Wanted. The player is contacted to kill another player in whatever way you see fit, you can run on roof tops, you can sneak up from behind, or you can hide in hay bales and wait for him. The other side to this is that there might be some one hunting you, so therefore if your running on rooftops like a nun that's just had her head dress set on fire then your going to get noticed, so it becomes a game of trying to find your guy whilst not being noticed, and the better you do, the more players will be contracted to kill you. All of this adds up to a whole new kind of multi-player that is very intriguing. I am not sure if I will be playing it for as long as Halo Reach but it has peaked my interest and I am having a lot of fun with it, and isn’t that what matters.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood is an excellently put together game that takes its predecessor success and adds to it very successfully. The new assassins guild mechanic makes the player fell much more powerful, and there sheer amount of stuff to be doing in brotherhood means that you can spend hours on it and never complete a story mission. The simplicity of the cat and mouse multiplier is innovative enough that any one that has simply dismissed it hasn't given it a fair chance. Although initially thought of as a side project for the franchise, Brotherhood is a full fleshed out Assassins Creed game that is a requirement for any member of the creed.