Assassin's Creed II

So. First off, I loved the original Assassin's Creed, and while the original was bogged down by a slightly confusing story and some gameplay issues, Ubisoft Montreal seems to have studied the feedback from players worldwide. The resulting sequel is a game improved on nearly every level possible, and highly entertaining overall. 

The Good

I won't get into too much explaining of the plot (you can just check the GiantBomb page for that sort of thing), but I must say that the main storyline is far more engaging than the original was, both outside the Animus and inside it. The sequences with the main protagonist in the present, Desmond, though still only a small piece of the actual gameplay, play a bigger part in the story, and Desmond himself is no longer reduced to merely being some dude switching between lying in a bed or in an Animus. Even though you only see the Desmond-storyline at brief moments in the game, Ubi has still made an effort to explain what's going on, which is really good to see. 
 
As for the OTHER main protagonist, Ezio, he is a huge improvement over Altaïr, whose constant bad-assery left him with even less personality than Cole McGrath. At the beginning of the game Ezio is charming and witty, and throughout the game we witness as he evolves into a vengeful killer. He speaks with a very heavy accent, which sometimes, surprisingly, makes him sound a bit like Niko Bellic. Or maybe that's just how I hear all non-American accents? Anyway, Ezio's presence helps drag the player into the game - especially in the beginning, when we follow him as he seeks to avenge his family. Later in the game, however, this effect wears off and how Ezio got from avenging his family to suddenly go on a killing spree all across Italy could have been explained better. 
 
Though the supporting characters certainly don't lack personality - least of all Leonardo da Vinci, who comes off as a really nice guy - none of them are involved in the actual gameplay enough to make them seem like anything more than, well, supporting roles.  For the most part Assassin's Creed II is the story of one man. And a lot of guards. Ironically, I ended up feeling more committed to my hired prostitutes and mercenaries than to any of the characters central to the plot, because they were the ones helping me 'in the field'.

The main storyline is big. Not San Andreas-big, but big enough. Actually, it sometimes feels too big and disconnected. The whole 'go here, kill this guy' recipe is repeated far too often, and at one point or another it ends up getting boring. Even for an assassin.

Luckily, the game has more side-quests than you can shake a stick at. Finding viewpoints, feathers, treasure chests, as well as playing hitman, bouncer or courier among other things. These could all be golden opportunities for PSN-freaks to go Trophy-hunting, yet for some strange reason only a few of the Trophies are concerning these side-quests. Most of them you just earn by completing the main storyline. Strange choice indeed...Another side-quest I have to mention is the way you get to rebuild the city of Montereggioni using your own, hard-earned cash. It's an amusing activity as long as it lasts, but if you haven't spent billions of cash on hookers and thieves, you should be able to renovate all of the city very quickly, and that's the end of that. 

The people and cities of Italy seem truly alive. The models of the average Joes hanging out at the corner drinking beer are simply gorgeous. As goes for the women. Their voicework is equally impressive, as well as quite hilarious at times. When I nimbly jumped from rooftop to rooftop, I could hear comments like a woman complaining how 'that's a man! Not like my Antonio', or a man mumbling to himself 'I guess I should find a way to stay in shape as well...'. The official GiantBomb review complained about recycling of voicework, but frankly, I haven't witnessed that very often (except for "Aha! You found another one! How exciting", which you'll probably hear approximately 29 times. You'll see...). 
 
As for the in-game music it is strikingly beautiful and also varied. Each city has different music, but it all comes off as soothing and medieval-tinged ambient. When chasing or being chased, the music switched to subtle 'chasing music', which is actually so good that I sometimes find guards to sucker punch and run away only so I can hear the chasing music again. I haven't experienced that kind of music-gameplay teamwork since I was driving an airboat while being chased by a helicopter in Half-Life 2. When in the 'secret locations', however, the music makes a total change, and instead becomes eerie dark ambient, which reminds me of the music of Black Dahlia. And that's a good thing.
 

The Bad

 
 Now for the negative aspects of this game, and the reasons that it didn't get a higher rating from me. First off, some of the controls in-game are notoriously difficult. This especially comes to show at timed events. Like in the original game, you need to press R1 to run and R1 + X to jump and crawl on walls. Unfortunately, the collision detection between Ezio and walls is fubar, and when jumping from railings or the like, you are often limited to 4 or 5 directions in which you can jump. This often leads to Ezio jumping the exact opposite way of what you want, or sometimes not jumping at all, merely crashing onto the pavement below. When you're free-roaming across the city, this is just a slight annoyance, but when you're fighting to complete time challenges or racing to a closing door or to intercept a fleeing guard inside a dungeon, it becomes a regular destroyer of all the fun. I have been dangerously close to throwing my controller out of the window several times when I almost    reached the lever I needed to push, only to have Ezio suddenly for some inexplicable reason ignore the lever, and instead jump into the water below, meaning a great deal of backtracking and cursing along the way...The buggy controls almost singlehandedly kills the platforming-aspect of the game.

Another thing which I must criticize a bit is the plot, which blends sci-fi, Renaissance intrigues, a quest for vengeance, the old Assassin-Templar animosity, Christianity and many other things into a confusing mess of a plot, and by the time you are finished with the main storyline, you probably won't feel much more informed about what exactly is going on than when you started. This makes it all the more tempting to seek out 'glyphs' left by Desmond's predecessor in the Animus. However, this only leads to even more confusing, although some of the mini-games associated with them are actually very entertaining.

Lastly, and most critical, Assassin's Creed II seems to drive my PS3 beyond its breaking point. Whether it's bad code or simply the grand scale of the game, I have no idea, but the game has both HUGE frame rate issues at points - especially when rendering the entire city - and a disturbingly great amount of freezes. I've even had the game freeze several times the exact same place. Needless to say, that is NOT acceptable.  I have also had people popping up right in front of me, and environment being rendered painfully choppy, which is strange considering the sheer horsepower of the average PS3. Also, the cooler is on almost all the time, even more so than in games like inFamous or Grand Theft Auto IV, which are also huge. This, along with the strangely low default volume setting, and the inability to change this, means that you'll probably have to crank your speakers way loud in order to get a decent experience.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Assassin's Creed II is a larger, more diverse and entertaining version of Assassin's Creed. It IS highly entertaining, albeit confusing at times, and were it not for the hardware and control issues, that unfortunately destroys a great deal of the gaming experience, I would not hesitate to call it one of the best games of the year. As it is now, however, it's sadly too buggy. Here's hoping for some kind of patch... 
 
 

 

Updated impressions

(30/11/09)  After posting this review, I've had several comments talking about how the Xbox 360 version of this game doesn't seem to suffer from the stability issues mentioned above (and a single comment claiming there is no difference). So I'm assuming that the buggy aspect of this game is restricted to the PS3 version. 360 users will probably want to ignore that aspect of the review.     (12/01/10) I just realized that patch 1.01 is out, supposedly fixing the crashes I've had when 'double assassinating' several times in a row. This  is great news, and you may want to disregard some of the above bitching about technical issues.