Everyone Loves A Good Sequel / Rewrite
In 2007 Ubisoft Montreal released the original Assassin's Creed to critical 'meh'-ing; it wasn't a bad or broken game as such, but it didn't live up to people's expectations and instead became a somewhat boring game experience. The missions were tedious, the fighting was average and apparently you were wearing horns and carrying a devil's fork since everyone was instantly suspicious of you. But you could go monotonously climb to the top of buildings and forcibly stare at the pretty view so it was all ok right? Right?
In the end Ubisoft was sent away with its tail between its legs only to reappear with the sequel, triumphantly declaring "We fixed it!". And to their credit, they have. Assassin's Creed 2 moves the setting to Italy and the time frame to late 15th century (Apparently when teleporting to locations was invented). The missions are varied enough to keep you interested, the combat has vastly improved and you can actually run without having a crowd of angry guards chasing after you. Huzzah! The problem is, this is what the original Assassin's Creed should have been.
There's no denying I had fun playing this game. And in the end, that's what determines how good a game is. If I'm not enjoying the experience, or gripped by what's going on, then in my mind the game has failed. My problem purely comes down to the fact the changes are pretty 'tick box'. It's as if the team sat down, read the reviews to the first game and created a list of the bad things. And now they roll out the changes, one by one, in order to shut up those critics. In some ways, this is what a sequel should do; learn from it's mistakes and make sure they don't crop up again. But look at any other media and they wouldn't be allowed to get away with it. A book writer can't publish a book to average reviews before rewriting a few sentences and re-releasing it a couple of years later.
So perhaps I should ignore what's come before. See this as an original game with enjoyable gameplay. The level design is beautiful. Places like Venice and Tuscany are truly stunning, and make you wonder why no one previously has taken advantages of such amazing locales. The story moves along nicely and at least this time gives you grounding to go along and throw people off buildings. And the music intergrates with both the tone and setting perfectly without making it seem like you're watching an educational reconstruction. The game controls well, with a simple enough button layout, but the day I can climb up to the top of my house that easily will be a good day for us all i.e. traversing the environment is a little too easy unless you're a fiftteenth century spider-man. AC2 also introduces side quests which are pure Prince of Persia grade traversal. These take place in several 'closed off' environments in order to gain the armor of Altair from the previous game, who apparently ran around in kevlar in his later years.
The notoriety system is a great introduction to the game, where in doing bad things gets you noticed. Funny that. At the heart of it it's a great idea to solve the previous game's problem, although since the majority or the time you'll stay unnoticed it tends to boil down to you swiping down the odd wanted poster when you make an error. The combat is very varied, both in the choice of weapons and your options for what to do with them. Getting rid of enemies isn't too difficult, though the having the choice to do so is admirable. Being able to pull enemies off buildings or into haysacks never gets old. The variety of weapons both comes from those dropped by enemies and those available at stores bought with your hard earned/stolen flore....floren....flo.....money. Which you will do a lot since the life of an assassin is apparently a lucrative one. By the end of the game you'll be swimming in the stuff, which makes the pickpocketing and robbing technique introduced early on seem quite pointless. The majority of your cash comes from your villa back home. Apparently not only are you great with a sword but also very business savvy, ultimately allowing you to plow your cash into buildings and shops in return for discounts and cumulative profits. I do however wish something more had been done with this, since after you've 'bought everything out' there's little sense of accomplishment.
And so Assassin's Creed 2 has a lot going for it. It's a great game that I'd happily recommend to anyone. But part of me wants to punish Ubisoft for simply doing what they should've done in the first place. You can't fault them for improving the game to a playable state, but when you compare it to the changes from games such as Mass Effect to its' respective sequel these seem purely superficial and to an extent forced- if Ubisoft hadn't had any feedback on their first game would they have simply pushed out an identical sequel? I'm interested to see the direction they take with AC3. Perhaps this time you won't exist in a land where apparently half the population were bitten by radioactive spiders.
