I just can't get with Assassin's Creed, I really can't. Playing through the first one, it frustrated me to no end. The lack of missions, activities... fun. It would drive anyone over the edge. With Assassin's Creed II, I read so many great things. "Way better than than the original". "Has more than three things to do." I took my time in picking it up but eventually I bit the bullet and picked up ACII last month.
 
Y'know what, just to contradict myself a bit, it is a good game. Looks nice, has a compelling story, interesting characters, and a well-realised setting. Still. Still I find myself clenching my nerdy wrists around the controller and howling at the moon. First and foremost, it does have more things to do. Like, for example, you can actually do some assassinating on a regular basis. You had like 9 assassinations in the original. That right there is an improvement. The problem is that there are so many assassination contracts. Scads upon scads of the buggers. Some of them are annoying, and long to boot. That isn't really much of a criticism however. They're optional and so I can just leave them be. I eventually had to pull the trigger on the completion compulsion inside me and just give up on the fuckers.
 
What I actually don't like about Assassin's Creed is a bit more tricky to put my finger on. The controls, while smooth and groundbreaking for their time, still piss me off and have me cursing to the high heavens. Nine times out of ten it will be fine, but that one time when you miss that one jump, the game should just slap you in the face. Another problem that gets me is the guards. They never seem to stop coming. Ever. I bump into one by accident and suddenly the half the population of Northern Italy is tracking me down. They just never go away. I climb to the rooftops and sneaky pricks are still up there. Peering at me as I try to gain an advantage over the busy Italian streets. I do have more criticism, pointless but hey they're mine, but I seem to ran out of blog stream.
 
Maybe it has something to do with myself always blaming the game when it was my ineptitude that held me back in the first place. I just find myself shouting at my TV every ten minutes, like a homeless man screaming at pigeons in a local park. It's like clockwork. Every now and then the game just ticks me off in some way, shape or form and suddenly I'm up the walls, in a semi-literal sense. Assassin's Creed is a fine franchise and is selling copies by the boatload. I doubt Ubisoft will be crying that one angry person can penetrate their games, they're too busy buying their solid gold houses (all the power to them). Sometimes I think maybe I can describe my relationship with the Assassin's crew in a cliché way. Maybe Assassin's Creed, "It's not you, it's me."