*Copied from the April 28th and 30th posts on my personal blog*
  

Assassin's Creed 2 Micro-Review

Alrighty, time for me to talk about yet another game way after its release. This time, it's Assassin's Creed 2 in all its sacrilegious glory. Despite not playing the first one for more than an hour, I found myself attracted to this one but with no time to play it until recently.

I'll get this out of the way right now: holy cow is this game good! See, I even used an exclamation point without it being in a quote from another source - that's how much I enjoyed it. My favorite aspect of the game has to be just getting around the world. Free running on anything that will hold my weight; barely hanging onto a ledge only to jump from that to somewhere else; climbing to incredible heights then falling to the ground either by accident or as a faster way of getting back down - every act of movement is satisfying and smile-inducing... when it works.

Unfortunately, the game has some serious control issues that keep it from being as good as it should be and occasionally make what would be a fun segment of fast moving action into an array of frustrations all lined up in a row. It's a bit of Mirror's Edge Syndrome, where you sometimes wonder what in the hell you did wrong, only to realize it was so minor that it should either never have been allowed to happen or more tightly regulated during the polishing of the game. "Inconsistent" would be the optimal word to describe my feelings for how the game controls.

The good news is that while fighting off enemies, or groups of them more likely, the new control scheme that is meant to change the terrible combat from the first Assassin's Creed feels great. It is very satisfying to fight off a gaggle of guards using the each weapon's specific specialties and techniques. When not fighting and simply murderin' folks, the smoothness of Ezio Auditore's (the "lead" character) actions makes killing people a little too fun. While the violent aspects of gaming are normally not my cup of tea, stabbing two people in the neck so fast that I'm already twenty feet away and hiding when someone notices makes me giddy with delight. Ezio is an Assassin, and there is no doubt about his ever increasing skill as the player figures out more creative ways to kill throughout the game.

The death-dealing, though, is only a guilty pleasure. The real meat of this game for me, and the thing that kept me engaged, was a story with ever increasing conspiratorial crazyness and honestly endearing characters. Ezio, his family, and the people that help him on occasion are a  pleasure interact with. The first game had a lead character that I was immediately not attracted  to since he was basically a full-tilt jackass, which is one of the many reasons I played almost none of it before deciding it was in need of a trade-in (I got it so cheap I felt like it was worth breaking even just to get rid of the thing). It felt like the developers made this character and everyone around him more likable and memorable almost exclusively to make up for the first main character's immediate faults.
 
 It's not just the scenic or character aspects of the story that appeal, either. The world is alive because it is so well forged out of historical events and characters, even if it's totally manipulated to fit the game's yarn. Notes and hints unlocked by locating glyphs and codex pages, deciphered by a young Leonardo da Vinci, flesh out not only the game's history, but change what world history really was by revealing Templar manipulations involving anyone from Tesla to Hitler. The game is so full of fantastically written information that a player who enjoys reading it will find themselves enthralled, devouring information left and right and then looking for more.

After all of that intellectual stimulation, the rest of the game is filled with moron enemies and easy to complete scenarios. I literally never died during this game while battling enemies, only after a bad jump (most of which were the fault of the wonky controls telling my character to jump backwards off a tower, roof, or wall while I tried to do something else). Failing a mission was only possible due to badly laid out information as to what you needed to do or small and easily corrected errors by the player. As fun as it was to have such an immense variety of things to do, it was so easy that I occasionally made stupid mistakes because I was used to not having to pay even a little bit of attention in order to get things done.

Assassin's Creed 2 is wonderful in so many ways that it is hard to summarize it all into this short review. It really made me smile while I devoured information and explored the world, playing through scenarios that are as varied as any game I have played - even if the end goal of a lot of them was to find something or kill some dudes. My favorite aspects of gaming are (and will always be) a deep story, good characters, and a detailed world, and this game contains all three in spades. Despite avoiding the first game in this series like the plague after just an hour of gameplay, I very much look forward to the finale of this trilogy - especially after the insane cliffhanger ending.
 
Edit for Giantbomb: I don't like to give numerical scores of any kind to games, preferring a sort of enhanced stream of consciousness style review. Therefore, this will not be given a score or made into an official review on this site.
 
Copyright (c) 2010 Michael Valdez and OddProdigal.com

I can't keep my mouth shut about it anymore...

Roger Ebert opens his big mouth and again starts to prove that he is simply an elitist douche. I am, at heart, an optimist. While I am fully capable of admitting a hatred of people who are purposely ignorant, at the same I only wish the best for them and hope they are able to expand their thinking. Ebert, though, just really needs to shut the hell up when it comes to video games; he's ruining his legacy as an intelligent film critic (that's not an oxymoron to me, I think you really can be a smart, open-minded, well-versed critic) and replacing it with that of a typical old cynic in the minds of millions.

Before I move further, I want to state that I know that "art" is a concept in the human mind that is hard to establish a complete set of rules for. It is a very personal perception to believe that something is or isn't art, so Ebert is entitled to his opinion. Unfortunately, he is stating his opinion as if it is an undeniable fact, like the earth is round and the sun is a bit on the warm side. The way I look at it, art is almost entirely up to how hard the artist works to get his work up to a level of skill that is undeniable in its accomplishment. Here's how I interpret the rules:

1. Art is something, anything, that a person uses learned skills to create

This one doesn't need much explaining. Just make something and you're making some level of art.

2. The artist must have a passion for what is being made and work towards its completion.

This is probably the rule that most defines the word "artist." Doing something, like painting a landscape, and not caring what it looks like or whether it is finished doesn't make someone an artist despite the fact that they are using some basic learned skills (how to mix colors, how best to manipulate the media, and so on). An artist will have a passion for what they are making and will work in such a way as to sooner or later get it done. Leonardo Da Vinci was an infamous slouch, never finishing quite a few paintings that he was commissioned to do, but he worked in such a way that he could have sooner or later finished them if he really wanted to and he was passionate about his work.

3. It must be above the "normal" level of something that can be created. If it is not, the creator(s) must have a desire to constantly improve in skill until it is.

And now it gets more complicated. I believe that a chef can be an artist, but someone making a grilled cheese sandwich in the kitchen is not getting to a high enough level of artistry if they don't work to keep making better and better food. Another example could be drawing. Someone who does stick figures in a book on occasion is not creating art, but someone who starts with stick figures and moves forward just might be. I can serve as an example for this one. I started off doing drawings that were just above the quality of stick figures, but something inside my mind fueled a raging fire that told me "get better, get better, get better." So I did.

4. The artist must either consider himself/herself an artist, or be considered as such by others.

Those four reasons above are why I think that some video games are art. A video game that is more than a place for a player to input commands is automatically art to me, whether or not I like it. Sports games and a lot of shooters are not art to me; they have artistic elements, but do not fully try to do anything except be a structure strictly meant to be a basis for player input. A game like Uncharted 2, Heavy Rain, or the upcoming Alan Wake? Yes, that is art to me. The player has their role in furthering the adventure through input, but the game as a whole is more than that. It is a story, with characters and atmosphere that propel the player into wanting more.

That last sentence can be used to describe films if you replace the word "player" with "viewer." That's not a coincidence to me. In my mind I probably have a couple more rules, but for now I think that explains my beliefs and opinion on this topic sufficiently.

PS: Whew, longest one in a while. I think this time it was actually needed instead of me just being a longwinded fool.
 
Note for Giantbomb: This blog post is copied from my site, so all content is Copyright (c) 2010 Michael Valdez and OddProdigal.com