I'm going to Brad the Assassin's Creed series - Part 2
By ventilaator 9 Comments
WARNING! SPOILERS FOR ASSASSIN'S CREED 2!
Assassin's Creed 2 has been obtained, and I've played a bunch of it.
Holy F-ing S. Ubisoft has figured out how to make the Desmond bits not completely annoying, by actualy having things happens during those segments. When you got to play as Desmond in the first game, you got to take part in such unique activities as Walk To Your Bed and Walk Back To The Animus and...well that was it really.
This game starts out by having you escape the facility you spent in the first game and beating up a bunch of dudes. Later you get to jump around like the ancestors you spend most of the game playing as.
Ubisoft has also figured out how to write a compelling story, by using such mind-blowing concepts as "Characters" which are a new addition to the series. Ezio, the lead this time around, shows more character in the first 6 seconds of appearing on screen (After the bit where you see him as a baby, obviously) than the entire first game had combined.
Gameplay-wise...I have no idea how they achieved this, but even when I'm doing the exact same stuff I did in the first game, it's way less annoying. When I ran around for viewpoints in the first game I could only do 3-5 of them before getting sick of it, here I got all the viewpoints in a city as soon as I entered it.
Later I ran around for treasure chests after buying the map for it. There are a ton of chests literally everywhere, and it didn't get annoying.
If I had to guess, I would say it's because of the fact that the guards don't want to skewer you if you look at them funny. This makes simply running around so much more fun.
I like doing random stuff in this game. At one point I figured I've been doing too many story missions in a row and I may be running through the game a bit fast, so I went and checked out the Assassin's Tombs, and loved the concept of turning the game into Prince of Persia for a section. The sidemissions are all fun, which is a huge improvement over the first game, which...mostly wasn't fun.
Combat still looks awesome while being unbelievably tedious, and the climbing mechanic is worse.
You heard me, there's something Assassin's Creed 1 did better. Coming directly from the first game, the climbing mechanic feels way looser, which brings the occasional situation where Ezio jumps in the completely opposite direction I wanted him to. In the first game I occasionally got stuck mid-climb, being unable to climb any higher while there was an obvious ledge to grab. In this game they overcompensated for that, if there's anything to grab onto, Ezio will, whether you want him to or not.
This doesn't break the game though, it just makes me have to pay more attention when running around. Assassin's Creed 2 is still about 60-80 infinities more enjoyable than the first game, and the game will probably be my first platinum trophy, because if I keep going like this, I will literally do everything there is to do.