Assassin's Creed 2

[Reicha7]

I am going to start this review with everything that is good about Assassin’s Creed 2 and then concentrate on everything that is so, so wrong with it. The reason for this is mainly because I cannot stand to be nice to a game that clearly does not deserve it and while some may be baffled as to this statement and may try and quote comments of excellence to me from the swarms of professional reviewers out there. I however will not be swayed by the views of those paid to witter about how awesome games are and equally will not care if I get my already small reputation as a reviewer bashed for not giving Modern Warfare 2 a perfect or whatever. Now we have that out of the way onto the game.

Assassin’s 2 picks up right where the first game left of with us still scratching our head as to what the f--’s just happened and Desmond locked in the Animus room of Abstergo (company composed of modern day Templars using genetic memories of Assassins in order to locate pieces of Eden and use them to rule the world) when your only friend in the world Lucy comes to your rescue and sets you off on your training in order to take part in the inevitable war that is going to start between Assassins and Templars.

This is to be done through the use of the Animus 2.0, a slightly better animus developed by a team of Assassins with the intent to help you explore the memories of another ancestor Ezio in order to experience the same Assassin training he did and as such rise from the Animus as a fully proficient Assassin. While in the Animus you learn more about the war between Assassins and Templars and the role Desmond’s ancestors played in it. Most of the unanswered questions from the first game get answered in the new instalment which is always a positive aspect. The problem is it just has to mutilate history in order to do this but I will come to that later.

Gameplay has remained largely unchanged from the first Assassins Creed except now you have a few more weapons to play with as well as a variety of interesting stunts to pull off for more amusing and stealthy assassinations. Various features have been added also to slow the time between pressing new game and winning and these include a fort from which you can generate money to spend on new weapons and armour and also collectible items that must be obtained before the story can progress to its climax.

The game world is certainly a lot bigger than that of Assassins Creed and generally has a lot more to do than its predecessor. This coupled with the improvement to environmental graphics helps add a sense of scale and awe to the game and I must admit even I found myself wowed standing on the tallest building surveying the seemingly endless cityscape.

OK we have pretty much covered everything that is remotely good about doubleassin’s creed 2 now onto the many things that completely ruins this game starting with the technical issues and then onto the true issues.

Lets go section the main issue we have with this game, the story. Yes it was an interesting story with some very odd and unique plot twists but now things are getting plain silly. I mean rewriting history to try and tell us that everything we have ever learned is a conspiracy and that every important person in history was either an Assassin or a Templar hellbent on expanding the empire of these 2 factions, neither of whom seem to be on the side of good no matter what we are told. All the bullshit that appears throughout the course of the games story is happily accepted by the main character with very little evidence or reasoning and he blindly goes along following orders for the assassin’s who could very well be on the side of evil for all you know.

Well I say for all the story when in actuality I mean all the story that you have access to on the retail disk. Yes it is a sad fact that we are forced to buy 2 DLC’s from the respective online store in order to complete 2 chapters of Ezio’s life and mangle another 2 periods of Venetian history no doubt. Due to the fact I have a fully functioning brain, I did not fork out the cash for these DLC’s and have learned that each is only about an hour or so long making the investment all the more pointless. Sorry for the whole paragraph on this but charging us to see some centre sections of a story is just plain evil.

Assassin’s Creed 2 suffers from a bad case of the gimmicks in this instalment several of which are carried from the previous game so some points for continuity I guess. Collectable items have always been something that annoys me in games no matter how good they are. Having to roam all the cities in search of little feathers all for getting a couple of achievements is not something I want to spend my time doing. The first game was worse for this since there wasn’t even anything to gain at the end of collecting the flags other than an achievement saying “Congratulations! You have no life!” Now we come to our biggest gimmick; the f--ing flying machine. This was advertised at E3 as the be all and end all cool utility in the game and I thought “Oh that looks interesting.” Unfortunately you get to use it once, that’s right, once. Building something up to be the best feature of your game only to let us use it once for 2 minutes should be on the list of game developer’s deadly sins. They did the same with the gun which is an utterly useless item as it takes about 5 minutes to lock onto an enemy and even then the chances of hitting are pathetic. This coupled with the DLC storyline and clichéd explanation for the pieces of Eden really just turns the game into a big joke. The only thing missing to this pick and mix of gimmicks is a crappy knock-off multiplayer but Brotherhood is right round the corner so I will no doubt be able to sink my teeth into its comedic attempt to further embroil itself in the casual gaming demographic.

To cut a long painful story short; the game is a relatively well executed and technically stable creation with at least some attempt at writing even if it gets sillier as it goes along. On the bad side however the game is a complete gimmick, unbelievably easy with legendarily thick enemies and no consequences upon dying whatsoever. The entire character cast are badly characterised and completely unlikeable and the whole game, once you cut out all the pathetic side missions and feather collection, is very brief. I can only say I can be glad when the “trilogy” ends with Assassin’s Creed 3, or rather the Assassin’s Creed 3 chapters 1,4,9 and 12 and the many DLC’s that will be released for it.

Technical Score: 8/10
True Score: 4/10

This review is written by a Purely Review member. This review may not be published or copied for commercial use without expressed permission from the author. If you believe this review has been partially or entirely stolen from another source, please contact Purely Review staff.

Images borrowed from Google image search but if you really want to sue me for using them for something like this then you clearly have a severe mental defect

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I apologise for the poor quality of this review. I have been a little under the weather hence the missed week and this was rushed to try and make sure I didn't miss another week. My Killzone 2 one will be better.

[Demon_skeith]

the game looks good but it sounds like it's AI system could use a boost. I played a little bit of the first one and I liked it and I hope this one would be just as good.

[LoneWolf]

I think you've been a bit unfair with the game here. It definately does not deserve the 4/10 score you have given it. The gameplay is slightly repetitive but the story is amazing. So what if its re-written history, I think that's a good thing.

[Reicha7]

Well to be fair the story was not really that good. Rewriting history is fine in small amounts but rewriting every bit of history since the beginning of time all to fit in with a massive conspiracy theory that is not actually that well thought out and only seems to boil down to one goal; world domination is not good story telling. That and the final few paragraphs of my review sum up why the true score is so low. The game is technically sound to be fair but is still an attempt to grab money. The story in the first game was good as it was in moderation, not trying to rewrite the history of the world. It had the same level of rewritten history as National treasure which is good because it is again, in moderation.

[LoneWolf]

Well I still don't quite agree with you because I enjoyed the game a lot. I believe it was such a good upgrade from the tedious first game and don't understand why changing history is such a bad thing. I look forward to your review of Killzone 2. You might be interested to look at my Red Dead Redemption review

[Reicha7]

It isn't changing history per se that I have an issue with, it's changing it to such a degree in order to satisfy a rather simple conspiracy which really did not need such emphasis, almost like they are trying too hard.

[LoneWolf]

Haha you're getting to technical

[Reicha7]

Well that's my job, I'm a freelance reviewer and I will go right into the nitty gritty parts of the game in order to expose it if it doesn't deserve the scores that mainstream reviewers are piling onto it in order to get their weeks pay-check for being full of praise. I on the other hand do not get paid and as such am not influenced in any way shape or form when it comes to reviewing.

[LoneWolf]

Fair enough, I respect that. Mainstream reviewers these days are pathetic. But I guess we have contrasting ideas about this game. I'd probably rate it maybe 6 or 7 out of 10. And I have to agree with you on the DLC content scam, definately not worth the money.

[Angel of fire]

I agree with your rating. Lot's of times, reviewers will give a popular game a good rating. They care about fanbase. You, however, remind me of how X-Play was back in its golden days. They didn't care about what other people thought and gave it their honest opinion, like you.