Assassin's Creed II

Written by Adam Woolcott  on December 02, 2009

Review: Pretty sure Desmond's other ancestors include Nathan Drake

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The core gameplay of Asssassin's Creed II hasn't changed much from the original. When wandering the city, you have to watch for guards that don't take kindly to your business, fear occasional annoying people getting in your way, and of course, lots of climbing around. You still have to climb up to high points to УsyncФ, but this is a good holdover because they remain fun little mini-challenges. The way the game deals with your business is different, however. In the first game you could barely do anything without that constant beeping from guards acting suspicious Ц now you can usually just run full speed through any section long as you don't do anything bad. In the past, if you wanted to sneak by stuff, you used the monks to blend, or employ rebel-like guys to distract guards, but now you can buy the services of bandits, mercs, or oh yes, prostitutes to lure them away so you can sneak in. This is most important to getting the Codex pages, because unless you get one from a target, they're always in a building with guards all around. Getting some of those loose ladies to pull those dudes away makes it an easy in and out.



The game also features a notoriety system; as you commit acts or annoy guards, your level of infamy goes up. If it maxes out, the guards will usually attack on sight. Thankfully, it's easy to reduce the heat in numerous ways. The easiest way is to just find the wanted posters (always skillfully placed on buildings up high where nobody can see them); they reduce your notoriety the least, but it's easy to find the posters without bothering with the other two methods Ц spending money to bribe a town crier to forget about you, or assassinate a crooked official. Between that and the improved interaction with guards (likely due to the looser standards compared to the extremely uptight 12th century Holy Land), it's much, much easier to just wander around the city without arousing suspicion. If you wander the rooftops you will get attacked by guards if you approach them or linger, but a quick assassination will silence him and the alert will go away. Even that's been changed; you no longer have to hide, long as you escape the area they're searching for you (or in Venice, leap into the water and dive underneath, since they won't swim after you). If you hide in a bale of hay inside this yellow cone, some guards will actually poke in and look for you, which is a problem early on... but once you learn some sneaky new assassination techniques, it's possible to actually drag a guard into the hay and kill them and keep your cover. Good times.

Otherwise, most of the same mechanics return. Climbing around is easy with the context-sensitive commands, though sometimes things can be a bit twitchy due to camera issues and the general speed of movement. It's really easy to just get into a groove and then screw up on a jump which could easily lead to your death. This is about the only frustrating thing though, as when everything works, the free-running is really fun and the races you can do test your skills well. You even learn a new move from the bandits of Venice, which lets you jump higher to reach areas that otherwise might not be accessible, or not as quickly scaled. Combat retains the timing-based action of the first game, which works but isn't ideal. It's been improved at least a little though, as countering and dodging is better implemented. The new ability of disarming a guard and then using his weapon on him is nice, and in some cases, necessary on some guards that have a ton of armor and are almost impossible to counter. However, as there's actually less combat (because there's no Уsave the wifeФ or Уsave the monkФ side-quests), and often times it's easy to just either use a smoke bomb and make use of the hidden blade(s) for stealth kills, or just poison them and leave them to die, so the moments where you have to break out the swords are minimal.

In most ways, Assassin's Creed II does what it needed to do: take away what didn't work (repetitive mission structure, flag hunting) and fixed almost everything else. More mission variety keeps things from getting boring, more interesting characters and improved how you interact with cities, and a ton of side-quests that don't involve finding a zillion different flags. The core of the first game was already good Ц it just needed some fleshing out... and it got just that. Yes, the story is a bit strange and there's a lot of stuff that's really out there, but it's done well. It's just a fun, involving game that fully apologizes for the sins of the past. The ending of the game does feel a little rushed Ц likely to make the fall 2009 date instead of being yet another game pushed into the insane 2010 Ц but that's about the only thing wrong with the game in terms of pacing. It's just a really well-made game that will take roughly 20 hours to finish Ц more than enough to make it worth the cash.

Few games have tackled the Renaissance era, and Ubi Montreal really captured the spirit of the era in its visuals. In the big cities, you get modern-styled buildings, beautifully recreated churches and landmarks, and an overall spirit that almost seems like it would almost fit in our current era. This is especially apparent in the city of Venice, with its beautiful canal areas and famous landmarks like St. Marks Basilica, which is almost perfectly emulated. To counter this, the countryside areas are far less modern, and the smaller areas like Tuscany are more rustic and frankly... old. It's an interesting parallel. The audio captures the spirit of the era well; the Italian accents are good and there's even a lot of spoken Italian, and with the subtitles on you can learn some new words, especially if you want numerous ways to curse at people. In the modern day, the now-famous Nolan North, also known as Nate Drake, voices Desmond again, so you know he does a good job. Kristen Bell reprises her role as Lucy as well, and she does an all right job like the first game. The improved soundtrack also is a great improvement, with more variety in the music and how it switches up depending on what you're doing.