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Assassin’s Creed 2 Impressions

I just beat Assassin’s Creed (AC2), I pretty much having nothing else to do with my spare time so I just play video games and beat them. Mind you, AC2 is not a short game by any means, unlike another game *cough…MW2*, I just have not slept that much the last few days as I was totally immersed into the world of Ezio Auditore, the main protagonist and assassin in this game.  Feel free to keep reading as there are no plot spoilers ahead.

The dev team at Ubisoft did a great job of removing content from the first game that was not that much fun. For the record I really enjoyed the first game but I agree with most of the comments that it gets repetitive. The first game had a formula, get a target, investigate the target, and kill the target. Rinse and repeat that nine times. Aside from that the fun part of the first game was the aspect of free running across the roof tops of ancient cities.

Unlike the first game, AC 2 follows a more linear path,  putting the players into the shoes of an assassin, rather than (for a lack of a better term) errand boy as was experienced in the first game. There are plenty of side quests to do but none of them directly affect the core path of the game. No need to investigate targets, or find view points to access sidequets. All of that is gone; AC 2 is just a straight up linear, and excellent single player game.

The best part of AC 2 is swimming. Seriously, it’s annoying has hell in any video game where water equals instant death, really? Swimming just adds new means of traversal to the game; no longer do you die instantly when you fall into a small lake or large body of water. Plus swimming is an excellent way to evade multiple enemies when you are on the run.

AC 2 also has a bit of a Vice City gameplay mechanic, where you get to own your own town. This town provides the player with income to spend on various things such as buying armor, weapons, or paying the doc to get healed (mental note need say something about the healing mechanics in a bit). At times if player has enough money they can re-invest back into their town to make it better and get more money in return. As the saying goes to make money you got to spend it right. Well by the end of the game or nearly halfway you’ll probably end up with more money than can possibly spend. Basically you can become the wealthiest assassin ever. Once you have too much money there are two very easy achievements to get by wasting it.  Though now that I think about those means of wasting money are actually quite helpful.

Money can buy you allies such as thieves, soldiers, and prostitutes. Yes, you read that correctly prostitutes. However, unlike our favorite game GTA, you can’t beat these prostitutes with a bat to get your money back. Anyways, these allies come in handy to distract guards or provide you with cover on your escape. To get them on your side simply find any of the aforementioned groups, and press a button to hire them. Money can also be used to distract large crowds and annoying street performers. The street performers are the equivalent of the crazy bums and begging women of the first game. However, this time around you get rid of them without killing them. At anytime during the game you just toss money freely out on to the streets, doing so gets rid of the annoying street performers and provides another option to escape past some guards.

Another great mechanic improved from the first game is blending. In the first game the only ways to blend in with a crowd included following the monks, sitting on a bench, or walking very slowly. In AC 2 the bench sitting mechanic is still there but blending overall has greatly been improved. Now at anytime during the game you can simply walk up to a crowd of people standing or walking and immediately become blended and invisible to the guards.  No more do you have to find the monks or bench to hide! Also your allies provide another means for blending. Simply hire them and stand next to them for a bit and you blend in as the guards run right past you.

However, there are times when the guards may spot you in a crowd, and not that it is a bad thing, in fact seems more realistic. In the first game you could have a high threat level (or whatever it was called) run and hide on a bench. The AI would be confused, saying things like “where is man responsible for this”, totally ignoring and not thinking the one dude in the white robe armed to teeth could not have done a heinous act. This time if your threat level (also known as notoriety) is high the guards will find you, unless you hide really well. But once you come out of hiding chances of them finding you again are high. To avoid be found again, there are three ways the player can lower their notoriety. Either they can kill a corrupt official who according the game has put money in front of honor, tear down wanted posters, or bribe town heralds to stop their slander against you. Once your notoriety is low you can explore the cities without being hassled by any of the guards. The only guards that will hassle you, regardless of your notoriety, are rooftop guards. These guys have nothing better to do than hassle you for running on the rooftops. Either you can easily kill these dudes (which increase your notoriety) or just run away as they rarely ever catch up to you.  Basically in a nutshell if none of that made sense think of it as GTA cop stars, the more you have the harder shit gets. The less you have, do whatever you feel like doing, but doing more stupid shit will bring back the cops, or in this case the city guards.

So yeah about healing, in the last game it was automatically regenerated once you went into hiding or had a low threat level. This time around it kind of regenerates if an entire health block is not lost. If a health block or multiple health blocks are lost the only way to get them back is either by taking meds or getting healed by a doctor (which there are plenty of). Either way both cost money, but as I mentioned earlier if you play the game you’ll end up with too much money, thus the charge for healing is nominal. But still I kind of miss the auto regeneration system from the first game.

Overall I’ll give this game 8.5 out 10. I would have ranked it higher but the three crash bugs causing me to restart my xbox brought the score down. No game is perfect, but considering how much fun I had in this game, I can forgive Ubisoft QA for not finding those bugs.

Now the important question of all, “should I play AC 2”? If you were a fan of the first one you are doing yourself a serious disservice by not playing the sequel. If you did not like the first one due to the repetitive gameplay or other reasons, I highly recommend trying out AC 2, due the fact that “crappy” parts of the first game are gone. However, the core essence of the game remains the same, you will have targets to kill, and getting to those targets requires a little work, but nothing as repetitive as the first game. Every target was a unique experience to tackle and hopefully once you try the game you will enjoy it as much as I did.