Review: Assassin’s Creed 2

I remember Assassin’s Creed. I remember how to me, it represented the first true “Next-Gen” game with its revolutionary control scheme and sprawling cities, full of life. I remember the urge to get a new console just to play the game, to experience a new era of gaming. Most of all, I remember a final product with unfulfilled promises which seemed rushed to the market to meet release deadlines. Despite all its shortcomings, the promise that Assassin’s Creed held was far too great to go unnoticed. It brought new gameplay ideas to the table and told an intriguing story. To sum it up, Assassin’s Creed felt like an elaborate “tech-demo”, the potential of which has been finally realised after two years with Assassin’s Creed 2.

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In fact, the biggest strength of Assassin’s Creed 2 comes from the capability of the development team behind it to take feedback and channel it constructively to weed out almost every issue that was counterproductive to every great idea that the original had. So lets dwell deeper into what makes Assassin’s Creed 2 a near-perfect realisation of the series. For starters, Altair is gone. Well, not exactly, but he’s gone nonetheless. Enter Ezio Auditore da Firenze, son of a nobleman by day and assassin by night. Ezio’s carefree life of running across rooftops, getting into fights with rivals and courting pretty ladies comes to a screeching halt when his family gets caught up in a diabolical plot to overthrow the ruling family of Florence. Most of Ezio’s story is driven by revenge, as he learns the ways of an assassin to hunt down those who hurt his family. However, the stakes are much higher than revenge, as the age-old battle between the templars and assassins takes centrestage later in the game.

All in all, the story is extremely engaging and is brought to life by a strong narration and excellent characters, led by Ezio himself. It’s a lot easier to get on board with the witty and snappy Ezio than the sour and serious Altair, and firmly establishes that being an assassin is not just about getting bogged down by the responsibility of saving the world. As a result, Ezio comes across as a badass assassin with a sharp tongue and a bloodthirsty “hidden blade”. On the downside, the concluding moments of the game may fail to make a huge impact on the player because the larger scheme at play behind the betrayal of Ezio’s family comes into the limelight quite late into the game. All of a sudden, you are hunting for, well, ‘something’ without fully understanding its implications.

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Ubisoft has to be commended for the design choices they took. Let’s look at the gameplay first; the dictate was clear: Do not try to fix what’s not broken. The control scheme still follows the “puppeteer” design, with face buttons mapped onto the actions of different body parts. The control scheme was hailed two years back as an innovative feature of the series, and movement/platforming in this game is as much joy as the first one. The marginal changes come across in the character animation during movement, with small actions such as Ezio establishing a firm footing before he continues to climb much more visible this time round. This makes the already great platforming within the game look all the more smooth.

Combat, however, continues to be a mixed bag. The enemies continue to display retarded AI in combat scenarios. Somehow, the idea of attacking all at once and overpowering Ezio never seems to occur to a group of enemies, and they continue to pay the price of chivalry with their lives. As a result, the combat never truly presents a challenge for survival. Blocking and counter-attacking will still get the player through every battle without taking much damage.

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So while the player will never be pressed to fight for his life, the challenge in combat comes in the form of how efficient and quick the player can be in dispatching the enemies. While politely taking turns at clashing swords will eventually win the fight, making use of all the resources provided by Ubisoft makes for a varied and thrilling combat experience. Apart from the wide variety of weapons that Ezio can use (hidden blades, swords, dagger etc), Ezio can also snatch the weapon from his enemy. This trick works especially well on tougher enemies, who once disarmed, go down very quickly. When faced with a large group, a smoke bomb gives Ezio precious moments to effectively exercise some crowd control by sinking his hidden blade into a few of the enemies before they can recover.

There is an underlying design philosophy behind both combat and platforming. The emphasis is on determining the most efficient approach to a situation by taking away the focus from executing an action. Platforming is all about the quickest route rather than timing a jump correctly, and similarly, combat is about honing an assassin’s killing skill rather than the bid for survival. While the idea is appreciable, its progressive nature is nullified to a certain extent by the poor enemy AI and the complete lack of challenge. That said, the combat is much more enjoyable than the first game, especially when all the tools are fully utilised.

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Variety extends to assassinations as well. One can take the boneheaded approach of going all gung-ho, but finesse is encouraged over it. The player can now blend into crowds (and not just the annoyingly slow priests from the first game), hire mercenaries, thieves or courtesans (pretty ladies!) to distract guards, throw money on the floor to create some chaos, stick a poisoned blade into an unsuspecting guard to draw away the attention from himself or a location, or use many of the contextual executions available to player like pulling a guard off the ledge. As a result, the thrill of a well-executed assassination is amplified by giving the player more tools to the get the job done.

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Following the numerous complaints about the repetitive nature of the first game, the mission structure has been completely overhauled in Assassin’s Creed 2. It’s a step back of sorts, with missions following the traditional structure of open world games. Story missions open up progressively, with side missions always available in the city without being a prerequisite for a main mission. In doing this, Ubisoft has made the side missions an attractive digression from the main missions, and some of the side missions reward the player greatly with either story details or additional items.

Mission variety has been greatly improved as well, and some of the missions such as a thrilling chase halfway through the game turn out to be a real blast. There’s a lot of variety to be found in the side missions as well. Apart from racing and assassination contracts, the player can go about collecting pages of Altair’s codex, which makes for a very interesting read. In fact, the codex, coupled with reverence with which Altair is remembered, gives more personality to the first game’s strangely American-accented protagonist than playing as him ever did.

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The game also features six assassins’ tombs, which are mostly linear platforming challenges with occasional combat. The platforming puzzles in these segments are very reminiscent of the Prince of Persia series, and are often an exhilarating distraction from the main mission. Completing them all earns the player a pretty nifty reward which is well worth the effort. However, the best reward comes from solving puzzles linked to glyphs; a set of strange symbols grafted onto the memories of Ezio by the mysterious Subject 16. I’d rather not go into any more details for the fear of spoiling one of the highlights of the story. Rest assured, taking up these side missions progressively adds on to the universe of the series, rounded off by a punch of a revelation appropriately dubbed as “The Truth”.

The stars of the show, however, are the cities themselves. No other game features such beautiful and well realised cities that come to life with their unique landmarks and busy streets full of people going about their business like they would in real life. The cities also follow a notoriety system this time, and as Ezio’s disruptive actions become more frequent, posters pop up and heralds start maligning the good name of the deadly assassin. Ezio must then act to reduce his notoriety to avoid becoming a wanted fugitive. These things give the game world a very organic feel, with the city reacting accordingly to the player’s actions. In fact, Ezio has his own little city to “manage” in the game, which serves as the base of assassins. Don’t be alarmed though, because the management elements been restricted to investing money to upgrade various buildings. The reward for doing so is a constant stream of revenue that the city generates for the player, which increases as the city becomes more prosperous, as well as discounts at various shops within the city.

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For an open world game, the graphics are the absolute best in the category, and the viewpoints proudly show off the incredible draw distances of the game. The graphics come at a price though, with characters clipping through walls and some uneven framerates. The latter, however, is barely noticeable and quite rare, and the performance holds up very well right through the 20 hour campaign. The soundtrack of the game deserves a special mention here as well. Personally, it’s the best original score I’ve heard this year, complimenting the game extremely well by rising and falling perfectly with the pace of the game.

Conclusion

I remember Assassin’s Creed. I remember everything it should have been. And as Assassin’s Creed 2 unfolded in front of me, I was delighted to finally play the game I wanted to play two years back. While a few small issues continue to plague the series, the joy of experiencing its unique contribution to the action-adventure genre backed by a strong story more than made up for them. The important thing is that Ubisoft listened, and delivered. And in doing that they made one thing certain: You will remember Assassin’s Creed 2.

(+) Engaging story with well-rounded characters
(+) Running across rooftops is a blast
(+) Variety in missions
(+) Incredible graphics and draw distances
(+) Excellent musical score
(+) “The truth”

(-) Combat is hardly challenging
(-) Poor enemy AI
(-) The last quarter of the game feels a bit rushed
(-) Clipping and occasional frame rate drops


How we score games

Title: Assassin’s Creed 2
Developer/Publisher: Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft
Genre: Action-adventure
Rating: 18+
Platforms: Xbox 360 (Rs 2,599), PS3 (Rs 2,599), PC (March 2010)

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