Think Prince of Persia + Zorro + Batman. Place it all in a warm nice pot of Renaissance-Italy and there you have it! Action-adventure singleplayer at it’s best.
Introduction
The game starts you off mildly, in a cozy setting in the life of Ezio Auditore. You help your family out and generally just do things that would seem completely normal, and it is. It’s a good way of introducing you to the basic skills and possibilities of the game through these every-day tasks, such as going to your girlfriends house or beating up your rivals friends (you know, the usual stuff).
Graphics and sound
A big part of this game is the photo-realism that the graphic delivers. Venice, Ezio, Florence, civilianz, every place and person in this game looks really smooth and beautiful. Some animations act strangely every once in a while, like opening a chest can sometime “port” you over in front of the chest, or stabbing a guy might not look as realistic as it could’ve, but these are rather small things, that while noticeable, aren’t big enough issues for anyone to really care. However, while the in-game graphics are stunningly beautiful, a lot of the cutscenes are not. The close-ups on some of the models in cutscenes look quite bad compared to the rest of the game, and it could’ve been made more desirable.
The sound is decent in this game, it’s not game-changing or anything, but riding on horseback or swinging your sword does have a sense of satisfaction because of it. The voiceacting is actually a lot better than I was expecting, it’s fairly easy to recognize one voice from the other, and while some of the dialogues seem a bit cheesy, the voiceacting doesn’t add to that whatsoever (though the thick Italian accent of Ezio is humorous, it is not in a particular bad way).
The varied amount of executioner- and assasination animations Ezio can perform is amazing, and small things such as the Leap of Faith just look absolutely amazing. Swingin’ around the inside of massive churches is an awesome feeling, and silently picking off unsuspecting foes never looked better.
Gameplay
But as it is with any action-adventure game, the one thing that really seperates one from the other is of course the gameplay. The movement and controlling of Ezio is suprisingly smooth, with a lot of depht to it. Alone with the movement speed there’s about 5 or more configurations (sprint, run, walk, walk slowly, walk slowlier and whatnot!) but it’s pretty easy to figure out the basic controls and jump right into the game.
The possibilities in this game are basically endless. When you do finish the actual storyline (and perhaps even the DLC) you’re still free to roam the open world. At first this remindend me a lot of an GTA-like game, but it’s not really. You can’t freely kill citizens (a limitation I’d like to see removed after at least finishing the game) but there is however a lot of “mini-games” or mini-objectives for you to throw yourself at and earn money with - assassinating people, catching thieves, delivering messages or beating up cheating husbands. There is indeed a lot of depht to this game, even after completing the actual storyline. This, much the GTA-series, adds a lot of replayability, so even if you complete the game in say 15-20 hours, you won’t neccesarily put it on the shelf for good at that time.
The large variety of weapons in this game is somewhat futile though. It’s hard to really notice a difference between the different swords (you kill a guy 1 hit faster, but usually you’ll use counter-attacks to kill foes anyway) and the overpoweredness of your fists (i.e. disarming people to use their own weapons against them) makes buying new weapons somewhat pointless. But that’s a choice, and I wouldn’t want them to take away the disarming, and if you want you can always buy weapons.
Story
The story of Assassin’s Creed 2 is a strange one. Quite original, I’ll give them that, but also confusing and hard to follow. It starts with one thing, that ends and leads something else with it, and at times it seems kind of stupid. However, throughout the game you’ll come to the realization that the general story isn’t important, but the things in between. You’ll learn to love Ezio, and the stories with him. There’s two different storylines: The real-life one (Desmond), and the Animus one (Ezio). The Desmond one is a lot less apparent, and somewhat strange. The Ezio one is awesome and enjoyable, and is really what gives the game it’s charm, but it is because of Desmond this game seems so original. What duality have we here, oh great Ubisoft!
The Verdict
Overall, this game is pretty damn awesome. The combat system is unique, the platforming is well-made and the overall graphical parts of the game are pretty goddamn amazing. There are small flaws that I’d like to see addressed in Assassin’s Creed 3, but if we go down in detail most of it is merely swatting flies, and even though this game may not be for all... If you like killing people with your bare hands or a large variety of bladed weapons, pierce them, smoke-bomb em, shoot em, steal from them, distract them with hookers or what have you, this game is for you. It makes you feel badass.
9/10 - Awesome!
(PS: I would have liked to include the two DLCs in this review, but as Ubisoft has some serious location-issues with it, I was not able to get them from Europe with an American-bought game, U-Play was never too good!)
