Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3. Developed by Ubisoft Montreal. Published by Ubisoft.
In 2007, Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed, a much hyped open world game set during the Crusades. Known before release equally for producer Jade Raymond’s appealing smile and interesting premise, the game received mixed reviews and sold like gangbusters anyway. Despite the problems (a very by the numbers mission system and repetition), a sequel was assured and two years later, we have Assassin’s Creed II.
Pic- Ezio Auditore- Assassin, lover, pickpocket. Hey! My wallet!
Assassin’s Creed II builds on the strong fundamentals from the original game in a way not seen often enough in videogames. Desmond is now free of Abstergo and working with a fish lipped Kristen Bell avatar and Switch from the Matrix and Wesley Windom Pryce from Angel, using their own Animus to delve into the world of the Templars. Here, Desmond enters the mind of Ezio Auditore, a Renaissance lad-about-town in 15th century Florence. Ezio becomes an Assassin and immediately sets off on a quest of revenge, intrigue and adventure. Make no mistake, this is firmly rooted in the world of Ezio with the ‘modern world’ only coming into a play a few times.
The free-roaming and combat have been refined slightly- they were pretty well done in the first game but polished a bit more here. You have high profile and low profile actions. Low profile means walking and gently pushing people out of the way, high profile means parkour, sprinting and battle and being badder-assed than Charles Bronson on a Jest Ski. It also will pique the interest of guards- they were profiling even back then. Climb on the roof and the fuckers will hunt you down like a dawg. You will gather an array of weapons throughout your playtime such as hidden knives, daggers, swords, etc and can earn money to buy them from Blacksmiths in each town. You can also buy better armour as you progress, change the colour of your robes, buy maps and even paintings to display in your villa (more later).
So if you played the first game you know how it all works. Here you don’t need to go to the Assassin’s Guild in order to be given a target, it happens far more organically. There’s more of a story being told, even if it’s the same deal- kill ‘x’ targets bit it doesn’t feel anywhere as quantized as the original game. Unlike the first one, missions are more asymmetric in that you don’t have three towns each rigidly cut up into three quarters and there are the same numbers of each type of mission in each area. Here you visit half a dozen locations but some are larger and more important than others. You will be spending most of your time in Florence and Venice with some sojourns to other places such as Tuscany, Forli and your family Villa in Monteriggioni.
Story missions are far more varied this time around with a good mix of things to do. Early on at least, you will will want to earn some money so side quests are useful if you want to be a courier, assassinate someone for money, beat-up a straying husband or race someone.
Pic- Ezio hangs out with his homes
If you don’t feel like doing that, the world is ridden with treasure chests, maps of which are available from art dealers. There are many many things to collect such as feathers for your catatonic mother, but most interesting are the six tombs which are necessary for the story’s resolution but not part of the main quest. Some tombs focus on combat, some on puzzles and others on tricky platforming. This mix of things to do and collect means you can spend quite a lot of time in this world or sneakcraft. Another of the non-optional collectibles are the codex pages, which help you on your quest via health and equipment upgrades from your friend, Lenny DV. The beauty of ACII is that the game gives you enormous freedom and lots of ways to achieve your goal (and hide from the law afterward). You can blend with crowds, hire mercenaries, thieves and courtesans to lure guards away, use bombs to get in close to an objective, etc. It’s a well designed game in almost every way. Just one question. WHY COULDN’T YOU HAVE DONE THIS TWO YEARS AGO, UBISOFT ?!?!
Combat has many options such as being able to block, dodge, disarm enemies, etc. But you don’t need half of them since you can have so many health boosts that you can get by with just pressing the same attack button over and over if that’s your bag. I suppose if you want more of a challenge, don’t upgrade your medicine pouch’s carrying ability at the tailor.
Since you earn money, one of the things you can do is upgrade the town of Monteriggioni. Why? Your renovations increase the value of the town and as Lord of the manor, you earn money this way. Later in the game you earn so much from missions and finding treasure and your rental income from the villa exceeds what you need to stock up on consumables like medicine, poison and the like that you can also end up collecting artworks. And that all adds to the brilliant atmosphere conjured by UbiMon. You feel like you’re there so much that some gamers have taken to playing the game with Italian audio on. This option does also cancel out Kristen Bell’s voice in the modern scenes, and unfortunately, Uncharted Guy.
Uncharted 2 has garnered many awards for beautiful graphics but I think ACII is right up there with it’s open world that’s not only technically brilliant but gorgeous to look at. The only major graphical sin is some fairly obvious pop-in when moving though the cities, even with the games fantastic draw distance (evident when you synchronize on a viewpoint). The framerate is smooth throughout though the latter stages of the game (like many games) do tend to have some areas where scripting and cutscenes seems somewhat rushed.
The sound is also worthy of consideration as it’s very slickly produced and although there’s still way too much repetition from some of the NPC’s, it’s not as bad as the first game where you had the exact same lines been repeated in different accents depending on which area you were in. I do know Luigi the fish merchant can’t be beaten for prices or the freshness of his catch. That much I have learned from this game. Here, almost everyone has an Italian accent, mostly convincing ones at that. And no matter what language you play the game in, the script features copious amounts of Italian dialogue which is why the subtitles come in (I did think the line “what, no fucking ziti?” was out of place). Ezio may sound like a reject from The Godfather but it never grates the way Altair’s bland American accent did in the first game. Ezio has passion and sensitivity. Altair was a cock. Of course, in the few short present days scenes outside of the Animus we have the voices of Kristen Bell and Nolan North AGAIN (we was also Prince of Persia and Drake and Shadow Complex guy).
Pic- Of course, Ezio is unlikley to appear in the next game so here he is carrying his stuff home in a cardboard box after he was let go.
If Uncharted 2 hadn’t been so great, I could have seen this is as a GOTY 2009 quite easily. Why? It’s a very good game that fixes almost everything that was broken in the first game. ACII is a must play.
Controller1.com rating 3/3
To continue: the Sony and Nintendo conferences were held today, the first day of the show, proper.
So let’s get into it….
Sony
God of War III is coming in March 2010. It looks like a painting come to life according to David Jaffe and I’m not going to argue with him, merely ask him not to visit goth art galleries anymore whilst inebriated. the fourth game in the trilogy 9(!) will close out the series (!).
PSP Go! was announced. People were shocked. People who woke up from coma’s were shocked anyway. Its a slimmer, UMD less PSP that will go on sale in a few months for US$250 alongside the current PSP-3000. PSP will finally see Gran Turismo portable, which seems to have taken a leaf out of Pokemon and Monster Hunter’s huge popularity in Japan by allowing trades over wifi. There’s a new Metal Gear portable game, Peacewalker or Pisstaker or something and this looks to be set a few years after Metal Gear 3. There’s the previously mentioned Little Big Planet PSP, Motorstorm and Assassin’s Creed PSP; as well as a newly announce PSP Resident Evi, PSP Infamous and PSP Soul Calibur.
On the PS3 front there’s the duel wand motion controller, currently unnamed and listed for release sometime in 2010. You can now get your waggle in three different flavours, depending on which system you own. As far as games go there weren’t many surprises, as most had been either announced, teased or leaked before the show. What games were shown mostly look pretty cool. Uncharted 2 looks to be fantastic, but we new that. MAG looks to be big and expansive but we knew that. The demo was nice in showing the strengths and weakness of the concept. Another quick look at the new Ratchet game in one of Sony’s many montages and a new Final Fantasy online game, FFXIV for release in 2010 on PS3 only.
But the exclusive that looks most intriguing is Agent, from Rock Star. Its set in the 70’s so I’m sure we’ll get that period completely inaccurate (you know early 70’s hippie fashions and giant afros with disco music). You’re an assassin. Its a Rock Star game so you’re never going to be handing out leaflets in a mall.
Assassin’s Creed 2, not shown on the Ubi conference, was demoed but as Jade Raymond was no where to be seen we’ll skip that. Just kidding. Can this game redeem the flaws of the original? Time will tell. PS3 is getting some exclusive DLC. Its called the PSP version and if you buy that, you get some extra weapons to use. Also shown is a cartoon racer where you can make and share tracks. Moving right along, there’s The Last Guardian, from the makers of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Even though the trailer showed up on the web a few days ago, its still nice to see.
Overall, better than last year but we knew 95% of the content previously so the surprise factor was lower. Personally, GoW III, Ratchet and Uncharted 2 are my must haves on PS3 out of what was shown here.
Nintendo
Well, if they could put the word Mario into any more products they would. They started by talking about mario’s evolution and how they want to take Mario into 4D. By this they mean a 4-player coop version of All New Super Mario Brothers for Wii. A 2D renaissance has taken place with this and Epic’s XBLA game announced yesterday, but hopefully this won’t merely be the DS game upscaled for Wii (though bets on that’s exactly what this is).
Of course there would be WiiFit 2. Nintendo may not be making the kewl games like they used to but your grandma needs something to do in between lawn bowls and writing angry letters to the newspaper. Motion Plus was pimped yet again, with what seemed to be a familiar montage of what you could do with it (deja vu circa the Wii’s2006 launch).
Wii Sports resort seems to be less of a tech demo and more of a “this is what we should have done all along” game.
Along the same vein, Red Steel 2 (Motion plus only, it seems) is going to try and fulfill the promises Ubi made in 2006 with the big selling but reviled original.
We have a Final Fantasy game for Wii, Crystal something. Open world gayness from SE. Weeeeee. A DS Kingdom HeartZzzzzzzzz. Mario and Luigi told from Bowser’s side. oh dear. Golden Sun. Oh well, some fanboys should be happy. But Women’s Murder Club? Cops: A recruit ?. I think my DS will be getting dustier and dustier.
Mario Vs Donkey Kong Mini’s March Again, is more puzzling action, this time with a level editor- buts its a DSi Ware game only. As is a Wario Ware title where you make your own games. I sometimes thing games where the idea is to make your own games is rather lazy on the part of developers.
There was a long build up to an announcement by Satoru Iwata (Nintendo Japan Head dude). The build up was to one of those cheap things you clip on your finger to monitor your heart-rate. The internet goes “huh?” The next announcement lead to believe its a joke at the expense of fanboys. Its Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Wii!
Also, making sense of the recent bundling of the three Metroid prime games on one disc is a new Metroid Game from Team Ninja. Its called Other M. And its semi side scrolling.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PS3, PC. Developed by Ubisoft Montreal. Published by Ubisoft.
Prince of Persia as a game series has one of the more interesting origins stories which we won’t go into. PoP as a Ubisoft franchise has a less interesting background. The formerly 2D Prince made the leap to 3D with Mattel’s PoP 3D. To all intents and purposes, it was rather ordinary. In 2003, Ubisoft (who had acquired some of Mattel’s gaming library a year or two previously) released Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
Here, in order to lesson the rather punishing lessons of trial and error the play would often endure in a PoP game, the reversing time mechanic was introduced. It was a great game with fantastic atmosphere, a great story, brilliant platforming based on contextual button presses and some button mashing combat that was neither here nor there. It came out and didn’t sell all that well until Ubi cut the price rather substantially wherein the game found its audience. For the followup a year later, Ubi looked at what the perceived barriers to purchasing the game and decided to lesson the whole Persian aspect, darken it up, more combat oriented and flushed any atmosphere down the toilet. Warrior Within was shash. The trilogy capping two Thrones was better but by then the damage was done.
Flash forward a few years and Assassin’s Creed, flawed it may have been, sold gangbusters is followed by a new Prince of Persia.
The new game is a sort of return to the atmosphere of the first game, with more platforming, less combat, a better story.
And its a great game being held back by TERRIBLE controls
The controls are quite simple and the game likes to do things for you. Which, if you’re a person who likes to have more than minimal control over what you’re doing can be very frustrating. You jump across a gap onto a wall. But you don’t have to press jump again because that will just have you jumping off into a chasm.
Time and time again, the game’s control system will confound your expectations and having you leaping to your doom because your mind can’t accept you don’t need to press so many buttons.
Just as Sands of Time featured the rewind time mechanic so that you didn’t have to constantly restart at checkpoints, this game has your constant companion Elika as a magical princess who can rescue you if you fall.
Many people have praised the removal of death of an obstacle to playing the game. That’s so much bullshit. All it is is a checkpoint system hidden by a cutscene of some chick grabbing your hand.
The game is sort of an open world. You get to a new area, jump for a bit, are confronted by a boss. Once you beat the boss, Elika fertilized the area and there are little glowing lightseeds you much collect. Think of them as Agility Orbs and you’re close to the mark. So the game is frustratingly good in so many ways, but ruined by unintuitive controls that are fairly loose in response to you inputs. But the graphics are rather spectacular with very solid sound. Presentation is obviously Ubisoft Montreal’s strong point. Gameplay, isn’t.
As a fan of Sands of Time, I’m highly disappointed by this title. Fans of Mirror’s Edge and Assassin’s Creed (you know, people you can sell any platformer to as long as you say its parkour) will be just as disappointed as real gamers.
controller1.com rating 1/3 (should have been 3/3 if the damn thing was playable)
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on PC, PS3, DS. Developed by Ubisoft Monteal. Published by Ubisoft
Ubisoft presents a Ubisoft Montreal production…
Assassin’s Creed is an enigma of a game. It looks like a gorgeous open world stealth action game. It looks as though there’s millions of things to do in this [cliche] leaving, breathing city [/cliche]. Well looks can be deceiving. Assassin’s creed has a few tricks up its sleeve. You just have to do them over and over again.
Halo creators Bungie have often said that their games are 10 seconds of fun repeated over and over. Well Ass Creed is about 2 seconds of fun repeated over and over again. It’s like Ubi Montreal got wrapped up in how cool the locale and story was and forgot about making the gameplay varied enough (as GTA does so well). Obviously you can’t have bazookas and helicopters in a game set during the middle ages. Or can you?
SPOILERS (even though this game has been out six months, Flamey still has another 3 years before he can even consider it retro enough for his tastes. This spoiler is not all that much of a spoiler since the menus give it away before you’ve even pressed start and the game doesn’t wait 5 mins before it tells you the big twist)
This game is set in the present. Your character is actually accessing a trace memory on his ancestor (similar to the Matrix). Unfortunately, this serves almost no story purpose, kills the middle age realism by having techno looking menus, computer voices telling you you’re fast forwarding and the like. It even feels grafted on in some ways.
So, hi tech conceits and repetition aside, what has Unisoft done for us? Well, the game is fun to play, the towns are interesting to explore and combat and movement is fun, despite the incredibly wanky tutorial. By incredibly wanky, I mean super incredibly wanky in the vein of Final Fantasy wankery. Its pretty and it sounds very good.I quite liked being able to climb buildings though I found having towers more fun than missions because they were more frustrating than fun to be honest. There’s little skill involved in pickpocketing more luck. Interrogating barely works and stealth kills in order to assist an informant where somewhat more fun.
Metal Gear meets GTA meets the middle ages meets the Matrix meets hype and cute producer meets 5 million in sales. If AC2 managed to fix the basic gameplay issues, I’ll be there, since they’re got most of the elements right. As it is, if you can play it for more than a few hours without getting incredibly frustrated or bored, you might like this.
C1 Rating: 1/3
