Assassin's Creed 2

In keeping with my new found video game blogging I am now the proud owner of a ps3 console. And the only way I can find to describe how it makes me feel is to quote seminal artist 50cent when I say, "that shit is pretty damn good."

Indeed the ps3 is pretty damn good. I have just finished Assassin's Creed 2 and at the outset let me say that this game is one of the better games I have played.



The story follows that of a young Assassin in renaissance Italy on his quest to avenge his murdered family, along the way he discovers a huge conspiracy and sets out on a quest to stop it. during said quest his morality is thrown into doubt as he begins to question whether or not it is okay for him to kill people for the greater good and is thrown into a spiral of self doubt.

That about sums up the first 80% of the game, and so far the story is excellent, then the following happens.

Leonardo Da Vinci makes you a gun, every character you have ever met in the game shows up to help you like some kind of Assassin equivalent of the Super Friends, Machiavelli tells you that he is an Assassin, you then clone yourself to fight with the pope, and it turns out that the entire story has been about aliens the whole time. I'm not joking.

way to ruin a great story, ubisoft, but then again ubisoft are french so it's probably a metaphor for Satre's existential crisis or something.

So, the story could have been brilliant but was actually lame. Oh and if you are familiar with the story and are reading this and saying to yourself:

"but he hasn't even mentioned, Desmond, or the Animus, or the imminent pole reversal!"

That's because if I went into any of that, my head would explode from having to comprehend the shitness of the story telling.

So, the story is a bit of a let down, but that's no matter as the gameplay is as they say "fucking amazing"

and it is.

It is similar to the first in that it is a sandbox style of gameplay, meaning that you are free to go anywhere. You are also amazingly skilled at parcour, so running across the rooftops of Venice and casually dropping two stories onto some poor guard and killing him is amazingly satisfying.

and moving away from the sandboxing the linear missions are great as well, with the right balance of stealth gameplay and action. Unfortunately the combat system is still ultimately flawed, in that it is practically impossible for any number of guards to actually kill you. As they decide the most efficent way to deal with you, is to stand in a circle awkwardly and take turns attacking you.

But disregarding that, the stealth elements and sandboxing make up for it.

There is however the issue of the broken economy system. In this game you can make money and spend it on things like armour, weapons, bullets, prostitutes etc. you're even given a villa that you can upgrade to receive a higher income.

Anyway, the problem with the system is that you end up with a stupid amount of money, and nothing to spend it on. You get the best armour for free, and once you have the best sword, there is literally nothing to buy and you just end up with a huge fortune and nothing to do with it.

This is however a minor grumble of mine, as the economy is most of the time, irrelevant to the actual gameplay.

But all these problems are pretty minor and the game is, as far as I'm concerned, excellent. Definitely worth buying, and then possibly playing.