There are some end-game spoilers in this review

Games no longer belong to singular genres and that, for the most part, is a great thing.

CliffyB recently famously stated “the future of shooters is RPG” which has proved to be true in several regards. Only a couple years ago, eons in the video game industry, games like Counter-Strike and Halo dominated the online world by proving nothing more than reflex testing challenges of who’s the best and scorecards that reset at the end of matches, leaving bragging rights to hearsay and trust. The transformation to a more rigorous and in-depth system came when Infinity Ward made the bold move in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare to add a leveling system to the fast-paced, reflex-testing shooting mechanics which made kills offer more than just an added tally to the match-end scorecard: they offered experience points. These experience points went on to fill in a little bar which, when full, would increase the number beside your username by one. This would go on to add things as pointless as user icons to as valuable as additional weapons and odd skills like the ability to run for extended periods or drop a grenade as you wither away to respawn. It was a move that challenged the ADHD perceived audience of Halo to indulge in something more complex than vaguely point in the direction of your enemy and shoot. Somehow, this worked. It worked very, very well.

Since Infinity Ward changed FPS games as we know it, every other sane developer jumped on the bandwagon. Sure FPS/RPG hybrids existed before to critical and cult acclaim, but it was never a phenomenon. This ushered in a new era where the masses were willing to consume a game system that was obsessive and insanely addictive and didn’t see it as socially shamefully like Dungeons & Dragons had been years prior despite being based on the same principals. I think it has to do with the setting. RPG hybrids came in the forms of everything from beat ’em ups like Castle Crashers to sandbox games like Crackdown. The appeal makes sense, rather than just explore a world and unlock all the weapons and costumes there are to offer, the player can fully customize their character to suite their own unique play style. You can now go visit a friend who is playing the same game but in a totally unique way, and you can return to the game and play it completely differently. RPG inclusion to other genres offers players a chance they never previously had, they can not only champion the game world and defeat the adversary that challenges them the entire game, they can reach the level cap, max out certain skills and literally dominate the world; gamers can now walk into their favourite world and brutally slaughter countless enemies not out of necessity but because why the fuck not? Nobody can even hope to stop you, and dammit, it took you 170 hours to get here so you damn well deserve to wipe your feet with what’s left of your enemies.

So now we come to Assassin’s Creed. An ambitious game from the studio who created Splinter Cell that offers a unique setting and an intriguing plot about being the world’s greatest assassin during the Crusades. You begin by doing moderate errands for elder assassins which then grants you a new weapon. Conveniently, the story requires you to have these items only after you have actually accessed them which is a relief to the writers I’m sure. You then continue to carry out these remedial tasks with your new weapon until your given another new weapon and so on. Once in a while you get to assassinate someone too, which is pretty neat, considering this is called Assassin’s Creed after all. It’s an expertly made, finely polished game that follows a well-worn, tragically predictable path that would have made it an easy “Game of the Year” contender, had it been released five years earlier. In 2008 when it was released, gamers were instantly bored with the idea that you have very little to do besides collect flags that had no significance and were probably left behind by someone just as bored with their lives as Altair seemed to be. It was a game that was tragically behind the times, while at the same time incredibly ahead of the curve.

Enter Assassin’s Creed II which thankfully became aware of it’s predecessors mistakes and does nothing more than attempt to correct them and offer the experience that the first game should have offered. This time it’s set in 15th century Italy which is certainly pretty, but less interesting than the previous setting, but it’s forgivable because Assassin’s Creed II includes RPG elements as well as expected sandbox tropes.

The game begins with a painfully long tutorial level as Ubisoft Montreal clearly believes you to be a peasant who’s never played a sandbox game before despite the fact that the Uncharted series, Infamous, and Crackdown have all already filled the acrobatic-sandbox sized hole in our hearts left by Assassin’s Creed. Once past this however you are introduced to your own Villa, a town you get to invest in which causes the area to visibly improve, creates income for you for doing absolutely nothing, and offers discounts at local merchants. This element of the game is a generous treat that isn’t required to make the game great but is an extra additional length that just goes to show how much further Assassin’s Creed II goes to please and fulfill your investment in it.

The game doesn’t have any strict leveling system, but like other sandbox game has a currency system which stands in for experience points. You gain currency for completing missions or looting corpses which can be used to upgrade weapons, armor, and improve the Villa. Weapons and Armor all have values associated with their traits like damage, block, etc. which would add depth to deciding how you play if the game weren’t explicitly clear on what is good and what isn’t. Any time there is conflict between which weapon is better, one might have +1 to X attribute, while another +1 to Y and -1 to X, if you scroll down further another weapon is waiting that is simply better in all fields making the choice no choice at all. This happens any time there is an opportunity for decisions on how to develop your character and in a way, is a further extension of how this game is trying to suck up to you for it’s lame predecessor.

Assassin’s Creed II never removes it’s training wheels from the RPG elements it employs. While these elements are satisfying on the most primitive levels by offering completion bonuses and giving your Villa value, they never change how you play. In fact I played a good portion of the game with a very poor sword I accidentally equipped never even realizing what I had done until I checked my weapons list. The stats are little more than a rouse to make you believe your building stats. The only stat that matters is additional health because that can be seen and directly impact combat. The Villa aspect is incredibly simple as well, you fix areas of your Villa by selecting “Restore” when looking at the model of the town given you have enough money. Since the game gives you a generous amount of money for completing simple missions and pickpocketing is easier than looting from chests you’ll notice you are stupid-rich all the time despite your best efforts not to be. And often by the time you return to your Villa you’ll have stacked up another few tens of thousands of Florans depending on your progress so it’s never a challenge to improve your town and can easily fully restore it within the first 40% of the game. That said, it’s still enjoyable to watch the Villa come to life from the bleak gray stone it initially is and the unimportant merchant discount is nice too if you want to buy everything possible just because you have more money than the god damn Pope. If you really need to waste money there are Tailors that purposely offer to dye your clothes just so you can stop tormenting yourself over why an Assassin would wear a white cloak and instead invest in the dark green outfit to look like Robin Hood. Then liberally use the toss money “weapon” to truly play the role (the toss money option is a clear indicator that Ubisoft Montreal was playfully aware of the excess in Florans).

The combat which, like Assassin’s Creed, is entirely about timing but is so simplistic it’s barely combat at all. There is more versatility than the previous game, you can jump around in combat more, there are more weapons to use, you can disarm than slaughter your defenseless enemy without remorse with their own weapon, and like the first game almost all of the combat entirely resides in you using the “Counter” option. Later enemies can block the counter leading you to use it repeatedly until they wither away or throwing them off a rooftop. The combat is very weird, it’s extremely satisfying because the kill animations are so fluid and fun, but it’s an extremely poor system still especially compared to the similarly simple but robust combat system from Batman: Arkham Asylum which redefined the stupid-simple but constantly engaging combat sytem. I never got tired of the combat system but often found myself fleeing which offers more versatility again over the first game through hiring groups to distract pursuing guards, tossing Florans to create crowds of desperate peasants as bowling pins, and water which is Death incarnate to everyone in the world except Ezio, the world’s first swimmer. Fleeing, while cowardly to some, is one of the most riveting aspects of this game. The rooftop hunts, tossing Florans to create crowds, blending into groups (a new, welcome feature in this game), smoke bombs, or hiring allies to distract guards all goes a long way to enhancing the effect of the get-in-and-out emphasis of the assassination missions. Ezio’s versatility on rooftops and where he can hide on a vertical scale certainly sell this aspect of the game and with a lesser engine, it simply would not work at all. The running sequences work because they are fluid, however the game does have a knack for finding a way to toss in some collision detection issues with the environment which can seriously hamper the immersion of these typically terrific moments.

As an acrobat open-world game Assassin’s Creed II is an example of progress; it is not perfect. When it works it’s beautifully fluid and intense giving a sense of vulnerability and adrenaline to the player through Ezio, however it’s often irritating when Ezio randomly decides he will not grab a ledge right above him, gets caught on corners, leads from walls instead of up them, or assumes the player wants to jump 12 stories rather than on that pole they missed by one single inch. There is a fine line between recognizing your own mistake by miscalculating a jump and plunging to your doom and the engine failing to register a ledge as a climbable object mid-battle. Compared to other games Assassin’s Creed II avoids the stupidly magnetic climbing of inFamous but doesn’t nail the balance of Uncharted 1 & 2. It sits on the opposite end of this scale, but close enough to be considered a good success, but God help you when embarking on a mandatory rooftop race mission because you sure as shit won’t punish yourself with any optional ones.

Before I wrap this up, I should talk about the game’s plot a bit since it goes to some lengths to develop one. The first game employed the infamous bait-and-switch by revealing post-launch that the game was actually science fiction and involved you playing as a douchebag in the future who uses “genetic memories” through a computer to access the memories of his ancient assassin ancestor to reveal some secrets and stuff. With everyone now accepting of that bizarre creative decision, the sequel was permitted to really delve into the mythology of a deeper conspiracy and expanded universe. As all good sequels should, the game does create a much wider plot which has some legitimately great sci-fi concepts in play, unfortunately these concepts are revealed literally at the last cut scene before the irritating cliff-hanger ending. The game is generous enough to have only three missions with future-douchebag, one random tangent to Altair from the first game that’s never explained, and a failed explanation of why you need to use the memories of Ezio instead of just going back to Altair. This concern is actually addressed but with nothing more than “because he’s special, shut up!” which is an okay explanation for most video games, I guess. I still don’t understand whether or not what I’m playing is actual history being “remembered” or some virtual simulation because I was being told that “Ezio had X items at this memory” so I had to find more which I guess means it’s not the actual history because he actually had the items at that point in reality (???). Regardless, the concepts come together in a strong way towards the end, however the narrative as a whole is sloppy and amateur. The sci-fi doesn’t bleed into the historical aspect of the game until the end and feels awkward and abrupt rather than natural if it had slowly seeped into the main plot. With that said, the game plays upon notions of religion heavily (I mean you’re an Assassin who kills religious icons) and gives the idea of all-powerful idols a modern spin in a setting where such concepts are completely foreign and never considered. It is very interesting to see modern theories applied to earlier eras and how that affects the people and their systems of belief, in a world so immersed in religion a revelation as this game suggests would be crippling. Too bad we have to wait $60 later to find out what the real repercussions of these concepts are. The games mix of history with fiction is fascinating if troublesome by blending the two so much that it’s impossible to tell where fiction ends and history starts, taking the leading secondary character for example, Leonardo da Vinci, you may have heard of him. There are also a bunch of “glyphs” which dabble in military and political history from a broad range of eras but don’t display any sense of depth beyond saying “welcome to History 101”, but that is totally fine because it’s more than most games would even attempt to offer. It is very enjoyable when the game touches on important notes in history and even points out the greatest assassins in reality as it expands the scope of the in-game universe, reminding the player that as far out as the sci-fi ideas go, this is still firmly set in our world and these sequences constantly make you ponder where the next game will be set.

Setting is a major part of Assassin’s Creed. One of the major aspects of the games interest comes out of a setting that is unusual for a video game. Italy is hardly as interesting as the Holy Land, at least to me, but like history, it’s different for everyone. There has been a lot said about the realistic recreations of modern cities in open-world games, but this game really goes to extremely impressive lengths to recreate 15th century Italy in painstaking detail. It’s a beautiful piece of 3D art which renders smoothly, looks terrific, and is fun to explore. If there is anywhere that Assassin’s Creed II absolutely nails it, it’s in the free-roam world designed for the game. Each are is relatively similar and their are load times between, but while Rockstar is busy obsessively ensuring that you’ll never see a load screen, Ubisoft has crafted a world of rich detail and flair that is beautiful and calming to just explore at your own leisure. Liberty City has always been amusing and entertaining, but it’s rarely been captivating.

Occasionally sloppy and rather frequently frustrating, overall Assassin’s Creed II is satisfying and one of the few open world games that is able to keep enough focus on it’s main narrative to keep you interested to the end while simultaneously offering a multitude of side activities to occupy spare time. While Rockstar is considered “king of the ring” in the sandbox subgenre I have always felt a slump in the main mission plot and an indifference to complete them since side-missions scratch the same itch without the commitment. This game doesn’t do that, the activities are unique and often extra details that flesh out the world further, “The Truth” puzzles are ultimately hot air but are mysterious and intriguing in all the right ways to keep you looking as well as the Assassin Tomb hunts. RPG in games is a critical importance now more than ever, and it’s a great element. Games now are constantly unique, even shooters which used to be fairly one-note, Assassin’s Creed II doesn’t extend beyond RTS For Dummies but has a base appeal and straight-forward satisfaction with surprising endurance.

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