Lightning Reviews

I have a really bad habit of doing things out of order when it comes to a series. When I was a child, for instance, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was first published, I read it before I'd read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (and thus, it remains my favorite in the entire series, regardless of the fact that most consider it the worst. :( ) I've done this again and again throughout my life, so I didn't really consider it odd when I picked up Assassin's Creed 2 before having played the first. I'd been assured by my brother and my friend that 2 would make plenty of sense without having played the first (mostly true, looking back) and that the story in 1 wasn't exactly tied in to 2 (kind of true, barring the entire underlying story with Abstergo, Lucy, Warren, and Desmond, which I guess I consider more important than most people do).

To be fair, I was originally uninterested in Assassin's Creed 2. The most I recall about it is that it came out on the same day as Resident Evil 5, and the GameStop I frequent was having a midnight launch for AC2 so I was able to get my copy of RE5 at midnight as well. There were a lot of Assassin's Creed fanboys at GameStop that night. My brother received the game for Christmas (2009) and I watched him play the beginning of it and found myself mostly turned off of the game because of the graphics (which I will get into later).

However, my good friend V (who you can find at her own gamer blog, Bat Romance) was also a big fan of the game, and eventually I decided to give it a shot as well. I picked the game up and took it home…

The first thing that originally struck me about Assassin's Creed 2 was the graphics. While buildings and scenery all look amazing, people look absolutely terrible - especially in their faces. Most characters seem to have the most issues in their eyes - blank stares, vacant expressions, and characters that are outright cross-eyed seem to dominate the game, with Leonardo da Vinci and Ezio's uncle Mario the two best-looking characters in the game. Clothes often look too over-painted or unrealistic, although people do move very well.

The sound in the game is good - my boyfriend was a bit stuck on the too frequent and sometimes excessive use of Italian (which, if you don't have subtitles on which translate the Italian into English, you have no idea what's happening in these scenes, and guess what? Subtitles being on is not the default setting) and the heavy Italian accents, which was slightly irritating but not overtly annoying in my opinion.

The battle system in the game was good, but a little challenging. This is a game that doesn't hesitate to use every single button on the controller at all times - and when you hold down RT, the buttons get another command, so you have to be really careful which button you're pushing at any given time. It isn't too difficult to master, though - I rarely died in the game, and usually only because I accidentally jumped off something or my Leaps of Faith off viewpoints didn't work properly. Unfortunately, this can also be a bad thing - I found that the final boss of the game was absurdly easy, which was honestly extremely disappointing. No where during the final mission was I even in the slightest way close to desynchronization - the ending chapters of the game were easier than most of the Assassin's Tombs.

Which brings me to a good point about this game - although it can possibly be somewhat short if you only play to follow the storyline and nothing else, there are so many optional sidequests and missions that it lengthens the playtime considerably, and does so in a fresh and enjoyable way. I found myself actually wanting to collect 100 feathers, a feat at which most video games fail (I still haven't found all the emblems in Resident Evil 5, for instance, despite loving the game and having played it over and over again). I imagine this is because, although collecting items as a sidequest is a stereotypical video game thing, AC2 actually integrated the feather-collecting into the plot, making it optional but still something that seemed important. And that's exactly how a sidequest should be done.

If any of you know me (and as this blog is new and small, I'm assuming most people who read this are going to be people who do), you know that I play video games for the plot. With the exception of old school games like Mario or Sonic (Genesis Sonic games, of course, I have no idea what that series is even doing any more but having an extremely long, embarrassing death sequence worthy of Metal Gear 2) I play video games for the same reasons I watch movies - because I want to be told a story. The story told in Assassin's Creed 2 gets off to a quick start and weaves an interesting plot, but it sometimes left me behind. I'm not sure if this is because I am a stupid American and so I began to mix up the complex Italian names and get confused or if it's because I have absolutely no background on the Templars with the exception of seeing The Da Vinci Code, but it was a little frustrating. Still, I liked the plot that was presented, both in Ezio's life and in Desmond's. The only thing about the story I didn't like was that I felt the ending was abrupt and unfinished. Suddenly, Abstergo had found Desmond's group's hideout and was attacking, but it didn't seem like it was very serious. They didn't really bring any heavy hitters, for one thing. The entire final scene was a little bizarre. And then Warren just randomly leaves without really having done anything. It was weird.

In the game, there are "glyphs" that are hidden throughout the world, twenty in total. When you access these glyphs, you solve a short puzzle and are then given a small piece of video (1-2 seconds long) the game calls "The Truth". The puzzles are introduced and narrated by a man like Desmond - a former user of the Animus who lost his mind, called only "Subject Sixteen". Over the twenty puzzles, you begin to feel that the "truth" that Subject Sixteen wants to impart to you must be extremely important, but because he's completely insane, none of it makes any fucking sense. When you finally unlock the entire video and watch it for yourself, you're left completely unable to comprehend what the hell any of it even means. Subject Sixteen's rantings are entertaining and somewhat chilling, but the "crazy" seems to have been overdone so much that it completely blocks out any of the message the game wanted to impart, which was sad indeed.

All in all, though, Assassin's Creed II is a beautiful game. The story, while somewhat dated and operating under the assumption that you understand pretty much anything about the Templars, is rich and full with a wide cast of characters that keeps the story going. The scenery is gorgeous and the world is expansive. The soundtrack is calming and only adds to the game in a cinematic way without being distracting or clunky. And best of all, it's a game you want to play - whether you're playing through the story or just collecting Petruccio's 100 feathers for no reason at all.

Verdict: A-