Take a tour of Italy!
posted by MPothier (WOODLAND HILLS, CA) Jun 12, 2011
Member since May 2011
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Much improved over the original, Assassin's Creed 2 presents another trip back in time, this time to renaissance Italy. The game is breathless in its presentation. You really feel like you are walking the streets of Florence, or swimming the canals of Venice. Not only that, the combat is very improved. While it still relies on countering your opponents, you get new moves such as disarming them, and using your hidden blades in combat for quick kills.
Ubi-Soft also developed elements that greatly help the strategic gamer. With the ability to blend into crowds (doesn't make sense, Ezio looks like a fish out of water in some crowds, but there you go) or hiring groups to distract guards, making an assassination now requires more finesse then brutality.
Ezio himself makes a far more interesting main character then Altair. By chronicling his rise from distraught young noble to master assassin, we become enthralled with his quest. He simply wants justice, but finds his world is far more sinister then what he grew up believing.
If you haven't played the first game, you will have a harder time catching up, but it isn't required playing, though highly recommended. If you play AC1 after this, you will end up frustrated with the flaws that they fixed for this game.
In the end, this game is proof that games have come a long way towards providing a complete mature experience. Not mature as in blood and sexual situations, but mature as in real ideas and issues. Is an assassin that kills to keep the world safe an inherent hypocrisy? It might be so, and Assassin's Creed 2 isn't afraid to explore that idea.
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