I think I love Assassin’s Creed
So yes, I’ve waited for days to finally talk about what is quickly becoming my most anticipated game for the rest of the year - Assassin’s Creed 2. At the risk of feeling a bit like a closet homosexual, I have to come out and finally say it publicly: I LOVED ASSASSIN’S CREED!
Yes, I did. After all the controversy, and the sharp criticisms (including those in our own review), looking back at it after all this time I realize that there was just something about that game that worked really well for my inner gamer. Strange as it may seem in this advanced gaming age of ours, I actually liked the repetitive simplicity, and the beauty of the parkour gameplay and the stunning setting never really grew old on me.
But enough about the old! If our friends over at Game Informer can be believed, the new Assassin’s Creed will be a formidable leap forward (parkour-style of course!), with the developers at Ubisoft taking some time to listen to and think about gamer criticisms of the first installation. The simplistic and repetitive “go to bureau, pick up job, kill and repeat” structure is gone, with all missions now developing directly as outgrowths of the sprawling storyline. The combat has also been revamped with a wider variety of weapons, and more strategic assassination options - the main character (who is not Altair, btw) can now swim, among other things. The enemies themselves will also have a lot more variety, both in terms of how they pursue, attack, and behave, as well as in terms of what weapons work best against them. And the new location - 15th century Italy, complete with Leonardo Da Vinci and the Medici family - surely will not disappoint.
All in all, I am excited. As I’ve written on this blog before, AC was one of those games that was sheer brilliance with a few crude design mistakes that splattered dirt on its otherwise magnificent face. Now it looks like AC2 will have no trouble correcting those minor goofs and taking the game to stellar new heights. Literally.
