Assassin's Creed 2 Review

Post by Steve Farrelly @ 04:23pm 18/11/09 | 20 Comments

We've been trouncing through 15th Century renaissance Italy for the past few weeks with the latest in the Assassin's Creed series, which has surprised us on countless levels thanks to a revamped focus on issues had with the first - all of which have been broached and fixed.

It's proof of the strength of the series, and of Ubisoft's commitment to quality and delivering to their audience. So if you've ever dreamt of running across the rooftops of Florence as a master assassin aided by the great Leonardo da Vinci (and let's face it, who hasn't), Assassin's Creed II is for you.

Click here for our full review.

assassin's creed 2 ubisoft assassin's creed review

Latest Comments

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simul
Posted 04:31pm 18/11/09

"What we liked: Barely repetitive"

So buying, glad they fixed that niggling issue, it made the first game unplayable for me after 5 hours.

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d^
Posted 04:39pm 18/11/09

Awesome town. Great work guys

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skythra
Posted 04:55pm 18/11/09

The first one ended on a goddamn cliffhanger, which is appropriate considering how much free running you do.

But I'll be spending money on this installment too, I don't care how repetitive it was, I still went around killing thousands of innocent lives, punched at least 100 beggers, and charged at least 20 guards off cliff faces in the home town (followed by systematically grabbing and throwing every other guard off while man giggling to myself).

The fights were weak but intuitive. By that i mean it felt naturaly to change targets mid fight, throw a big hit moving you away from the people surrounding you and throwing a dagger at someone randomly behind you because they were far enough to allow it.

Although i found it annoying that if you did anything too agressive in most fights you'd be parry countered, but you were rewarded for blocking for too long, by someone grabbing you to throw, but instead you just counter their throw leaving you as the victor. So that made every fight the same, block, counter, block counter throw, block sidestep the big swing which would go through the block, attack the guy who has his fist in the air while he's not guarding and block again.

Basically this game was like grand theft auto for me, i got to go around exploring, killing and being a jerk to anyone i wanted at minimum penalty, but also surprisingly interesting storyline.

The other problem was the game was too short. Really i think it may be possible to complete in about 2 hours if you do the bare minimum.

If the new one fixes the fighting a little bit, keeps its free running and killing, while extending and maintaining high quality story lines, then i'll be super happy.

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kettels
Posted 07:21pm 18/11/09

loved the first one and glad to see this one is better then the first. To bad i want to play on PC.

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skythra
Posted 07:46pm 18/11/09

To bad i want to play on PC.

What do you mean? It isn't coming out on PC? I played the first using my xbox controller on my PC connected to my 42" tv in my bedroom. If i can't do that again I'll be sad..

edit:

Genre: Action Players: 1 to 0
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft Classification: TBC

Why doesn't it say Platform: PS3 XBOX360 etc etc?

last edited by skythra at 19:46:39 18/Nov/09

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taggs
Posted 07:46pm 18/11/09

i think it's Q1 2010 for pc iirc

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konstie
Posted 07:47pm 18/11/09

To bad i want to play on PC.
What do you mean? It isn't coming out on PC? I played the first using my xbox controller on my PC connected to my 42" tv in my bedroom. If i can't do that again I'll be sad..

get a console if you're gonna hook your pc to a tv just to play in your bedroom...

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imitation
Posted 07:50pm 18/11/09

First one was the first PS3 game and first game I've played in years, thoroughly enjoyed it and have watched the trailor for second one, looks great. My only problem with the first one was that I finished it in probably 7-8hrs play time which I thought was kind of poor, very glad I just hired it out for a week and was done rather than spend $xx on a game.

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skythra
Posted 08:48pm 18/11/09

get a console if you're gonna hook your pc to a tv just to play in your bedroom...

I have both a 360 and a PS3, nothing beats PC. Graphics are best on this thing, way better then either.

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konstie
Posted 09:02pm 18/11/09

yeah i agree, but on a tv don't you need a top of the line card to support a high resolution? i dunno im just asking..

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groganus
Posted 09:12pm 18/11/09

I started playing AC2 with alot of hesitation, thinking "whilst Ubisoft say they listened and fixed the mistakes the first had.. surely they have no idea what the real mistakes are.. and surely if they did they don't have a decent way of fixing them"... turns out i was way f*****g wrong, and instead had one of the best gaming experiences this year.

AC2 made up for how bad AC really was.. when you play this installment you will ask yourself how on earth did you enjoy the first one so much... (on the assumption you enjoyed the first one.. if not you will be pleasantly surprised how much better the game is)

The ending was totes unexpected but gives way more light on the situation and builds up for what hopefully will be a fantastic 3rd installment.

My only problem with the first one was that I finished it in probably 7-8hrs play time which I thought was kind of poor,

You will be happy.. took me 2 8 hour days and abit more to finish it at 91% completed... I probably could of done it quicker, but i really took my time taking the game in.

I probably sound like a fan boy... but I'm only really impressed with the game so much because of how hesitant i was to play it to begin with.

last edited by groganus at 21:12:37 18/Nov/09

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PureAussieGamer
Posted 04:20pm 20/11/09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W80WbQSggY

my own one.

i just found this spot on this forums haah =]

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deadlyf
Posted 04:42pm 20/11/09

I never finished the first, just couldn't get into it. Definitely going to wait for this to be on PC as I think playing it on the console was half the reason it didn't grab me.

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Spook
Posted 04:48pm 20/11/09

yeah i agree, but on a tv don't you need a top of the line card to support a high resolution? i dunno im just asking..

1920x1080 is pretty hefty resolution

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Thundercracker
Posted 07:07pm 20/11/09

yeah i agree, but on a tv don't you need a top of the line card to support a high resolution? i dunno im just asking..

My current desktop monitor runs in the same res as hidef TVs ( i <3 my 26 inch wide) and im running an old 8800GTS. I haven't had any troubles running the latest games like dragon age, MW2. Many games are targeted at consoles in terms of graphical detail so you don't really need a top end card at the moment unless you want to run crysis on its highest settings.

If you want to run with anti-aliasing then you will definitely need a beefier card.

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theaddictor
Posted 07:19pm 26/11/09

I purchased to find that AC1 doesn't have subtitles... and so then I zzzz'ed during the diaolgues... and i haven't managed to complete the game :( ... anybody know if ACII comes with subtitles?

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Khel
Posted 08:24pm 26/11/09

Yeah, it has subtitles

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greazy
Posted 09:14pm 26/11/09

Haha I completely agree the intro is horrible. Though I loved the part where he says there's this girl called sandy (cut to her chest) I think she's on my side.

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Khel
Posted 04:02am 27/11/09

Its mostly an awesome game, I just wish they hadn't put the races in, because all the races do is show off the limitations of their parkour system and highlight all the worst parts of the game mechanics. The system is great when you're just running around normally, but its obviously not made with pinpoint precision in mind, and once you start racing against a clock, it just becomes absolute frustration as you're randomly jumping off into the middle of nowhere, climbing up walls you brush past while sprinting, having to constantly fight with the camera to try and find the next waypoint, etc, etc.

Then, just to add insult to injury, there isn't even a "restart" option on the menu, if you f*** up and want to restart the race your only option is to abort your current mission, wait while the game loads and puts you back where you were before you started, then take the mission again, sit through the mission briefing dialogue because it is unskippable, and try again.

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shad
Posted 07:33am 27/11/09

unskippable mission briefing dialogue? My god, why wont some game developers never learn.

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