Assassin's Creed: A Retrospective

Today I was mainly playing Mass Effect 2, trying to perfect my character, Jak Shepard, in preparations for Mass Effect 3 coming out March 6, 2012. Later tonight I was playing Halo: Reach campaign with my cousin, MJOJOJO, and we were taking turns lagging the crap out of eachother due to some connection problems. On Legendary, of course, would we play anything less?

Anyway, after that we played with our friend on Matchmaking Mode and won a few rounds, and lost some, as expected. You win some, you lose some, right?

All that said, I decided to throw a completely off-the-wall game at you, one I am an avid player of. Assassin's Creed, Ubisoft's attempt at a free-roam Prince of Persia.

Now, there is nothing wrong with the concept of the original Assassin's Creed. It was a great game, though many like to put it down for it's flaws, it was what we call an experiment. I could spend my time here yacking about all the flaws of the original game, but instead, let's look at the good things it had to offer.

Image of Combat as seen in Assassin's Creed

Now, many agree that the combat in Assassin's Creed II is more involving than AC1, and this is true. There are many more options to explore for each way to kill people, and many ways to kill lots of people. I don't disagree one bit--once you get the counter kill in Assassin's Creed, it's all you need to kill anyone and anything, final bosses excluded.

What I'm looking at, however, was the age it was in. Sure, ACII's renaissance theme is brilliant, but AC1 really shows beautiful style of where all the Templars and Assassins began: the Holy Land. Mind, it doesn't portray Templars as they are usually portrayed, the bad guys with evil secrets, as opposed to the good guys. The way the overall "tone" of each city varies really sells it for me; the colors are beautiful, and makes it worth freerunning.

Now, I know we ALL hate the repetitive "information gathering missions" prior to Assassination, pardon the unnecessary capital, but when it got to the assassination, it really paid off (somewhat). It gave you a scene, info on the target, and let you go about your own business killing him. While Assassin's Creed II keeps this element, it makes it different when you don't get the whole scene.

It's like Altair plans his kills out carefully, and Ezio runs in following his gut and relying on luck. By principle, Altair is a better Assassin due to this fact, but by plot Ezio is. Don't get me wrong, some missions really don't give much room for planning, like when flying over Venice. No amount of contact interrogation could prepare Altair for that, and Ezio knew to go with his gut instinct, but there are times that Ezio, had he sat back and planned his Assassinations better (again, excuse the capital) he would have had a much easier life.

SO, now that I've finished bagging on Assassin's Creed II to promote Assassin's Creed I, I will say that ACII has a very innovative combat system. Each different weapon has umpteen ways to kill someone, and that isn't even counting taking their weapon and killing them with it. I found myself playing through multiple times just to fight with different weapons. (you can see how obsessed I am about it by looking at the one hundred percent achievement list I have for this game). 

The cities are larger, and the story is more tragic and can be related to better than the silent protagonist of Altair. We get to SEE the transformation of Ezio Auditore, from a young hotshot into a skilled Assassin (then a middle aged Master Assassin, then a "Why are you still an Assassin?" old Assassin in subsequent games involving him). It pushes over twenty years of his life at us, and tells us why we should care. 

A young boy driven for revenge. We all know Sasuke Uchiha already, is what I thought at first. I think he easily could have become a Sasuke-esque character, had his uncle not instilled a code of honor into him. A code that as he followed, transformed a hollowing quest for revenge into a growing experience for the man.

Something Sasuke never had. Fricking Itachi killing Sasuke's uncle.

Ezio's Armory as seen in ACII

"Come on, man, no more Naruto references."

Fine, no more.

Anyway, as pictured above, there are several weapons to choose from, each having their own usage and talents. Alone, Ezio can take a sword, a knife, his two hidden blades, cash money, smoke bombs, and hidden blade upgrades with him on any mission. A smart Assassin will use them well, knowing full well that using a wrist-mounted pistol will probably kill anyone in a single shot, as bulletproof armor has yet to be invented.

The funny thing is, there are no dogs in game. If you fire the gun, you hear dogs barking in the distance. Where are they?!

Back to being serious, the game really upgrades on variety, and adds something the last Assassin's Creed could never have. Town upgrades. 

It let two elements of RPG into an action game. Customizable weapons, and upgrading towns. These seemed like awesome ideas, and still do, but little do we know, they are ushering in the defeat of action in Assassin's Creed, and the rise of roleplaying.

Not that it is bad, mind, but it is against the original concept. Create a freeform Prince of Persia, an action game. (Though Prince of Persia is a linear platformer)

Is it deviating too much? I think so. Yet I, as a roleplaying gamer, am enjoying it somewhat.

"Hey, Assassin's Creed II was a hit!"

"Dude, I totally know! We did something right! What was it?"

"Man, it was totally Ezio."

"Totally. Maybe the town upgrading too!"

"We should use Ezio again!"

"And get a bigger town to upgrade!"

"Just to be safe, let's add some new elements. Like, let's make Ezio the Master Assassin!"

"Yeah!"

"Let's also kill Uncle Mario and make Machiavelli into Cesare Borgia's enemy!"

"...you never read 'The Prince', did you...?"

"But it would be totally awesome!"

...at least, that's what goes through my head when I try to imagine what Ubisoft was thinking in bringing Ezio, and Italy, and town upgrading, back.

You see, one thing that made Assassin's Creed II a hit was the hinting that we're visiting lots of different time eras, and being lots of different highly trained killers. I guess Ubisoft wasn't expecting a Cash Cow like Ezio, and figure pushing him on through his old age is a good idea. 

The game is great, and certainly exceeds "Expansion Pack" status. The new features of "Brotherhood Control" and the idea behind managing your own guild was great, but fixing all of Rome? I agree with Benjamin "Yahtzee" Croshaw on this. "What are we trying to do, evict them from Rome by buying everything?!"

However, the fact being we're using the same character who has already gone through life's greatest challenge, he just doesn't have any more character development left in him. He's already grown up to be a fine young (old) man, and pushing him any farther than he actually has to go is plain stupid. The story of the game falters somewhat at this point, being that we're the Master Assassin. Assassin's Creed's saving grace was that we did not know Altair's past, we were trying to figure that part out. In ACB, we already know Ezio, his past exploits, and what his full capabilities are.

Now, something that I review separately from singleplayer, is the multiplayer.

The different multiplayer characters and their selectable weapons (not all included)

Now, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood was a good game, don't get me wrong here. But the multiplayer blew me away. I loved being online doing my Assassin thing with other people, hiding from and killing players. It brings a certain tensity to the game not knowing who will kill you but knowing who you are after.

Looking over your shoulder while at the same time looking straight ahead. It provided a great deal of challenge. Of course, having preordered from Gamestop, I had the Harlequin character, who also happens to be my favorite character when playing the game. 

The kills in Online Play are beautiful, and it is satisfying knowing you just ruined someone's kill by taking your own. Of course, it backfires when someone kills you, but what the hey, it's all good. There are a couple problems I found with multiplayer, of course.

First being the most vain of them all. Why oh why, if we're on the same team, do we have to be the same person? So partners can tell eachother apart? To make it easier to find your opponents? Both could easily be rectified by adding a color code system similar to Halo and almost every other game out there. 

Since no one else can select the character you selected, all of that character are coded red for the match as well. Easy fix, non?

Second, the EXTREMELY long wait times on every match. It says we're waiting for six of six people, then seven of seven join, then eight of eight. I've played some pretty bullshitted servers before, some that booted me out of the game before I could collect points (everyone else was booted out of the game too) and sometimes people are forced off. 

Sometimes it seems people are trying to be real asses and joining just to quit, which is infuriating to me. Though I have to try and understand, maybe they just didn't want to play that map or something.

FINALLY, I want to be able to pick the maps I play on in a public server, not just private. I prefer the Monteriggioni maps and would like to play on them, but if I want to not have to hope the server randomly picks Monteriggioni for me, I have to go to Private mode, invite friends, and get no points for the match anyway. Seriously?!

I hope these major problems are fixed by the time Revelations comes out. Expect an article in preparation for it, and an article after I get and play it.

Anyway, that's my rant of the day. Happy trails until next we meet!