Reviews Comments: Second Rate, Third Person

Assassins Creed II game review by Tomwithnonumbers

Second Rate, Third Person

In Assassins' Creed you play as a person playing a person in Renaissance Italy and that's what it feels like.

The setting is impressively detailed but the camera is always pulled out far and the vision is always on the next place to jump, failing to give you a sense of reality and impressiveness and made it is.

The characters aren't and the plot (with several impressively unreveal reveals) and it has all the draw of reading about someone reading a book. Several times you will be a bit unclear why you are going to a place and why you're doing what you're doing but it's okay, because you're just following disjoint markers and pressing buttons whilst Desmond plays fragments of Ezio's life.

Combat is reduced to waiting around for someone to attack you, pressing a button when they do, and watching your assassins kill the person off (albeit it in a very cool manner). The complexity added to this game is, sometimes you have to do it multiple times, or drop your weapon first, do it, watch the disarm animation and then repeat.

The economy is the method of you waiting round whilst the game showers money on you that can only be spent on earning more money and even without it, the game is easy. Health is pointless because if you lose it, hold the block button and wait for it to regenerate. Since countering involves holding block, only boredom will kill you.

If you make a mistake it's not your fault. It's Desmond's. Freerunning consists of holding two buttons and watching the character pick out appropriate places to run and jump. Sometimes he will decide to jump off a building instead of onto the next ledge and then you die and have to wait a few seconds and possibly repeat half a minute of mission. The challenge in freerunning is 1. Trying to control the camera whilst pressing a button with your right thumb. 2. Trying to step off a balcony.

Side missions often involve morally questionable activities, like helping someone cheat on two women, or recovering evidence on the behalf of an adulterer and soon to be murderer. You can only run to designated objectives whilst Ezio happily completes the task. You can't even fail, only pretend you never took the mission.

At the end of the game it appears that someone is speaking directly to the player. And then it turns out they're speaking to Desmond. It is a good game, but not for you

I quite enjoy playing ACII, but your points are valid. The game is... Friendly, but in a somewhat demeaning way. 'See this big red marker here? Look towards it. Are you looking? Yes, good boy! Now press those two buttons, Just keep pressing them. Look! Who's a big, strong traceur? You are! Yes you are! Attaboy. Such skill, such grace! Look, you reached the marker! You did it! Now, if you just press that button, I'll show you who you're supposed to kill. Yes, it's the shiny gold thing. You found it! Good boy, good boy. Now go to the edge of the roof. You went to that roof alright! That's my boy. Now press the button and look! What a big badass boy you are! You jumped and killed him! Good boy! Good boy! Here is a lot of money, because you're so good. Now, just walk away, and... No, wait, don't run into the big group of shiny red guys. You... You ran into the big group of shiny red guys. Well, that's okay, i guess. Just run away and you'll be fine. No? You don't feel like running away. That's ok too. Just press that button and they won't hurt you. Why aren't you pressing the button? I'm sorry, maybe you didn't hear. That's ok, don't cry. Don't cry. You still have two thirds of your health left, because you're such a big strong boy, so don't worry. Just press the button and everything will be fine. No? You don't want to press the button? Please, it's just one button. Press the button, come on, it won't hurt you? Oh, you died. Wait, wait wait! Don't cry. It's ok, it's ok. Nobody's gonna hurt you. Just... It's okay, look, you have full health again. It's okay, nobody's going to hurt you...'

comment #7454 ArtisticPlatypus 28th Apr 11

I don't get it...you act like because Desmond is reliving Ezio's memories, this makes it feel like you aren't playing the game.

The camera is pulled out far enough to allow you to see people behind you without being too far away so that you can't see what you're doing, so I don't know what the problem is there. I don't know why you need to be doing something like looking behind you while you jump forwards either.

As for the side missions, I'm pretty sure those are courier missions, and Ezio isn't reading people's letters. Also, you CAN fail, because those missions are timed. Or you could just quit the mission.

comment #7457 LaLiLuLeLo 28th Apr 11

If you fail it puts you back at the start to try again, if you quit the game pretends you've never started the mission. I guess i'm more of a story person

comment #7463 Tomwithnonumbers 29th Apr 11

This isn't a very good review. What do you mean "not for you", you don't know who we are. If you're trying to review something, don't just speak for yourself.

comment #8998 ninjaclown 31st Jul 11

"If you fail it puts you back at the start to try again, if you quit the game pretends you've never started the mission. I guess i'm more of a story person "

Plenty of games have a retry feature. Don't tell me you're going to complain about them all.

Anyways, the main point I got from this review is "This game isn't immersive (Like Oblivion)".

comment #9001 eveil 1st Aug 11

@ninjaclown He means that it's a good game for Desmond. As in, you're playing a guy playing a game.

comment #9003 McSomeguy 1st Aug 11

I kind of like this review, in the sense that much of Assassin's Creed is havily automated. Free running is largely just a matter of holding down a button and a direction arrow (and hoping Ezio moves in the right direction). Combat is largely just a matter of waiting to press the counter attack button (and watching Ezio do the actual stabbing). I think the reviewer made a good observation; the game does give the impression that it is playing on its own, and that your input is limited.

Saying that, the review is badly written. The sentences don't make sense, the grammar is poor and it could do with more fragmentation. It needs a rewrite to better communicate its argument.

comment #9004 maninahat 1st Aug 11 (edited by: maninahat)

Sorry, about the terrible structure, I tend to sick over my keyboard in one go and don't even reread :(

You managed to sum up what I was trying to say(barring story considerations), infinitely more clearly in just three lines (whilst also reviewing my review) :D. I'll try to do better in the future

comment #9050 Tomwithnonumbers 3rd Aug 11

Agree and disagree. The game had a little bit of difficulty but wasn't really...hard. It was tricky more than anything. Some of the tricks that they added into the second game like the vaulting while climbing and a couple other timing related acrobatics gave the game a little more strategy than the first one (at least in the climbing puzzles). The really really nice thing about the game at least in terms of gameplay was that it was a combo sneak game and platformer that didn't make me want to throw my mouse through my computer monitor. The bad thing was the sneaking isn't refined or realistic or required (though they took some steps to fix that in brotherhood). You can walk up and kill a guy with the entire town chasing after you if you wanted to then run into the first haystack...A few cases require more sneaky methods but in those cases it involves just standing behind the guards (usually).

The combat was slightly improved over assassin's creed I: counter kills weren't automatic and other tricks forced you to wear down your opponents. Also there was a variety of guards rather than just an archer and standard mook.

The thing that I really liked about the game was the story, scenery and dialogue. The characters are witty and fully fleshed out and the missions generally make sense. Florence and Venice are beautiful. Agreed also that the economy side is a bit shaky as well, (this doesn't improve in the next game, in fact it makes even less sense)

comment #9294 snowburnt 16th Aug 11

Gotta agree with Ninjaclown on the "Not for you" thing, it's a little pretentious of you to think what is or is not for us without any info on us. and I can't understand the whole, thing with Desmond, it's like knowing that Desmond is in-between you and Ezio is preventing you from feeling you're really controlling Ezio. But I can see where you're going with most of the review.

comment #9300 marcellX 16th Aug 11 (edited by: marcellX)

Wait... you people can actually understand what this review is trying to say?

comment #9302 eveil 16th Aug 11

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