Assassin’s Creed 2

To give a really accurate review of Assassin’s Creed 2 would require some degree of scholarship in 15th century Renaissance Italy. Perhaps anticipating the need for an informed perspective, SCUM went ahead and sent this reviewer to Tuscany last summer in preparation. Well, actually SCUM didn’t really pay for the trip… nor did they know ahead of time that I was going… but the trip did happen and maybe if I rewrite history in this introduction (and rewriting history is essentially what Assassin’ Creed is all about, right?) it will inspire SCUM to pay for future research trips in the name of accurate video game reviewing. Isn’t there a Fallout game set in Las Vegas coming out next year?

Plotting Points by Tan(x)
Video Game Reviews by a Very Busy Math Teacher


Assassin’s Creed 2 picks up where the last left off, with our modern day protagonist Desmond making his escape from the Templars and joining the ancient order of assassins in order to fight their Illuminati-style evil. Why the Assassins are a friendlier secret organization than the Templars is unclear, but it is always easier to sympathize with the secret resistance than with the secret rulers in power. Plus, Desmond has his eye on the hot Assassin girl who helped him escape and, well, what’s really more important than that?

Regardless, the Assassins have their very own racial memory machine that lets Desmond jump into another past life, this time that of Ezio Auditori of the early Renaissance. Before you know it you’ll be scaling Florentine walls, leaping from the tops of towers into haystacks, and knocking over civilians in the street as you rush madly about hoping your counter-fashion hood will hide you from the street patrols. Be ready for another generous helping of civic disobedience occasionally punctuated by the planned murder of “badguys”… it seems that Ezio quite resembles his ancestor Altair.

The world of Assassin’s Creed 2 is the biggest attraction here. Florence (or Firenze, as the Italians say), Venice (Venicia), San Gimignano, the Tuscan hills and your personal Villa… all are recreated in loving, lavish detail. Each city features many recognizable landmarks, accompanied with encyclopedia entries that give you a little blurb about why they are famous. The cities are so detailed and true to form, that it is sometimes jarring when a familiar building is missing. For instance, the famous Duomo and Campanile of Florence are present at the beginning of the game, but the hexagonal Bapistry across the street is missing (it should be there at the time… in fact, it has some of the oldest doors in all of Florence). At least one spokesman for Ubisoft was sheepish about the omission… it turns out you can only have so many intricately detailed buildings next to each other with present technology. Add one too many, and the XBOX 360 slows down too much to allow proper playability.

Speaking of the Duomo, I was quite excited to get inside of it to see the painted Dome. In modern day Florence tourists scale a seemingly endless series of dark and narrow stairs in order to reveal a gorgeous, detailed illustration of heaven and hell splashed across the entire ceiling. The game does eventually let you inside the building to search for a secret Assassin’s Tomb (there are six quests like this, each one a little more dungeon-crawly than the rest of the game). Unfortunately, in the 15th Century the Dome hasn’t been painted yet… couldn’t we have let historical accuracy slide just a little on this one?! Happily, my disappointment in not seeing the Dome again was later mitigated by the full recreation of the interior detail of the Basilica di San Marco in Venice. Here is a cavernous cathedral full of golden Byzantine designs, intricate mosaic floors and grand architecture, so beautiful to explore that it made it rather difficult to focus on the jumping puzzles at hand.

The love of Italian culture and history is not just about the buildings. In addition to hanging around with a fun-loving and youthful Leonardo da Vinci, Ezio encounters quite a few other historical personages, some as cameos and some central to the plot. He also has a side quest to upgrade his uncle’s Villa in Monteriggioni (by the way, another strange error… as far as I can tell, Monteriggioni and San Gimignano have swapped places on the map from their real world equivalents. Maybe the Templars caused this bizarre juxtaposition as part of a far-reaching city-swapping scheme to take over the world…) In addition to commissioning upgrades to the town and collecting arms and armor, Ezio is able to purchase famous works of Renaissance art for the walls of the Villa. Each piece of art comes with a brief description and can be viewed whenever you like. Forget gold pieces or precious gems. Real world art is the best treasure I’ve seen in a video game to date!

I would heartily recommend Assassin’s Creed 2 to just about everyone just for the virtual tour of Italy, but it turns out the game itself is not half bad either. Many of the issues from the previous game have been addressed or completely fixed. Travel time between locations used to be painfully dull as any attempt at moving faster than a crawl caught the attention of the town watch. Now you can sprint at two speeds and maintain anonymity, and there are shops that sell instantaneous travel to key locations throughout the land. Much of the gameplay in Assassin’s Creed 1 was overly repetitive… the sequel involves a much wider variety of tasks and parcels out new abilities with a good pace, leaving something new to discover in almost every chapter of the game.

This being said, there is still an element of repetition that plagues the underlying game play. Let me provide an example. One of the many things to collect in the game are pieces of a Codex that are always under guard and need to be brought to Leonardo to decipher (always good to have a mathematician around to handle the hard stuff!) There are several ways to dispatch the guards of said codices, but the most efficient way is to hire a group of prostitutes, thieves or mercenaries to distract them. While this is a neat idea, the process of accomplishing this task requires only the issuing of a command… in other words, there is no skill or planning or contest required, and thus, no game. After the fifth or sixth time you’ve walked through this simple process, it becomes a repetitive, mechanical task rather than an engaging encounter.

In this and several other situations Assassin’s Creed could improve further by the addition of mini-games or challenges. Maybe a metaphorical arcade game or puzzle could stand in the way of success, like those used for picking locks or breaching security in games like Ratchet & Clank or System Shock 2? Or perhaps the answer is in dialogue. While Assassin’s Creed 2 has many people populating its cities, you often feel a bit alone as the people around you are all extras with little interactivity. Don’t get me wrong… there are a lot of interesting characters for Ezio to meet throughout his journey. But I miss the days of Japanese RPGs where various random people in town each have a bit of gossip, news or opinion to impart. I know dialogue trees are not popular in action games like this one, but spreading more optional text around would probably not add significantly to the cost of game development, but could greatly increase the player’s connection to the world and the virtual people they encounter within.

What Assassin’s Creed 2 lacks in word on the street it does somewhat make up for in collected ramblings of madmen. With a conspiracy theory underlying plot that sounds like a Kenneth Hite GURPS campaign gone a little nuts, Assassin’s Creed 2 deluges the player with wild accusations, historical paranoia and the like. Uncovering hidden markings on buildings send you deep into territory pioneered by the likes of Robert Anton Shea’s Illuminati Trilogy and Grant Morrison’s Invisibles. The puzzles can get to be tough as well… you may have to be a little unhinged if you want to solve the secret decoder ring problems without too much effort.

By the time I was finishing the story and side quests of Assassin’s Creed 2, Ezio had begun to get a bit erratic in behavior. Questions like, “just how many unconscious guards can I drop into the same haystack” or “how many people can I run over with my horse” were taking central stage, indicating it was time to finish. I had a very quality time running Ezio around the countryside, and I eagerly await the chance to visit more historical landscapes in the future. Please go out and buy a copy of Assassin’s Creed 2… Ubisoft continues to blur the line between education and fun, and they deserve all of our support for their efforts.