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Post by Knightfall on Oct 28, 2009 9:45:52 GMT 1
I remember playing Assassin's Creed when it first came out a couple years ago and thinking it was so-so. I've been thinking of picking it up lately on the cheap, but not seriously thinking about it.
But Assassin's Creed 2 might be a whole different story. I've become absolutely enamored with my Renaissance art class, where we learn about the era, the paintings, the meaning behind them all, the culture, etc.
And now that I've been watching the previews for the new game, I've been recognizing the various details they've implemented into the game. Little things like how Enzo's father worked for Lorenzo de Medici, who was a ruthless tyrant we've been learning about in class. It seems like this game wants to interactively teach me about an era that I am just loving at the moment, so I'm very tempted to pick it up on release.
This has also renewed my interest in the first AC, since it deals with the Holy Land and I've been studying that era as well lately.
Really odd stuff.
Also, this was just awesome:
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Post by Zarsthor on Oct 28, 2009 10:42:08 GMT 1
Theres a movie! Geezus I really am living in a cave.
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Post by Mr. Glow on Oct 28, 2009 11:09:51 GMT 1
what i like about this movie is that you see the little teenaged Ezio playing chess with a friend. It also contains the creepiest chess advice that anyones ever received.
Apparenly, most of the voice actors and mocap people reprised their game roles in Lineage. It makes you wonder what a Mass Effect short movie would be like.
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Post by Knightfall on Nov 17, 2009 9:17:44 GMT 1
Assassin's Creed II comes out today in AMERICA. It looks amazing, but I hope they've remedied the faults from the first game. At the very least, it sounds like the protagonist, Enzo, isn't somehow American. That bugged me so much with the first game. We're out here in the Jerusalem of antiquity, and Altair sounds like he's from New Mexico. The fuck?! Anyway, fingers crossed. Hoping it gets good reviews. If not, then I'll probably be picking up Dragon Age or Prototype or something. Either way, I need a new game. Fallout 3 is still fun to mess around in, but 70 or so hours later and it has run its course. EDIT: Looks like it's doing pretty damn good! Probably gonna pick it up after class! You guys have to watch the video review on IGN. ACII takes place in Italy, and they managed to do a Super Mario reference in a genius sort of way. =D www.gamerankings.com/xbox360/956858-assassins-creed-ii/index.html
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Post by Knightfall on Nov 20, 2009 23:57:08 GMT 1
Ended up buying the game and, simply put, this game is amazing. So far, unless the ending messes it up, it's easily on my Top Ten Favorite Games list.
The story is well-told. I could compare it to the cinematics of Mass Effect, in the way that it feels very much like a movie at times, but also you feel very connected to it. It doesn't suffer from Final Fantasy syndrome, where something amazing would happen in the cutscene and then it would get back to you, and everything's suddenly not amazing anymore.
The characters are very well characterized. Ezio is so damn cool, as you'd expect an assassin to be. He's clumsy and arrogant at the beginning of the game, but I'm about half way through and you can see how much he's changed. In the beginning, he kills with such ferocity, but now he's respectful of the dead, and always finishes his assasinations with a prayer or some sort.
The highlight so far, in my opinion, is Leonardo da Vinci. He's portrayed so accurately in how he had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and how he invented (or had a clear idea of) many things that we have today. He's also very funny at times. It's very awesome to feel as though you're palling around with one of the greatest minds in human history.
The cities of Assassin's Creed II are accurately recreated with insane attention to detail. If something was under construction at that time, you can see signs that it's not finished. And everything's so beautiful, in comparison to the first Assassin's Creed being sort of boring and dirty. I would compare it to some of the best visuals of a game like Oblivion. It just makes you want to run around aimlessly, just so you can see everything.
Just having Florence in the game is awesome enough. It's massive, and you will be startled when you find out that there are other places to go. There's Venice (also a beautiful city), Tuscany, a mountain community, Forli, and your very own town that you eventually take control of. In this town of yours, you can do renovation, display all the weapons you've earned, all the paintings you've bought, the items you've collected. And if you pour enough money into the place, everything will start looking less dreary, people will start showing up, you'll start seeing a cut of the town's profit, and stores will give you things at a discount. Awesome.
The gameplay is what sort of broke the first game. I only played for a little bit and it got tiresome, boring and repetitive very quickly. With this game, I can't play less than five hours at a time. It demands that I keep playing, and I gladly obey. There are assassination contracts to pick up, racing events, delivery events, and items to collect that are actually fun to track down. There is so damn much to do. You can also customize your armor, paint it different colors and chose from a variety of different weapons to carry.
The free-running part of the game is improved over the first. It seems more fluid, and there are way more places to jump around. Plus, the addition of the second hidden blade makes assassinations fun as hell.
Need to lure some guards away from a place you're trying to get inside of? Drop a body from the roof to distract everyone, hire prostitutes to hit on the guards, or thieves to steal their money. Or you can just fight. There are so many ways to go about nearly every mission, it's insane, and it's fun to chose from that list.
If there is one thing I didn't like about the game, it's that most places outside the cities, while still beautiful, are really just for show. For instance, there are endless, waving fields outside of Tuscany, but...there's not much you can do with it. You can jump around on the isolated farmhouses, but that's it. I would have liked it better if the countryside was smaller, or there were more things to jump on, like trees or something.
That's a small grievance, though. With open world games, I don't like disconnect or being aware that it's just a game. When you're running through the city, you don't have time to think about that. But when you're making your way through a very big field that does nothing for the gameplay, you notice.
And I know it's accurate to have the cities so far away from each other that you need to fast travel between them, but I hate walking down a path to a town and being asked "Do you want to travel to Florence?" I want to walk there, dammit! That's why I didn't like Fable or Fable II, and why I loved Oblivion and Fallout 3. You could fast travel, but if you wanted to walk your ass all the way out there, then you could.
Again, those are small annoyances that really don't amount to much, given the scale of the game. You won't have time to notice things like this when there are tombs to plunder and people to kill.
I love this game. If you were drawn in by the promises the first game made, this is where those promises get fulfilled.
Long review. Sorry!
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Post by Mr. Glow on Nov 21, 2009 3:22:53 GMT 1
You've gotta love Uncle Mario's way of introducing himself, "It's-a Me, Mario!"
I picked the game up earlier today, and love it even more than the first one. I agree with every thing you said in that review, Knight. Everything's improved and I'm even enjoying the modern story line. Especially the glyphs, very Da Vinci code. On the subject of Da Vinci, I find him very intersting and funny. i especially enjoyed the exchange between him and Ezio when he repairs the hidden blade.
The only thing I don't like are the death bed conversations, in AC1, they were well written, well acted 5 minute long conversations and now they're just a few words over the targets corpse. Oh, I miss the cutscene glitches as well.
It's also brilliant how much the characters lapse into Italian, but annoying when you're playing with subtitles off.
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Post by Knightfall on Nov 21, 2009 5:21:42 GMT 1
Yeah! The whole game is just so perfect. Everytime I say to myself, "That would be really cool if____ was in this game" it's always in there. xD
It's all the little things, like how when you pick a fight with the guards, the pedestrians start crowding around, throwing rocks sometimes. All the things the merchants shout. And the minstrels, lol, I laughed so damn hard when I was first crowded by four or five of those guys, singing to me. I threw money at their feet and they started fighting with each other.
I keep trying to think of how they could possibly improve in the third game, or which epoch they'll chose. It seems to be dropping hints, but I couldn't say if any of those choices would be better.
I think the main thing that would make the whole experience better is creating more things to do outside the city, and make it less disconnected so that there aren't loading screens between cities...maybe. That would be difficult if they're trying to keep it consistent. Or creating more buildings you could go inside of. I kept wanting to explore da Vinci's house to see all the things he's made, but no such luck. He even says, "My door is always open to you, Ezio." It was always closed unless I had a codex page. >=O
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Post by Tillian Panthesis on Nov 21, 2009 14:17:21 GMT 1
Hmm... you make it sound it convincing to make it as a must buy. I might try to get it.
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Post by Mister Buch on Nov 23, 2009 0:13:17 GMT 1
Wow, you are really loving this game.
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Post by Rascarin on Nov 23, 2009 14:16:59 GMT 1
I was going to get that £70 edition, but they've all sold out. Sounds pretty good, though. Guess I'll pick up the regular edition soon.
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Post by Mr. Glow on Nov 23, 2009 16:40:28 GMT 1
I've finished the game now, and while the ending was interesting, it just wasn't as awesome as i thought Assassin's creed 1's was.
As for the time period for Assassin's 3, The developers have said that they wrote the games the way they are to allow for as many installments as they wanted so I guess its anyones guess when and where it'll be set.
Personally I had hoped it would be a trilogy with no.3 set in the modern day, but they've said it's unlikely there'll ever be a game with Desmond as the sole protaganist.
If I had to choose any time period, I'd say it'd have to be post renaissance, obviously, so the french revolution like AC2 was rumored to be, Industrial revolution america or Victorian london would all be cool eras for a game like AC to be set in.
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Post by Rascarin on Nov 23, 2009 17:53:59 GMT 1
You thought Assassins Creed 1 had an awesome ending?
Personally, AC1's ending sits proudly in my top three all-time WORST video game endings ever (accompanied by Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and NWN2).
So, if you're saying that AC2 is not even as good as that... I'm stunned.
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Post by Mr. Glow on Nov 23, 2009 19:11:58 GMT 1
I liked it. Probably because there were several cliffhangers. Cliffhangers are always good.
Without spoiling anything, 1's ending sort of set the stage for the next act. 2's ending should have revealed more things than it did, and I didn't really think what it did was of the same quality of the rest of the plot so far.
1 also had a better boss fight, better dialogue between the PC and the boss and had a better build up to the fight.
And you didn't get to play as Desmond as much as in the first game.
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Post by Knightfall on Nov 23, 2009 21:06:57 GMT 1
I just finished the game last night, too. The ending did sorta take me aback. I never played the first one to see that ending, but I understand the ACII picks up exactly where the first one left off. In the end, I thought the ending it was interesting, like you said. It certainly didn't wrap everything up because Ubisoft know that they're gonna put out a third game and that it will continue there. In that regard, it's hard for me to fault them. When you think about what was revealed at the end, it was very, very clever what they're implying. I still give the game high marks and I still give it the honor of being on my Top Ten list. The game just has a wonderful story, the gameplay gets better and better as everything progresses, and it makes me excited for Assassin's Creed 3 already. And the conspiracy theory of Subject 16, and how it ties in with the ending, was amazing. That was some brilliant writing. And AC3, I also hope the next game takes place maybe during the American Industrial Revolution. My other choices would be World War I, the American Revolution, Ancient Greece or Rome, Feudal Japan, or Medieval England so that I might fight with King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table! But for some reason, I get the feeling that the next game's gonna take place in Egypt. That would be lame. Another desert area.
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Post by Hodster on Nov 24, 2009 4:07:18 GMT 1
I got AC2 today and so far it is awesome.
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