I’m still plugging away with AC2, and I think–if I keep this same schedule–I can beat this game in the next week. I only have about five more sequences to go, so I have hopes.
But aside from that, quite a few of my friends have asked me what I think of the game and if I would recommend it to them. I’ve had a hard time with both.
Am I enjoying the game? Yes. Do I like the gameplay, um, well, not really. I really liked it at first, but it’s starting to get repetitive, which is what I heard burned out a lot of people from the first game. When the game first started, I was eager to assassinate certain people because of what they did to Ezio’s family. But now that they are all dead, I’m not finding the same motivation in killing the rest of the Templars. Sure, they’re doing some bad things, and I should try to stop them, but it doesn’t have the same emotional meaning as it did in the beginning. So now I’m going through the motions of each memory, and as a result, it all feels the same. Track down this person, and either kill him or follow him to his clandestine meeting and then kill him. Today when I played, I did nothing but hunt down glyphs for the Truth just to do something different.
It’s the setting of the game that I absolutely love. I love running through Renaissance Italy and seeing the country again, even though it’s through the eyes of a videogame. The cities are so well rendered that I knew where a certain short cut was around the Santa Croce because I once walked down that alley and I recognized the layout. I have never experienced anything like that with a game, and I doubt I’ll ever be able to experience it again. This part for me is what makes it a great game.
I admit that I snicker a little bit every time I pull off a sneaky kill, even if it’s just pulling a guard from the rooftop or performing an air assassination. So my favorite thing to do is to rob banks for the Codex pages. I like planning out the best spot to kill the most guards at once so I don’t have to do hand-to-hand combat for too long. That part of the game really, really sucks.
I also really like the fact that the game pushes me to do things game-wise that I normally do not, such as platforming and being sneaky. I’m more of a hack-n-slasher, one that likes to just yell “RARRRRRR!” as I enter a room with my sword swinging wildly, so being sneaky is typically not my forte. Every time I have to sneak around and not be seen in this game (which is quite a bit, since I’m an assassin), my heart races and I can feel my hands sweat. So every time I pull off a sneak attack successfully, you can imagine my excitement.
The same thing happens when I have to do a lot of platforming, like in the Assassin’s Tombs. Actually, I have a love/hate relationship with these areas. I obtain a strong feeling of satisfaction when I complete the Tomb sequences and finally find the damn seal, but I cuss quite a bit during the process. And I call Ezio stupid a lot as well, particularly when he jumps somewhere I did not want him to go. Like down.
But do I recommend the game? I don’t know. The combat is quirky, the missions are repetitive, and there are only two really innovative and distinct aspects of the game–the glyphs and the Tombs–and one annoys the hell out of me. I can honestly say, despite all the positive attributes I’ve already listed, that I would not be finishing this game if I didn’t like its setting so much. The only reason why I wanted the game was because of its setting and I heard good things about the first AC, but everything else about it is just “meh” to me. So I suppose I would recommend it if you like platforming or stealthy games, or liked the first one (but then you probably already have this one), but outside of that, I really can’t recommend it. As far as action games go, I’d rather recommend inFamous or Uncharted 2.
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