Published by Ubi Soft

Rated “M” for Mature

Contains blood, intense violence, sexual content, and strong language

The Assassin’s Creed series is an extremely complicated one. It involves a battle between two secret societies that takes place throughout history, the rise of a hero who fights for the common folk, a story within a story, one told in the past and the other in the present, a series of complex city systems with an array of different tasks, and like a thread drawn through it all, a Dan Brown-inspired conspiracy theory involving religion, world leaders, strange artifacts, and possibly aliens from another planet. That Ubi Soft Montreal can find a balance in all this is why they are one of the best game studios in the world and with their second game they have done more than merely extend the original concept, they have dramatically improved upon it, finding a new way to tie all their complex ideas together with infinite ease and immense joy.

The core gameplay is still the same. The way you can move through streets, blending amongst the crowds, hiding within haystacks, is still there, and the way you can bound across rooftops and clamber up towers to bypass security patrols. The combat system is much the same, the way you are surrounded by and take on entire rings of guards with a sword and balletic finishing moves. So to with the assassination tricks, the ability to move up behind a guard and slide a blade between his ribs, to dive from the rafters and plunge a weapon into a politician’s throat, or the casual toss of a throwing knife at a rooftop guard to shut him up.

The change is that you will spend less time trying to escape the characters who are designed to harass you and more time getting on with the enjoyable tasks of assassinating targets, delivering letters, competing in rooftop races, beating up cheating husbands, collecting feathers, and searching for clues and secrets areas that are part of the bigger conspiracy afoot.

You can now hover near death longer, use special capes to calm security patrols, swim in water ways instead of drowning in them, and in place of the infernal beggars and clinging mental patients, you’re approached by singing bards who may be persistent, but can take the hint if you give them a simple shove. All of these tweaks help to remove the tension the earlier game had, delivering a more comfortable challenge that makes it easier to enjoy the larger game experience.

And what an experience there is this time. The story shifts to a descendant of the original Altair, to Italy during the Renaissance. If the first game seemed a little too repressed and dreary with its dirt farmers, its slums, and paranoid villagers, the second explodes with life and personality. The streets of Venice, Rome, and Florence bubble with interest and joy.

Courtesans, dressed in gossamer gowns with their hair stylishly up, giggle and flirt from the corners while acrobatic troupes of thieves lounge in alleys, flipping coins. City streets are decorative and full of shops that sell fine clothes, paintings by the masters, and sheep’s urine cure-alls from doctors wearing plague masks.

One of my favorite sequences is the Carnavale festival in Venice when the crowds dress up in costumes, wearing masks, while jugglers, contortionists, and fire-eaters move amongst the crowds to entertain them.

Ezio Auditore da Firenze is the next to wear the assassin’s cowl and his life too has more layers to it. We get to see him from birth, growing up to be a brash young man in a healthy family, wooing young women and being chased down the streets by an angry father as a result. He then reluctantly takes on the role of the assassin hero when the calling comes, but still somehow staying very much the Enzio of his youth.

I like that Ezio is a ladies’ man, that’s always been a part of the appeal of revolutionary anti-heroes like Robin Hood or Zorro, but am disappointed that Ubi Soft Montreal only briefly touches upon the idea here with a few sequences. I would have liked to have seen a series of missions where you must sneak along rooftops at night in order to slip through a young woman’s window, only to be chased down the streets in the morning by an angry parent or guardian. I have no issue with sexual themes being introduced into a video game as long as it’s done with intelligence and sophistication, something Ubi Soft has demonstrated well with the romance of their first Prince of Persia title.

Throughout his adventures Ezio earns several friends and discovers communities of people who have banded together to make the world a better place. If Altair was summoned to rescue a world on the edge of depression, Ezio is needed to save one that already has flourished.

The one friend he earns that steals the entire game is Leonardo Da Vinci, wonderfully portrayed as a young man with wide-eyed enthusiasm and a warm, inviting smile. Visiting him throughout the game is a real joy and Ubi Soft uses him to introduce a number of upgrades to the assassin’s blade as well as special sequences that include a magical night time flight with an Ornithopter. Gliding gently over torch-lit streets, the small flight sim mode delivers one of the game’s more memorable sequences and, much like that flirtatious rendezvous with the girl, I wish there was more of it.

What remains still weak with the series are its two other elements. Throughout the game we cut back to the modern world where Ezio’s recreated life is being acted out by Desmond Miles, a contemporary descendant of both Altair and Ezio. The two secret societies, the Assassins that Ezio is a part of, and the Templars which are made up of the corrupt politicians and leaders he fights, are still battling with each other, with each side is sending people like Desmond into machines to go back into the recreated past in order to locate powerful artifacts and secrets for an edge in their on-going war.

This time Desmond has escaped the Templars and is now working for the modern Assassins and while it’s a better-looking place with more stylish-looking technology, the reality is that playing an average Joe in a hoody while battling standard security guards in a typical warehouse is quite boring compared to Enzio’s adventures in the past.

The same can also be said for the greater conspiracy riddle taking place. Much like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code novel, this one suggests that there’s a shocking truth underlying all of the religious stories and world events that we think we know. The problem is that this is a trick you can only pull once and Dan Brown has already done it. Those who bought into that first story, now know all-too-well that it’s just nonsense. The first game explained little, remaining cryptic, this second offers more clues involving powerful beings, possibly extraterrestrial in origin, none of which is really interesting, and none of which is worth following through an entire series of games just to solve.

With Assassin’s Creed II Ubi Soft has delivered a world I’m not ready to leave yet. I’ve already finished the game, collected all that can be collected, finished all the side quests, and yet I’m still ready to spend more time in the Renaissance, more time finding adventure and romance amongst flooded streets and mountain villas, to attend more night-time festivals and daring flights in fantastic contraptions. Although the series demands that next chapter move to another place in time, I hope that, through added downloadable quests or content, Ubi Soft finds some clever ways to go back.