My guilty pleasure has always been the Assassin's Creed series, but more specifically those with Ezio Auditore da Firenze. I remember borrowing Assassin's Creed 1 from a friend of mine and became generally quite interested in the unique setting and story the game had to offer, but became in some a frenzied rage over the game controls that I gave up on it. When they released the sequel I was hesitant to try it out, but once more I borrowed it from a mate and I was thrilled to see that most of the kinks had been worked out. The free-running system in number II had its issues but it was always fun to run over Venice rooftops before leaping from a roof top and shoving your hidden blades, both of them, into the non-expectant skulls of the patrolling gaurds. Ubisoft carries on the story of Ezio Auditore in the 3rd game in the series, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. It leaves off exactly were number II left off story wise and also this time includes and online multiplayer, but we'll get to that in a minute.
The story starts off with the standard 'training' section. First you learn to climb and use eagle vision, in it's simplest forms of course. I realise it is for new comers to the series to learn the basic controls and physics of the game but the majority of players will be returning the series after dedicated use of previous titles, yes you we need to learn new skills they have been added to this game but please offer a way to skip training sections, or leave it in a different tutorial section. I remember Assassin's Creed I had that annoying tutorial section, but because the controls were as intuitive to use as vomit this became more of annoyance to try and gentle push through a crowd without knocking the pots of their heads only to watch as in a rip tide domino effect your character decides what you wanted to do was practically throw the civilian into Saturn's orbit and so his and everyone else clay pots fall to the floor in a cascade of mocking sounds of broken china. This was more annoying than Brotherhood as at least they incorporated it into the story somewhat.
Throughout the journey of Ezio in his new home, Renaissance Rome, he has to rebuild Rome using his money, complete side quests for his thief, mercenary and courtesan comrades and train up recruits to the assassin's order. All while destroying war machines Leonardo di Vinci has made for the enemy and only you can destroy them, and your reward for stopping these bomber gliders, naval cannons, tanks and horse drawn machine gun? A parachute. If I were Ezio I would cut off his gonads there and then. However each mission gives you extra florins which is useful, this way you are able to purchase better armour and weapons, bigger pouches for your gear etc. etc.. To unlock some of the items though you have to collect items located in 'hidden' treasure boxes around Rome. Now, Romans have to be the least organised and most careless people in all the world. Jewelled Headress were carelessly left for anyone to walk over and steal. As I took advantage of, often, and always.
It's at this point that me must question, what type of character is Ezio? Is he a liberator? A shining beacon for all to follow? An unquestionable leader that, yes, may kill one or two hundred people every now and then, but is doing it for the right reasons? Or is it he's a mass murdering psychopath, thief and con man? Of course he isn't the latter because that would defeat the whole purpose of a story that has been generally thought out and is gripping, with a shock ending and gameplay that is fun, original, addictive and quite frankly fabulous.
However, I think the online multiplayer was this games downfall. It is ill-thought out and is about as enjoyable as watching High School Musical, followed by listening to the audio-book of twilight read by Joe Pasquale. I became infuriated by it, you would try and assassinate your target but you would be aerial assassinated out of nowhere and have to watch in slow motion your humiliating death. Or be shot from the hidden gun, across map, with insane accuracy. Or poisoned. And the animations are un-skippable, so when assassinating your target guess who creeps up, like a minecraft creeper, tells you "that's a very nice life you have there", before stopping on your face. It was as balanced as an ice skating weasel on acid. I think if they are going to include it in Revelations they need to seriously rethink and completely overhaul it. Or just stick to what had us hooked originally, the thing Ubisoft does extremely well, create a great, original singleplayer mode.
Out of ten this gets an 8. Good singleplayer, multiplayer still in infancy and needs to develop more first.
J Stanley
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