Assassin's Creed 2

Anyone played it?

Do you think it would be better if you have played the first one? I was thinking about buying the first one since its only a tenner. Just a quick play-through so I can pick up the jist of the story. Still not sure though?

I was considering rebuying the 1st one whilst playing the second, then I remembered how shite it was. In a nutshell, no. I doubt you'd be compelled to finish it.

I'm getting it for Christmas.

From what I've heard, it improves on the original so much it'd be hard to go back [and hey here's someone who has played it saying just that!]. The Holy Land appeals to me way more than Italy, but I can't wait to play it.

It follows on pretty directly story wise so it's good to have played the first through before starting it. I like everything about it a lot apart from the setting. Loved the Crusades setting... Italy is all about gay Mario accents.

I'll be getting it for Christmas too Gonna borrow the first one of a mate though. Only ever played an hour or so and thought it was shit, maybe I'll like it more this time.

When I was considering buying it again, I was thinking about how it would be great fun to play in the old setting, and play through all the assassinations again all whilst reminding myself of the story, but then I remembered all the fecking investigation missions

getting it in january, never played the first one though.

There's a quick recap at the start of the second one anyway so don't worry about the storyline. The original is pretty pathetic in comparison to its sequel anyway. AC2 was fantastic.

JokerJamie wrote:There's a quick recap at the start of the second one anyway so don't worry about the storyline. The original is pretty pathetic in comparison to its sequel anyway. AC2 was fantastic.

Cheers for that . Will probably just jump straight in for the second one now.

A mate just told me that the game is really short.

How long did it take you guys to play through it?

FireHotStickies wrote:A mate just told me that the game is really short.

How long did it take you guys to play through it?

Really? No I thought it was pretty long. I beat it in 5 days but thats because I played it non-stop. I reckon it's about 15-20 hours gameplay at least, depending on whether or not you wanna do the side missions and stuff.

Took me 14 hours, without doing most sidequest assassinations or getting the collectibles.

I've had a look into some reviews and they have all been saying its about 15-20 hours to complete the game. Don't know what my friend is on about then ?

Looks like this may be a possible purchase for me again .

Should be a definite purchase man, its my GOTY I reckon. Give it another week or so to see if I feel the same but as of now, it's better than Modern Warfare 2 in most ways.

For me one of the best games this year, maybe because games this year have been incredibly below par or what, but I just loved it.

Just ordered this, Modern Warfare 2 and Left 4 Dead 2. Should come on Friday but I will be away on the weekend and home Sunday night. Might give it a blast then and post my opinion.

Btw, thanks for the advice guys .

I rented this on Thursday and I've completed already and I'm around 75% synchronised (overall completion) at 20 hours in. Only got the feathers and the odd assination/messenger/beat up missions. Do the chests count towards completion?
Anyway, it was a fun game which let you do quite a lot of neat things to sneak around the city with. I wish the combat was improved but stuff like throwing coins and hiring gangs to distract your enemies or hanging on to the crest above the door of a codex page building and dropping down on to 2 guards with double hidden blades are brilliant to pull off but get a bit repetitive. I love 'blending' to get around town when I'm notorious such as walking in a group of pedestrians or killing guards on a roof and their body sliding down one side of the roof onto the streets below and watching pedestrians crowd around the body. This game has lots of neat stuff to diversify the experience.
Chasing thieves and whatnot across the rooftops never gets old, in fact the climbing overall is just brilliant. I'd say 98% of all edges you see can be used for climbing and this freedom makes for some incredibly fun gameplay. The fact that you hold R1+X and just hold the stick in the direction you want to go makes the jumping and leaping across the rooftops feel rather automated but the climbing is top notch and one of the best things about the game. The graphics were good, especially the size of the city and its draw distance when you reach a viewpoint though gameplay overall gets repetitive towards the end of the game. The animations and face modelling can be distractingly sub-par in story cut scenes which takes away from the experience though not as much as the story itself.
It starts off okay, I didn't only not mind the whole Animus shit, I thought it was pretty cool, the concept of repeating memories in a sort of virtual reality game. The story remains okay for the first 8 or so hours then plummets into poorly written nonsense with a magical staff that shoots lightning seemingly topping off the utter bullshit towards the end. The final battles were really underwhelming too, I found myself tapping square and holding the stick in the direction of the final boss and just tapping square to win the final battle, he was basically like any other pedestrian except that he took about a minute of getting smacked about instead of 15-20 seconds.

8/10 for the atmosphere and open and intuitive gameplay with points deducted for a bullshit story and some repetition towards the end.

The last boss was comical, I just kept grabbing him, headbutting him until he fell on the ground, and then stamping on him four or five times. Grab him again as he stand up, rinse and repeat for a minute or so and it's over. Still, less bullshit than the final boss on the original.

Ok this game is pretty great, but in the few hours i've played i've already become annoyed with Ezio randomly leaping off buildings from a great height when all I wanted him to do was hop to the ledge a few feet in front of him. I don't recall this this being a problem in the first game.

I just got this as well, I'm enjoying it. It feels a bit samey, though, but seems like they've ironed out the annoying things from the first game.

I agree with Mase that Ezio jumps off the wrong ledge now and again.

Thought you would have had these played a long time ago Suede! This is in my top 5 GOTY 2009 for sure. Awesome game, significant step up from the first, besides all the Desmond bullshit...

Yeah, I thought I would have too, but lately I've been cutting back on paying full price for games that I'm not dying for. I mean in the first few years of my 360 days, I was buying basically every game full price I liked the look of, when I could easily have just rented them online. Wasted a lot of money.

Anyway, the game is getting better, liking all the new equipment. It still suffers badly from repetition just like the first game, after an hour or two my eyes begin to glaze over. I really like the fighting system though, it's pretty cool, even if they didn't exactly change it much, and countering is still far too easy.

I'm growing more and more like you Suede. I buy barely any full price games now, Reach was the first one in ages.

As for AC2, I loved it. It was repetivite but it never seemed to bother me at all - I just loved all of the little changes alongside the big gameplay ones

Just finished this, found it was quite good, it's definitely got me intrugued for the sequel, anyway. The end boss fight has to be one of the worst ever, though.

[7]

Anyway, I've been trying to buy all the weapons and shite so I can have maximum income on the Monteriggioni Villa, although, I've just watched a video of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and it all gets blown to shit at the start. Bah!

I didn't really think that this was that big an improvement on the first game. It still felt awfully condescending how the game holds your hand the whole way through.

The only real improvement was the structure of the game. Not having to do the exact same tasks in the exact same order 9 times certainly made things less tedious.

Character models were fugly as hell.

I liked how you could play it all the way through in Italian though. That was a great touch.