Tale of the "Less than subtle" Assassins Part 2 (Assasin's Creed 2)

So now we move onto AC 2.  Two years after the release of Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed 2 arrived on the scene and like it's first iteration, PC got shanked again for the time being.  And I was very wary about it's release after my disappointment with AC in regards to it's trailer.  I didn't play AC 2 when it first came out,  I just couldn't be bothered to give it another shot especially since the lack of a PC version and my living in a new apartment got in the way of access to a 360.  So it gathered dust until early 2011.

I lived far away from home during my university years, further than I wanted to drive more than a few times a year, but my roommates did not.  So one holiday break I had an empty house, a 360 and AC 2. I loaded it up, sat down and played the whole game over the course of three days.  I think I might have problems...


AC 2 picked up, at least in the future, after the events of AC which is one of the things that sold me on the sci-fi aspect of the game.  How else were they going to do it?  At least they didn't make you a time traveler which seems like it would be awesome, but there would be no character development at all.  The main character would already be the greatest assassin in history, no room for growth.

But aside from that, AC 2 shines in every way that AC should have.  You had some stock in the story, Altiar was a renegade seeking redemption and then there was some bit about an apple.  It was tough to relate to the guy, he had no back story, very little motivation and was kind of a dick for most of the game.  Ezio on the other hand was just some fairly average guy thrown into a situation beyond himself.  It felt like there was actual stakes and there was legitimate room for character development.  Every target felt like an actual blow struck and carried weight.  In AC, the weight of the target was only reviled after you had sunk a blade into them, their exit monologue the only thing to carry the story.

But this is not the only thing that makes AC 2 great, far from it.  Weapons had actual value for one.  In AC you get a better sword and what?  The combat had no need for an upgrade system, hold the right trigger and hit X at the right time, just this time the death animation had a different model running through the guards.  But in AC 2 it changed the way you fought.  Guards that were once beyond anything but a well timed counter now can be killed by simply attacking them with your new and improved knife with twice the speed as the old one, but now heavy attacks break straight through your block and you better learn to dodge fucking sharpish.

Armor gave you a reason to avoid combat lest you blow your hard earned (waited for?) money repairing your armor for the ninth time that day and the ability to dye your robes was just plain awesome, just awesome.

The climbing also got easier and more fluid, I guess physical training wasn't exactly at it's peak in 1200 AD.  Along with the addition of the jump climb mechanic, climbing was a joy rather than a chore.  And the cities had some variety.  Florence was nothing like Venice which was nothing like Flori which was nothing like Montegiorno.  Each area had it's own feel to it rather than just running around the same city in a slightly different section of the city as AC would have it.  Even the memory walls seemed less invasive, not getting in the way unless you actually tried for it.

Oh and Leonardo Da Vinci was in it, mother fucking Leonardo Da Vinci.

Better outfit design too, that painting looks familiar...

I'm going to depart for a second to talk about a little bit about the insane DRM locked in with AC 2 on the PC.  Since Steam seems to be the pinnacle of game-program management-community management at the moment, of course, every other company thinks they can do the same thing.  Ubisoft made uPlay.  Now I'm more forgiving than most when it comes to game programs that are like Steam because as most people seemed to have forgotten, when Steam first came out, it was awful.

For those of you not privileged enough to be around during the hay day of Counter Strike, everything was going okay until one day, one day that lives on in infamy, buried beneath current good press and the newer, better versions of Steam, this day was the launch of Counter Strike 1.6.  Way back when Half-Life was getting modded like a douchey high schooler's car, every game had it's own shortcut on your desktop.  One for Half-Life, one for Deathmatch, one for TF, one for Day of Defeat, one for Counter Strike and so on.  Counter  Strike 1.6 changed that.  In order to launch Counter Strike 1.6, you needed to download this new fangled program launcher called "Steam" and it was awful.  I mean really awful.  Steam crashed the game often, it sucked resources even though it appeared to do nothing and just added and extra step to the process.  It also killed my framerate.  At the time I was running CS 1.5 on a Pentium 3 machine and was getting about 40 fps.  1.6 comes out and BAM 25 fps with skips.

The point of that long ass story was why I'm willing to give new programs a chance because now I love Steam.  That said, uPlay can die off and I wouldn't care.  Here's the process to get into the game.  Open Steam, click "Play" on AC 2, unusually long hang on the "AC 2 is launching window" then, do I get the game?  Fuck no, uPlay opens up, and I have to click "Play" on that too.  uPlay thinks for a while and then about 30% of the time will load up in a window for zero apparent reason causing me to have to close the game, and relaunch through uPlay.  Then, once I get into the game, I have to reset the controller settings because apparently, uPlay can't just load Logitech's Profiler settings like a sane program, and sometimes it won't even recognize that I have a controller plugged in, it insists that the key and mouse are the only input devices.  I did eventually solve this problem by saying "Fuck it" and just ran my controller in X-Input mode and used it like a 360 controller.  And then I can actually play the damn game.  And it's a damn good thing my tower has 16GB of RAM because uPlay holds on to about 500MB of it for no apparent reason.  I suppose it's so if I call on it to find me the 15,000th row of Pascal's Triangle, store all the values in long form, and then bubble sort the entire triangle it will be ready.

And for those of you who have had the joy of playing games through uPlay, you'll no doubt know that they have their own overlay, which is absolute shit.  The Steam overlay provides good information.  Your friends list, achievements, the time, your session time, news updates that no one reads, the screenshot manager and even a web browser.  UPlay's overlay provides you with, your user name, the name of the game, your friends list (completely useless, it's already running through steam),  and it's bullshity "Rewards" thing.  None of which are even slightly useful   The rewards thing only has about 4 per game, why do I need to check that in game again?  Did I turn into a goldfish with a 3 second memory?  How many times would anyone need to check how to get the rewards again?  You get all of them just from playing the game.  Not from completing side missions or doing cool things, no just play through the story once, get everything.  I hate you uPlay.