There Is No Truth

Sometime in either late 2008/early 2009, I picked up the first Assassin's Creed on Steam for $5. I then pulled out my trusty Xbox 360 gamepad and proceeded to have 15 hours of delight with the game. When Assassin's Creed II (AC2) was announced to come out this last fall, I was excited, but also a bit disappointed that it wasn't going to come out for the PC right away. In October of last year, however, I picked up my first "next-gen" console: a PS3.

Back when I was playing Prince of Persia, I had a terrible graphics issue that basically made me stop playing. I realized at that time that unless the PC version of a game really adds something new or benefits from the mouse/keyboard controls (or is super cheap), it just isn't worth it to pick up a PC version over a console version. With that knowledge in hand, getting AC2 for my PS3 instead of waiting for the PC was a no brainer.

Due to a brother who is VERY good at taking hints, (It's on sale for $40! Get it for me for Christmas!) I received it as a Christmas present. You don't have to be a calendar wizard to see that it's taken me two full months now to finish it. It my defense, I had a LOT of PC games I had purchases during the Steam sales and only got around to really sitting down to play it recently. I was very glad I did.

AC2 picks up, for better or worse, exactly where the first game left off. You once again take the role of Desmond Miles, a reborn assassin who can revisit the memories of his ancestors. With the help of a friend, you escape from Abstergo, the evil corporation that was taking advantage of you in the first game. Before too long, you are back in the Animus reliving the experiences of another of your assassin ancestors, Ezio Auditore da Firenze. This is the beginning of my first real annoyance with this game: it starts too slowly.

Between escaping from Abstergo and reliving Ezio's early life (including his birth!), you spend multiple hours in the game before you ever even get your assassin weapons. I started and stopped playing this early section twice because it just didn't suck me in at all.

I also didn't enjoy the fact that this game didn't explain the Creed at all. The beginning of the first game did a much better job explaining what assassins are, what they stand for, and why you should care. Even after you obtain your assassin gear here, you are basically just sent off in the world on a crazy mission of revenge. I was quite a ways into the game before I really started to feel like a proper hardcore assassin instead of a cocky, spoiled brat who was good at fighting and climbing buildings. I will admit that while I initially found Ezio to be remarkably unlikable at first, his character grows immensely as the game progresses and ultimately becomes much deeper and interesting than Altair ever was.

While the beginning of the game may start slowly, it picks up shortly afterward and then rushes forward at a ridiculous pace. In fact, while I thought the story in the first was a little more interesting, the story in AC2 was much more substantial. The overall pace was quite good and each memory sequence was well contained. Even the end of the game was more or less satisfying. The second game definitely has a stronger story overall, despite the fact that the Creed plays a much smaller (almost non-existent) role. I did miss the more planned-out assassinations that the first game had, but the second game was much more varied and dynamic throughout.

Perhaps the place where the second game most excels over the first is in the game mechanics themselves. The developers really just took everything that was fun about the first game and made it better. The 1-2 button platforming was brought forward along with some additions such as being able to leap up to higher ledges while climbing. The mechanics felt very familiar, but somehow better. Additionally, the combat in the game was worked on a bit too. First of all, the developers added a pretty big handful of new weapons. In addition to the sword, knife, throwing knives, hidden blade (you get double blades in AC2) and fists, you also get: medicine, a wrist pistol, a poisoned blade, smoke bombs, and the ability to throw money on the ground to distract guards. While they weren't all great additions (the poisoned blade was pretty worthless), it was just really nice to have more variety in combat.

In one particularly fun moment, I was fighting two heavily armored, long sword wielding guards. After performing the dance with them for a bit, I was getting frustrated with my inability to damage them much. I then remembered my pistols, switched weapons, and shot them both in the face. The Indiana Jones scene flashed in my mind and I ran about my business.

Finally, in addition to the weapons you can carry, you can also pickup two handed axes, polearms, spears, and even things like brooms and fishing poles. You can also train additional skills in your special weapons, like sweeping people off their feet with spears and throwing sand in the face of your enemy while unarmed. If you wished, you could fight every battle a little bit differently, and I thought that was great.

Despite the combat improvements, combat was also one of the areas where this game really faltered compared to the first. Mostly in the fact that this game was WAY too easy. Basically, the developers gave us a plethora of new tools to use that make us more effective, but they neglected to make the enemies we face any more challenging. In the first game, to even assassinate an enemy you had to sneak up behind them otherwise they'd merely throw you off and attack. In AC2, you can walk right up to a group of guys and simultaneously stab two of them in the face with your hidden blades. You can then throw a smoke bomb on the ground (which stuns everyone who runs into it except for you) and stab the the rest of them two at a time. Get hit a few times? Not a problem! Merely use one of the 15 medicine vials you are carrying and go about your business. If you ever die in combat while playing this game, it'll be within the first few hours, because you are drunk, or because you are so mind numbingly terrible at games that you should be instantly euthanized. You'll definitely jump off a building a little bit a wrong a few times and die that way, but when it comes to the enemies you face, Ezio is borderline invincible.

In addition deeper story and more involved combat, they also added something pretty significant to this game: money. You collect money by looting people you kill (so little as to not be worth it), from chests strewn about the world (again, not significant enough to be worthwhile), from completing missions, and finally from your villa. Pretty early on, you take control of your family's villa in the country side. Your villa generates money every 20 minutes of in game time. It generates more money the more you put into it, i.e. spend money to improve your blacksmith, bank, and fix your mine (as examples) and it'll generate more for you later. You also get discounts at the vendors in your villa if you upgrade them. I figured out pretty quickly that it was smart to upgrade as much as possible early on, so sunk most of my money into getting everything fixed up. I was glad as I did, as I had plenty of money to buy all the new weapons (22 in all), armor upgrades (4 different, 4 piece armor sets to buy), and was evening able to buy paintings to further my villa's value. You also use money to get healed, refill your ammo (smoke bombs, bullets, and throwing knives), and to top off your medicine and poison pouches. While I thought that money was a great improvement to the series overall, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of endgame money sinks. In my current playthrough, I literally have 10 times as much as the single most expensive item ever cost. It would have been nice to have had something to drop money on even late in the game.

As you probably could tell so far, I basically spent the entire game comparing it to the first. While I felt like this game was stronger of the two, I kept thinking that the first game had done a bunch of things better. To see if I was right or not, I decided to fire up the first game. I didn't even spend 15 minutes there. Despite my complaints, the second game truly is a full improvement over the first. That's not to say the first game is bad or even that the second game is better in every way, but as a complete product AC2 was a very solid upgrade. I'm very anxious to see where they take the series next (throwing my vote in for 1700's England or France).

Finally, I'd like to discuss the downloadable content. I picked up both pieces of DLC, Battle of Forli and Bonfire of the Vanities for $4 each. I also bought the additional three tombs that come with Bonfire for an extra $3. All told, I thought that both pieces of DLC were solid additions. Battle of Forli adds some great open combat sections while the Bonfire of the Vanities adds the best assassination missions in the entire game. I thought both of them were easily worth $4, even if neither of them were very long. I was, however, disappointed by the fact that they each felt like they were pieces of missing content from the main game. Instead of feeling like something new, that would add to the game, I felt like I paid $8 to fill in a gap in the story. While that did annoy me, I really thought they were both worthwhile. Even the additional tombs that I paid a $1 each for were fun. If you are considering the DLC and haven't played the game yet, I would recommend buying them before you finish the game, however, as they fill in memory sequences 12 and 13 (14 is the last one), so if you buy them before then, they'll nicely fill in a missing piece of the story.

Let me sum it up for you: Assassin's Creed II is an absolutely brilliant game. It's a worthy addition to an exceptionally solid franchise and a very fascinating universe. If you enjoyed the first game, you absolutely have to play this one. If you haven't played the first game, you absolutely have to play them both. Trust me. You won't be disappointed.

Army of Two

Other than perhaps GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64, I've never been a big fan of console shooters. With few exceptions, I find myself wishing that I had a keyboard and mouse in just about every situation. I've recently come to understand that when the game goes third person, I don't hate the gamepad quite as much. Although as I can be attested to in my recent Uncharted review, it can still be enough to ruin a game for me.

Despite all of that, I recently picked up Army of Two for my PS3. While normally I wouldn't even considering purchasing such a game, my wife was out for the evening, my cousin's wife was watching my daughter, and my cousin wanted to play something with me. Since we were craving something we could do from the couch and the game was only $20 new, I decided to give it a try. I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised.

In Army of Two, you and a friend play as two mercenaries working for a privatized military group. Salem and Rios are forced to work together doing things like helping each other up ledges or taking turns holding a shield/shooting. The story is pretty standard fare: the guy who starts out good but is obviously evil turns out to actually be evil. The game plays in third person (as you probably guessed) and is top/bottom split screen.

Loved

• Co-op play. Army of Two is completely saved by its co-op play. Playing with a friend is an absolute blast. The game does a great job of making you work together, such as one person drawing fire so the other person can sneak around and shoot people in the back. The game is also very well balanced for two people. While there is a single player mode (I suppose your partner would be AI controlled?), I can't imagine wasting any time on it. Seems like it just wouldn't be fun at all.
  
  
• Gun upgrades. The game features a money/upgrade system where you get cash for completing primary and secondary objectives that you can use to purchase both new guns and upgrades for those guns. Most upgrades are practical things: clip increases, damage upgrades, accuracy boosts, and so forth. However, each gun also has the absolutely ludicrous "bling" upgrade. It does exactly what you (and Fitty) would expect it to: it covers your weapon with gold and diamonds. While the option is undoubtedly ridiculous, I found it to be very fitting with the overall tone of the game and was a fun thing to do with all of my favorite guns.
  

Hated

• It's a console shooter. At the end of the day, this still annoys me. While I specifically purchased this game to play with my cousin while sitting on the couch, if it had been a PC game with us either playing in the same room or chatting via Skype, it would have been a better game. That's really all there is to it. The mouse/keyboard control scheme is better for shooters than a gamepad and nobody will ever convince me otherwise.
  
  
• Cliche and predictable story. I could see the entire story from the very beginning of the game. In fact, the plot twists were so unbelievably obvious, I thought that they couldn't possibly be true. No writer would be that obvious would he? Well, he was. The game was oozing with "bro-ness" and the story itself wasn't interesting in the slightest. The story did little more than provide a reason for doing what you were doing. (To its credit, it made more sense than the story of Modern Warfare 2. I suppose that's something.)
  
  
• No same machine versus mode. Unless I wasn't understanding the menu system properly, I couldn't play versus mode with my cousin. It appeared I could only play versus against people on line and then only in groups of 4. It seemed quite ridiculous to me that after playing through the campaign with my buddy, I couldn't then play against him.
  
  

This game is what I would call a "popcorn movie" game. It's not deep, it's not special, but at the end you find yourself thoroughly entertained. I would never recommend it to somebody who only intended to play it single player or even in online versus, but for $20, you and a buddy will find an entertaining afternoon/evening here.

Charted

For any of you who may not know me in a real life, I'm a bit of an anal-retentive completionist. While it's not as bad as it could be in the era of achievements and trophies, I have this powerful need to finish every game I start. The only exceptions are usually games that I deem to be so terrible as to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever or games in which the genre in question bores me to tears. Of the top of my head, I can only think of one game in recent memory that fit ones of those categories: Heroes of Might and Magic V. Of the two, it falls into the latter category, although it definitely had some redeeming qualities; I may revisit it some day.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, shortly before buying my PS3, my good friend TheShums let me borrow a handful of his games. Among those was Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. This was around the same time that the second game came out and everyone was falling over themselves saying how good it was. It was supposed to be similar to the the first game but better. I decided that I would play the first one in preparation for eventually playing the second one.

The game started out well enough. Right off the bat, I was blown away by how good the voice acting was and just the sound in general; it sounded like I was getting surround sound from my stereo TV! For the first handful of chapters, I was quite pleased, the game was basically Tomb Raider-like with a relatively likable male character. Soon though, I got my first real taste of combat.

Combat in Uncharted is often compared to Gears of War. Having never played Gears, I have absolutely no idea how apt the comparison is. All I will say is that if that's what Gears of War plays like, I'm NEVER going to play it.

The combat is laughable in its ridiculousness. With few exceptions, the enemies appear in what I've heard referred to as "arenas." Basically, they are areas that have obvious cover points (pillars, waist high walls, etc) with enemies at the far side. You enter the arena, find cover, and pop up and slowly shoot each and every enemy. Most areas have 1-3 respawn triggers too, meaning that after you kill the initial batch of enemies, more of them appear. Kill that batch, you get a third batch. The combat felt like I was entering a shooting gallery. I just waited for the man looking thing to pop up or out from behind its obstacle and then proceed to shoot it.

The painfulness of these encounters was further exacerbated by the console controls. If I had been playing this with a mouse and keyboard, I'm quite certain that although it still would have been terrible, it wouldn't have been quite as bad.

Let me just step back for a moment. You may be thinking that I just don't enjoy console shooter and/or platformers. I may have thought you were right, but I was a huge fan of the most recent Tomb Raider games (played them both with a gamepad) and I also sunk quite a few hours this weekend into Army of Two on the PS3 which I enjoyed quite a bit. While I'd like to say that I'm merely opposed to this type of game, I don't think that's it. I'm opposed to the type of gameplay that is contained inside of Uncharted. While the cover/pop/shoot system is perhaps a matter of taste, I don't like it, I don't think it's fun, and it absolutely ruined this game for me.

So what about everything else? Uncharted is surprisingly well written. The story makes sense for the most part, has a mild twist or two, and allows you to visit a pretty big handful of interesting locations. Platforming is serviceable at best and maddening at worst. The save points were nearly always way too sparse, forcing me to replay large platforming sections or spend multiple attempts in the most recent enemy arena.

I really, really wanted to like Uncharted. In fact, I disliked it so much, I felt like I was playing it wrong. After I initially started the game, I stopped playing completely about 5 chapters in as I just wasn't enjoying it anymore. I didn't touch the game for a month or more, then the completionist in my kicked in again and I decided to power through and finish it. After spending the better part of a morning with it, I learned I was still nowhere near the end and quit again. I probably would have never touched it again, but TheShums and I started talking about it, and I actually found myself feeling guilty for not finishing it. One more weekend later and I managed to get all the way through the game.

I'm unsure why I kept coming back to it; I just didn't enjoy the core gameplay. I don't know if it's because I'm a glutton for punishment, a gaming connoisseur, or just a little stupid. Probably all three.

I suppose I can see why people like the game. It tells a great story and is very well put together. I don't think I'd ever recommend it to anybody though, because unless you enjoy the combat (and I suppose some people do), the game falls flat. The best voice acting and story in the world can't save a game that just isn't fun to play.