Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
Two nights ago I had the same feelings I had about a year ago when I finished Assassin’s Creed 2. I felt as though I had been ripped off.
Many a good word has been said about both AC2 and ACB (also affectionately known as Ass Creed Bros.) by various different reviewing engines, but rarely have I disagreed so much with the vast majority of the scores and the opinion of the storyline that appears in the franchise. I agree with the majority of people - Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is the best game in the series, and one of the better games of 2010. In fact I would go as far as to say this game felt like more of a step up than it was from Assassin’s Creed 1 to 2, simply because of the new way I felt I was playing the game, and because of the additional multiplayer which wasn’t just hacked on.
My opinion is based on a number of things - the way the synchronisation is now weighted between me being able to achieve my goal in a certain way, forcing me to play certain levels in a way I maybe wouldn’t have thought about doing it before; and the overall depth of the meta games, specifically the assassin’s guild and recruitment.
The game did a very good job of immersing you into the city which actually did feel oppressed by the game’s antagonist, and by building up your assassin’s from their lowly status of humble peasant through the ranks up to the level of assassin was not only satisfying, but hugely rewarding later on in the game when a simple whistle led to the annihilation of every enemy on screen from a storm of arrows. It’s just one of the coolest things I’ve ever felt in command of, and hasn’t stopped me smiling yet. This may make the combat of the game slightly easier, in the way that you don’t have to do much, but I never saw it as the only way to play - the timeout from using it was enough for me to respect it enough to use it as a last resort, or when I knew that it was appropriate. And the challenge, for me, lied in actually ranking the assassin’s up to that level, rather than the subsequent benefit I got from it.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON:
I also thought the ending battle of the game (fighting Cesare on top of the ruined castle) was pretty epic, especially having mastered the chaining part of the combat by that point, and then the bit with Desmond et al in the Coliseum was a very pleasant parkour set.
Where I was left feeling ripped off then, was that overall, the final section of the game left me with more questions than it had answers for questions that had already been asked. This to me was like the entire TV show LOST, and whilst I absolutely loved LOST and fought its battles over the years, even though a lot of the time I agreed with what people were saying about it, LOST was never about the sci-fi - it was about the characters and what happened to them. Sadly, I think that video games have got a long way to go before they can convey the same character development as TV shows or films, and unfortunately for Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood it didn’t have such a good cast that I cared about any of them. Except for maybe Ezio. What a dude.
I could, if I felt so inclined, go looking for influences the game had on other people and see what they thought about the ending, but why should I? More difficult concepts have been described in other media in clearer detail that the end of ACB, and I feel cheated about it not actually being made clear enough for me to understand what the hell was going on, so I would want a next game, rather than just paint a massive banner over my screen advertising the sequel where they probably won’t tell me any more details anyway.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, as annoyed as I am, I still went back and played another two hours of it this evening finishing off the side quests. The gameplay is some of the best of the generation.
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P.S. - I can’t actually believe gametrailers.com review said the graphics look dated. It is one of the best looking games I have ever seen on 360, the draw-distance is phenomenal and the frame rate is pretty consistent throughout; the textures are also incredibly high quality - and the sheer fluidity of the thousands of animations is enough to make me doubt the quality of gametrailers reviews.
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metagamer posted this
