Opinions over Time: Assassin's Creed 2 (Final Thoughts)

It’s rare for me to feel sad at the end of a game because I want more. I think even most good games wear out their welcome by offering tens of hours of gameplay. Every now and then however I’ll be watching the credits roll and be thinking how I want more. Of course nowadays there is downloadable content, so I’ll have more to do in Assassin’s Creed 2 within the month I believe.

As I’m sure you’ve surmised already using your incredible deductive reasoning, I’ve finally beaten Assassin’s Creed 2. The reason it took me so long is because I think I was actually trying to savor it. Each time I’d play I would spend hours wandering around the world working on various tasks. I’m not even sure I was working towards any specific goal a decent chunk of the time. Simply put, the world Ubisoft crafted for Assassin’s Creed 2 is remarkable. Venice specifically is the coolest virtual town I’ve ever been to.

The strange thing is I thought the story of the game was pretty weak, the gameplay and controls had a few glaring problems, and yet it was hands down one of my favorite games of the year. Didn’t beat Uncharted 2 for my love though, maybe next time. I should probably clarify what I mean by the story being weak. I thought the whole revenge and redemption thing was fine, if not a little hard to keep tabs on, but the future science fiction aspect of this series is starting to piss me off. In both games it is so vague that I almost don’t see the point in including it at all. This time you only even see the “real world” for maybe 20 minutes of game time, but the ending practically invalidates Ezio’s entire story. And if one more game ends with a cliffhanger that won’t be resolved for at least 2 years I’m going to stab something. It’ll probably just be a tomato or something, but it’s going to be brutal.

Now that you’ve read two paragraphs praising AC2 and another hating on it, let me try to explain why I liked it so much. As games tend to be more and more sandbox style with emergent narrative techniques being employed, the worlds we play them in have to be immersive, believable and most of all interesting to interact in. That’s what makes games with insipid storylines like Crackdown so freaking awesome. Assassin’s Creed 2’s story wasn’t as bad or as pointless as Crackdown’s, in fact if you ignore the science fiction it was pretty good, but if I had nothing but the world and guards to mess around with I’d still probably have fun for more hours than I’d care to admit. That's what I loved about it, if they can nail down some of their storytelling techniques for the third we'll have something truly special.

Check it out if you’re on the fence; just remember the first three or four hours are pretty dry. You must endure, it's worth it!