POSTED 9/12/09


ASSASSIN'S CREED II

Ubisoft

Missed the first Assassin’s Creed and wondering just what all the fuss is about? Well, imagine if you will Prince of Persia, Mirror’s Edge and Street Fighter IV smushed into a blender with The Da Vinci Code, The Matrix and The Sopranos and you’ll… erm, probably still be wondering WTF.

We’re talking epic with a capital ‘EPIC’ here, in an open world third-person epic adventure epic that couldn’t be more epic if it were the epic Ben Hur in epic disguise. Epic, epic, epic! Right, now that we’ve got that out of the way…

Hoodie-lovin’ Altair is yesterday’s news, for this time around the player, via the time travelling Animus doohickey, takes the role of hoodie-lovin’ Ezio, a young bloke in Renaissance Italy who’s given some serious avenging to do. We mean serious – this game doesn’t pull any punches at all when it comes to extreme violence or even spatterings of ‘naughty’ words (won’t somebody think of the children?!).

Everything from the first instalment has been improved upon several-fold. We were suspicious that screenshots we saw before release weren’t in-game ones – we were wrong, mister. ACII looks utterly stunning. Plus, extra elements have been added to flesh out the gameplay, including some neat-o riddle/puzzles and greater depth to weaponry, fights and missions.  

Hurtling over rooftops has never been so much fun – and this time our protagonist can actually swim, just one more improvement to proceedings. Oh, and you get to play with some of Leonardo da Vinci’s wonderful toys – score!

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