This week I found out exactly how much of a twisted person I was. I got Assassins Creed Brotherhood for Christmas and haven’t been able to put it down. Stupid superglue… Anyway onto the review.
Assassins Creed centres on the assassin Desmond Miles and his ancestors. Desmond was brought into Abstergo, the staple evil corporation, to relive his ancestor’s memories to find pieces of Eden which somehow allow the holders supreme control over the world and all who dwell in it. If you’re confused don’t worry because Desmond’s story takes a back seat in the series anyway. The real story comes in his ancestors memories.
Now I’m not sure how much of Brotherhoods story to reveal without giving spoilers, so I’ll leave you with this. IT DOESN’T MATTER. Really the story, much like all Assassins Creed games before it, is sound but about as gripping as polished ice. Basically this time around it’s about revenge and retrieval and that’s all I’ll give away. The real entertainment lies in the gameplay anyway.
Ah, the gameplay. First off let me say that there are so many things to do in this game. I got to memory sequence 4 and the map I had was full to the point of having to zoom right in to see individual icons. Everywhere there were assassination contracts, faction missions, shops to renovate, landmarks to buy and recruits to, well, recruit. I spent hours just levelling up recruits to assassin level and setting them loose on guards. This brings me to the first important change in Brotherhood. For the first time you can go out and recruit citizens to your brotherhood, level them up and use them to kill guards, either in battle or sneakily. Once you get enough recruits you can even use a special manoeuvre to annihilate all guards in the area. Take note other developers. This is what fun is.
This isn’t the only fun to be had however. You probably saw my opening sentence, about being twisted. Yeah, funniest thing I discovered I could do in Assassins Creed 2 and you can still do in Brotherhood is to poison a person to make them randomly start attacking and then throw money near them to get people to run towards him. That’s not even the most twisted part. The very next thought to go through my head was, “I wonder what happens if the poisoned person has a blade?” So I tried it on a guard. It was hilarious, although for some strange reason, despite being hit repeatedly by a long sharp sword they were only winded. Apparently you can only be killed by a sword if you actually own one.
And, of course, there is still the option to just hunt guards, though this isn’t as much of a challenge as it was in AC1. However, the many, many, many, many, more methods you have to do it counteract this. Stealth plays a large part in Brotherhood too, more so than in AC2. This is mostly because in order to get 100% synchronisation there are certain missions where you must not be detected, which leads to many interesting learning curves. The first being THE FREAKING DETECTION METER IS BROKEN AS HELL! Seriously, while it doesn’t affect gameplay that much overall, it’s ridiculously annoying to get used to carefully using the detection meter to lure guards over only to discover that it has suddenly thought, “I know what would be funny; have the guards attack on sight.” To be fair if it wanted a reaction it was not disappointed. Stupid controllers and their remarkably un-unbreakable plastic.
Another lesson the game drills into your brain with the vigour of Ron Jeremy is that the joystick will screw you over. Hard. Revolting mental image aside, Ezio has the attention span of a small child… With ADHD. He will run up the same wall three or four times, despite the fact that it’s clear you don’t want to go up there and then, after getting where you want to be, he will jump into space and he will die with his shin bones firmly inside his own rectum.
A new and, in my opinion, brilliant addition to Brotherhood is the Virtual Reality Training Mode. Basically it gives you a few maps, in Mirrors Edge style grey and red (without the green) and sets you tasks and a time in which to do them. You get medals for how fast you do them and by completing them all with at least a bronze medal you can earn a new costume for Ezio. Fortunately, bronze medals are easily attainable by even the most cognitively challenged lobotomised monkey. There are four categories of challenges; Stealth Assassination, Free-run, Locate, and Combat. The first two are self-explanatory, Locate has you finding flags and Combat has you getting kill-streaks. Overall it’s a pretty fun diversion that actually, and pay attention again developers, HAS A REWARD. I spent hours perfecting my times and reflexes. The weird thing is that it actually does transfer to your gameplay skills. I assumed it would be like Practise mode in FIFA but it really helped me with my kill-streak timings.
Finally, the single most fun that can be had on any game ever (apart from Borderlands :P) /drumroll/ the free-running. Yes, there’s no better feeling than soaring over the heads of your enemies knowing that they had no clue you were ever there, or stealing treasure from under their noses. It’s a real feeling of power and makes you feel like a bad-ass without overpowering you (ahemPROTOTYPEahem).
As you play you’ll definitely notice that the graphics have been touched up and the sprawling city of Rome has a huge draw distance, allowing you to see the city in all its splendour… Before tumbling to your death because the ****ING JOYSTICK HATES YOU. Ahem, sorry, last time I mention that I swear. There are still the usual little things that, while not really obvious, aren’t exactly subtle either. Ezio’s cape going through his body, guards randomly disappearing and problems with some of the skins were the most prominent problems I noticed. However they don’t affect my opinion of the graphics much at all especially because, and you can try this too, when I put my disc in the tray and start the game, I look over Rome and realise I get all this with no slowdown. At all. Ever.
Of course the things that really matter though are the little things. It’s the feathers from the pigeon coops falling majestically through the sky, the enemies that actually block your attacks in a realistic way, angering the citizens and climbing on to a box to notice that one of them appears to be vigorously fisting your bottom. Yes it’s the little things that really make this game great.
MULTIPLAYER! You’ve probably heard by now that the newest instalment to the AC series has the fabled multiplayer mode. It was advertised heavily as a massive part of the game and totally not an afterthought at all. It’s actually… pretty good. It certainly wasn’t rushed and feels just as smooth as single-player. You pick a skin to play as, for example the barber, and then you play one of literally, take a seat for this, a few modes. My favourite was Wanted, basically a cat and mouse game where you are assigned an assassination contract and can have a contract placed on your head too. It leads to a nice layer of thrills while stalking someone and hoping they don’t recognise you topped with the sweet taste of fear that you too could be killed at any time. Of course there remain the idiots who think running around on rooftops is stealthy who can ruin the game for everyone if they aren’t dealt with but overall it’s a good experience.
Overall, Brotherhood is a brilliant game to get if you’re a fan of the series, it will provide hours of fun doing exactly what you have loved doing since AC1. If you’re new to the series, prepare for an interesting experience learning the controls the tutorial tried and failed to teach, followed by the same fun as seasoned veterans.
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