The M.A.D. Files

Really minor spoilers

So, what can I say about this game to express my feelings…I like to quote Desmond for this.

What.the.fuck.

That kinda describes my feeling. In a positive way as I was blown away by this game. About as much as Assassin’s Creed 1 and Mass Effect.  This game is so awesome that I have a hard time describing to you why it is awesome.

Not that I’m not going to try anyway. So, let’s start with a little history lesson of what my feelings are about the first game.

As mentioned the first game blew me away. It had kickass characters, a kickass story and it did many things just right. Sure, it wasn’t perfect and the complaints many people had were totally true but yet I can’t help but love this game, and I still do. If I ever make a top ten list this one would be on it.

Now, for the second game I was kinda worried. Because I liked the first game so much I was afraid that because of the complaints they would change too much. I didn’t like the name of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, I didn’t like his Italian accent(while appropriate, I preferred the more natural English from Altair).  I wasn’t fond of the economy system and when they told in one of the last dev diary’s that it wouldn’t feature Desmond as much…yeah…

Well, I can safely say that my fears were unwarranted. Anyway I have been stretching the intro for far too long now, let’s see what this game is made off.

Okay, so when you start the game you hear a voice over by Desmond and it’s a bit cliché but that’s not that bad. It’s the last sentence he says: My name is Desmond Miles, and this is my story.

Yeah…that’s why you weren’t featured in any trailers and your screen time is about as big as Ezio’s dad.

See, I don’t know who’s complaining about too much Desmond in the first game, I’d like to meet some of them…apparently a lot were complaining about it too…because while he can do more in the bits you do play with him they are so short. If he is the hero of the story wouldn’t it be nice to know what his thoughts are on the events that play out?

Then you have the supporting cast,  of course there is Lucy, played by the oh so beautiful Kristen Bell, there is Rebecca, the fun loving hot chick/nerd and of course the typical English Bastard who seemed to get far too many roles in games and films. He’s the character that berates others for making jokes while he is doing all the work, he’s wiseguy, the smartass, the Chandler…and…he is kinda useless. So yeah, his information on the buildings and characters is nice…but we didn’t need another cynical bastard when we had Desmond already.

Speaking of characters…did someone complain there were too little characters in AC1? Because in this game there are just too much. Which makes caring about characters a little bit difficult because you can’t remember their names, or you don’t care about the characters you assassinate. As  you have no clue what they have done…

Then to actual gameplay.

The game play has been tweaked slightly I’d say, Ezio is a lot smoother when climbing up buildings and the overall feeling of free running is good. It already was good in AC1 so if it ain’t broke…don’t fix it I assume they thought.

A lot of people complaint about the fighting system in part 1, I loved it. Yes it was simple but I do think that the RuleofCool applies here. And in that they succeeded. You can use your fists, daggers, hidden blades, hammers, axes and all kind of swords to dispatch of your enemies and finding all the different ways is just so much fun. And it feels bad ass to just put your sword away and taunt them with only your fist. Disarming them and then killing them with their own weapons. So did the fighting improved with this game, I’d say it has been tweaked to work more smoothly. Enemies now do attack with more people at the same time which can be hectic. And with a lot of people on screen I sometimes lost sight of where I was…

Which brings me to the new feature where you can hire mercenaries, thieves and whores. The thieves and whores have their uses. The mercenaries…I don’t know why anyone would bother with hiring them(unless the story requires it too). They don’t seem to be able to kill anyone, they are in your way and they are not that good at distracting people. Which is the thieves and whores specialty.

One last thing before I’ll give my conclusion. The structure of the game. Another complaint I heard about was the repetitiveness  of the first game and while true…in this game I think they went a bit too much the other way around. In that sense that I had lost my sense of where I was in the game. This also made for the ending to come so unexpectedly and it’s a bit of a lie of the developers to say that you live through 30 years of Ezio’s live when they skip so many years.

I think I should be arriving at a conclusion somewhere around here….it’s pretty simple. Assassin’s Creed 2 is a great sequel. It does what a sequel should do, it advances the story, fixes the problem from the first one and add some new stuff. The story is brilliant, if a bit farfetched. The characters are likeable. The action is top notch, there are just not many things to not like except…

The bards…

Of all the complaints you got about Assassin’s Creed 1 you decided to ignore the complaint about NPC’s that are annoying and stand in your way when you are following someone? Really Ubisoft? Did you like the beggars and lepers so much you decided something as painfully irritating should be brought back in this game? WHY?!