Ezio - The hooded badass

Assassin's Creed II is a historical fantasy third person action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal for Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. You play Ezio, a man whose lost it all and has been thrown into a role that will take him across Italy to many of the largest cities, doing the work of the citizens. Oppressive leadership and a corrupt government have a stranglehold on the people, and only need a push in the right direction to free themselves from the shackles of their superiors. Most of the game takes place inside the Animus, which is a modern day device (fantasy of course), that delves into the mind of Desmond, who is your actual character. The medieval setting is the recreation the Animus has constructed based on DNA based memories left behind by far distant relatives. Ezio, and before him, Altair are two of such ancestors.

The Templar, who maintain power throughout the realm, seek to maintain power by seeking powerful artifacts, that will grant them strength to dominate over the assassins, and to keep their grip on society. Desmond's ancestors are people who were last known to have the location of these artifacts, and people in the modern world who are also part of the Templar are looking for his memories.



Enough of the story. The combat is pretty fun when you're not trying to be Hercules and take on hordes of opponents, which also defeats the purpose of being a more stealth based assassin. The ability to have two of the hidden blades, and thus assassinate two targets at once is pretty awesome also. Roof jumping and the rest of the controls are very fluid and responsive, although I found Ezio refusing to run off some roofs, even though he could make the jump, but that may have been from not having enough speed or a bad angle.

Speaking of bad angles, my god did this game have some horrifying camera angles. There were parts of some of the side quests that I found myself hating the angle that was making certain jumps really difficult. Those kinds of camera shots aren't always avoidable, so I can't complain too much since they were fairly minimal.

The Villa 'mini game' was fun for a very very short while. Since you can amass so much wealth by doing quests, the income gained from your villa is inconsequential. I was able to buy every armor and every weapon without the use of the villas income. The one thing I did use it for, however, was attaining discounts, and visiting the bordello... I mean spending time with quality, outstanding women. The story is solid if you're okay with clearly far out fantasy stories, and the ending had me saying "NO! NOT YET! It can't possibly be over!" AC2 had the cliffhanger from hell, and will most certainly have me playing Brotherhood. Yeah, I'm a little behind the times in terms of game releases I guess.