Assassin's Creed 2 follows Ezio Auditore, a likeable character whose father and brothers were killed off in a conspiracy, on a path of vengeance that leads him to more than just killing off the conspirators. Like Altair, Ezio is a ancestor of Desmond Miles, who in the first game was kidnapped by Abstergo, who turn out to be Templars, in an effort to rule the world by gaining knowledge from Desmond by putting him in an Animus machine, which allowed him to relive his past lives.
Assassin's Creed 2 starts off right where AC ended, with a bunch of crazy writing on the wall. He immediately wakes up and wonders where the hot, sexy, Lucy is. Almost on cue, Lucy busts in and leads both them out of Abstergo, and leads them to an assassin hideout (Lucy is an assassin, something that could've been picked up on from the first game), where they have an even better animus. In order to speed things up, Lucy puts Desmond in the animus, hoping that as he lives as Ezio, he will gain his abilities as Ezio learns them, so as Ezio learns to free run, so will Desmond. This brings me to my first down point of the game (one of my FEW down points). The game has a fairly slow start. I just wanted to jump right into doing sweet assassinations with sweet swords and blades, however I found that all that would have to wait til about 2 hours into gameplay.
While the game is a lengthy 25 hours, I feel that a 2 hour start is kind of excessive. While it's nice to learn different abilities one at a time, Ezio doesn't get accustomed to things until about 1 hour into the game, doesn't get going until about 2 hours into the game, and doesn't acquire all of his awesome abilities until well over 7 hours of gameplay. That said the story is very well told, and while you can't do anything right off the bat, it does feel like a natural progression. If it were any quicker one might question the legitimacy of somebody seemingly learning to do all this crazy stuff overnight.
The story has 2 main storylines, one following Desmond controlling Ezio, and one of Desmond trying to discover the fate of Subject 16, Desmond's predecessor. Along the way, you will encounter glyphs on different buildings throughout Ezio's adventure. When scanned, a minigame appears as well as a message from Subject 16. Solving these minigames unlocks a small 1-2 second chunk of a video. When all the glyphs have been found, the full video can be played.
You will also meet a very interesting character everybody should know: Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci will help Ezio along his adventure by providing him with unique equipment and weaponry. From poison blades to flying wings, da Vinci's in game ingenuity is as good as his real life ingenuity. His gliding wings will let you sail down from high heights and silently drop in on unsuspecting enemies and his wrist mounted pistol can take out enemies from a distance without requiring Ezio to get up close and personal.
Each weapon is so unique that you'll wonder how AC even skated by without them. The graphics are stunning and really bring the late 14th century Italy alive. You'll visit major cities like Venice and Florence and you may even recognize some buildings that are still in existence today. Being able to scale them like spiderman is even better. The freerunning is as good as ever, even though Ezio will occasionally make stupid jumps that are clearly unintended by the player. Climbing isn't as good as say Uncharted 2 or Tomb Raider Underworld, but its less of an adventure game than those and more of an action game. The animations are fluid and there's enough of a variety to make each kill look unique. While I felt that counters were still overpowered, I understand that it's what players expect.
Overall Assassin's Creed 2 is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor and it's a shame that it may be overlooked as it's released just a week after Modern Warfare 2, as I feel as it really is a must buy for any fan of action games. Assassin's Creed 2 is available for the 360 and PS3 and is coming to the PC in early 2010.
