assassin’s creed 2 and brotherhood

Assassin’s Creed 2 picked up where Assassin’s Creed left off. Desmond Miles is still trapped at Abstergo Industries in 2012. Lucy Stillman, who’s played by Kristen Bell might I add, then helped to break him out.

They escaped to an Assassin safe-house where Desmond met Rebecca, who designed Animus 2.0, and Shaun, who’s played by Danny Wallace who has a column in Shortlist. If you live in central London and use the tube often, you’ll know what Shortlist is.

Desmond uses Animus 2.0 to access the memories of a different ancestor this time, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who lived in Italy. You get to play as Ezio from when he first learns that he is of the Assassin’s Creed until he becomes a true Assassin.

The developers have indeed greatly improved the shortcomings of the first game, which I’ve already reviewed on this blog.

People complained that the first game was repetitive, now Assassin’s Creed 2 has a more varied gameplay. The first game didn’t have a lot of variety in the fight moves, now the second game has even more weapons and moves. You can even counter an attack by grabbing your opponent’s weapon.

It was annoying that in Assassin’s Creed that Altaïr can’t swim. An assassin that couldn’t swim? Quite ridiculous. I’m not a very good swimmer myself, but I’m not an assassin am I? Well now in the second game, the main protagonist, Ezio Auditore, can swim. Hooray.

Assassin’s Creed 2 is a more open game compared to the first one. Plus, there are many more things that you can do. There are several Codex Pages written by Altaïr. Ezio brings these to his friend, Leonardo da Vinci, to decipher. Some of them are cool new weapons such as a double blade and a hidden gun. There’s even a mission where you need to use Leonardo’s flying craft to get to a certain place.

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is really good as well. The game gets even better. You’re still playing as Ezio, but he’s now a bit older. Villa Auditore in Monteriggioni is destroyed by Cesare, so the setting of Brotherhood is mostly in Rome.

Since Rome is a very large city, you get to ride horses throughout the whole map. In the first 2 games, this isn’t possible; you can only ride horses outside the city walls. The really cool thing about riding these horses is that you can jump to an enemy’s horse and assasinate him with your hidden blade.

The interesting aspect of Brotherhood is that you get to train some citizens to become Assassins. You first save them from guards who are attacking them. You then send them on missions or “contracts” as they are called in the game.

These contracts will increase their experience points and upgrade their level until they finally become Assassins. Once you have your trainees, you can call them anytime they’re available to help you in your fights or just to kill some guards. Lovely.

Leonardo da Vinci is in ACB as well. If you complete all of Leonardo's 4 missions, you'll unlock parachutes that you can use to glide from high towers. There's also a virtual training mode in the game.

Brotherhood is the first in the Assassin’s Creed franchise to have a multiplayer element in it. There is a multiplayer mode that you can play online. I don’t have Xbox Live Gold so I can’t play this feature. Hmm.. maybe I should get it for a few months? Heh.

Both AC2 and ACB have glyphs hidden by Subject 16, who was/is the last Assassin abducted by Abstergo before Desmond. After finding all the glyphs, it will unlock Subject 16’s “The Truth” message. I actually looked for all the glyphs and solved all the puzzles to get the hidden video.

Please don’t play the following clips if you don’t want to know any spoilers. Here’s the “Truth” video from AC2:

After a lot of time playing AC2 and ACB, I just couldn’t be bothered to look for all the glyphs in Brotherhood. So I just searched for “The Truth” for ACB in Youtube:

There are some talking until 00:40. Then there are some uninteresting scenes where Desmond is climbing and running to get somewhere. Just skip to 12:40 for “The Truth”.

You must be thinking “what the-”, aren’t you? Well, you’ll get a similar reaction to the ending of both games as well, especially AC2. I can’t wait for the next instalment. It will be a different ancestor but there has been no confirmed news yet on what location it will be.

I really enjoyed playing both these games. The graphics are beautiful as was the first one. You still get some glitches where Ezio goes through parts of a horse or a bit of the wall once in a while, but I’m willing to close an eye on that as the games have great storylines as well as gameplay.

Bring it on Assassin’s Creed 3!