Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Nick Carver

Is anybody else playing this? After a shaky opening couple of hours, I'm really, really enjoying this latest AC game. Once things are fully underway in Rome and you start recruiting assassins and doing all the other stuff it really is a lot of fun. This game finally delivers on the potential that AC1+2 promised. It's a genuinely fun open world (it finally has a day-night cycle and looks fantastic in most lighting situations) with lots of different things to do at any time. The Romulus mazes are a lot of fun and deploying your team of followers to take out guards is always rewarding. I'm seriously surprised that Ubisoft cranked this out in a year (I'm guessing the dev team was on perma-crunch since the last game was released...).

The only real negative for me so far is the modern day stuff.Running around tombs with female buddy in tow is like a poor man's Uncharted, especially when Desmond's voiced by Nolan North. I know they had to find some way to link the time periods of the different games, but all the Animus, Abstergo stuff is irritating and superflous to me.

Anyway, I'd recommend giving the game a try even if you were put off by the monotony of the first (and to some extent) second game.

00Zero

the second game also had day/night cycle. whats the main thing that sets this apart? (besides multiplayer). it seems like DLC to me from what I'm seeing from it. Im sure it would be fun though.

Habboi

I wrote my review on my blog but I have to disagree about the present day stuff. To me, it's the best part of the game. I'm a sci-fi sucker and really don't care for the past because we already know so much about it. The future, we do not and I like to see how Ubisoft predict it.

However, neither the present or past can work without the other. Experiencing the battle at the start of the game and then climing through the underground tunnels in the present and seeing the ghosts of those before was really deep and atmospheric.

Overall though, I wasn't satisfied with Brotherhood. AC2 made a huge jump and not only had a variety of environments but also had a good story to latch on to. With Brotherhood it was nice to see what happened to Ezio after AC2 but hardly any time passed from start to finish and a villain who I knew was going to be killed before I even played it was totally pointless.

It had some decent music as well, Jesper did his job well but yeah, this game felt like DLC. The Romulus tombs were crap compared to the Assassin tombs in AC2. Did you see the church in Venice? My god, the lighting, the textures, the actual puzzle. I'd buy the game if that was the only thing in it.

DrunkShaman

Another issue I had with the game was the stress it sometimes created. Funny enough I came across Ubisoft's job page and they have videos of developers talking about their experiences and what the jobs involve. One of the developers then talks about their design philosophy and how games can't always be happy, there must be times of great stress. I'm sorry but I strongly disagree with that statement to some degree. While we all like a challenge I have to state that there's "stress" and then there's "STRESS".

For example I was running after a target in one of the Romulus tunnels when the automatic jumping decided to make me miss a pole and fall in the water. Now, my target is getting further and further away and the game is yelling at me to "hurry up" while at the same time I'm being hit with stones from nearby NPC's causing me to fail my full synchronization. You could argue that's all my fault but I must note that even the review on Game Trailers bashes the automatic jumping which causes quite a few miss-jumps. So really Ubisoft probably could have tweaked that if they had more time to test it but it's really just a minor issue and I just laughed it off.

I thought the game were suppose to help you relieve your stress, if they are putting the stress concept in their games (or thinking about putting it) Aside from people who endup in the nerd rage mode. I dont see this AC series going thus far.

I was really planning on getting this game even though I havent finished the first and the second one. =\

Habboi

That's a bit silly Finish them first! I don't know if you've got to this bit yet in AC2 but it's amazing. Sad to read the comments though, a lot of people hated it but only people like me can appreciate the work put into it.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-ivSbyN5Uo&feature=related[/ame]