Alright, so here we go, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (ABS or Ass creed bro). This is the third game in the Assassin’s Creed series. Our hero is Ezio Auditore, a renaissance Italian who, fresh out of the last game, gets thrown into a new situation that requires his hidden blades to be implanted into the soft gooey bodies of the Borgia.
So this entry takes place right after the second game, so if you haven’t played that, you’re not going to understand what’s up with this one. If you have played that…well it’s pretty much that. You run, you jump, you stab, and all of it’s done really really well. This brings me to the biggest gripe I had, the controls. Now please don’t take this the wrong way the controls are really tight and smooth and really work well…most of the time. I don’t know if it’s my perception, but when I play games like Mirrors edge, or Assassin’s creed, the further I get and the more I play, the more I notice when I screw up. I don’t know if that’s because I’m getting better at the game and I notice more of my imperfections, or if the game has gotten sloppier.
So this becomes perfectly evident in the last parts of the game which you have to make these perfect jumps which can become infuriating! I don’t want to spoil anything, but I have to ask….if there is only one way to go, why would I be able to jump another way? Yes that might make it too easy, but I want to feel like a badass at that point. I’ve spent the entire game honing my skills, so why can’t I just feel awesome for making those jumps and move on instead of raging at the controls or camera for another 20 fucking cockslurping minutes.
One of the features that I feel gets looked over would be the little snippets of info you get when you find a certain person, or climb a certain building. They’re usually like a paragraph or two long and give a little bit of history about what you’re climbing all over. Now being Italian and actually liking the time period and history of this game, I might be a little more into this than most others.
The other big new feature is the “Brotherhood” part of ACB. You’ll go around helping out poor little townsfolk and in turn they will pledge their allegiance and start with the murdering. By the end of the game you’ll have a small white hooded platoon and can overcome a lot of trouble by sending them in to go kill people you’re too good for, sort of like some stabby white lemmings. The game also has a small RPG feature with your posse, you pick a few of your pawns and fling them across Europe to do different things like murder a politician or protect a banker or pick up the dry-cleaning. This earns them XP and then they level up until their ready to become fully fledged assassins. Now that I think about it, I wouldn’t mind an Advance Wars style game involving the brotherhood or maybe a Civ 4 type of Turn based strategy minigame, or hell even its own game. Halo got something like that, so why can’t Ezio’s crew?
Now this game isn’t really much of a technological upgrade from the second one, and you know what? I’m ok with that; there aren’t a lot of clipping issues which I find REALLY annoying. You know, when a characters hair goes through his jacket or someone’s cape flows through their sword as opposed to around it. Yes I know that it takes a lot of power to do that sort of thing but it makes me oh so happy to see that. Also this game will make sweet sweet love to the “large panoramic” shots of the world part of your brain. Ubisoft knows that people like to climb up really high, look around and then throw themselves off into a conveniently placed hay bale, so it’s good that they didn’t mess with that formula. Oh and from the highest point of the game, you can literally see the curvature of the earth and your house…it’s quite the sight.
Should you get it? Well that depends, if you’re really really into this series, than you probably have already, if you like it but aren’t sure if this is just an expansion, get it, at least try it, the multiplayer is a fun time waster and if you’re like me, you thought ASII was just too short, so that alleviates that. Though I would recommend that you play through the story again real quick or look up a guide or something because for me, it was too long of a gap and I found myself asking who people were a lot of the time. If you haven’t been into this series or just noticed it, go play the others first, then make your decision. It’s fun and well done, and more of what you’ve come to expect. Hopefully when the series ends they’ll come out with some sort of box set of all these games so you don’t have to wait the painfully long years between them.
Whew...ok a little long, but I think you get it....
-Nick
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