Assassins Creed 2
Svenpa
Wait, what? Join Date: 2004-01-03 Member: 25012Members, Constellation
Wait, what? Join Date: 2004-01-03 Member: 25012Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">stabby jumpy stealthy</div>To sum up, it was all that the first game should had been, I keep getting this feeling more often nowadays. Nevertheless, really neat and with a lot more options worth your money.
You get multiple weapons, splinter cell like assassinations, poison, upgradeable equipment, more roof chasing, ability to throw yourself into people as a tackle, crowd stealth system (no more 'blend' auto stealth), less regenerating health (think rid######:efbb), smarter guards who first take a good look at you before they try killing you (depending on infamy status and where you are), BIGGER guards, more varied side quests, loot ability, carry corpses to hide or draw attention somewhere particular, city investing and management, pick pocketing everyone, cloth coloring, better dodging, steal weapon grabbing, overall better fighting system, and less long winded speeches from stab victims.
Most likely much more so which I have forgotten.
Discuss.
[Edit] I see topic spelling error just as I click submit, agh!.
[Ninja-double-edit] Fixed. -Scythe
You get multiple weapons, splinter cell like assassinations, poison, upgradeable equipment, more roof chasing, ability to throw yourself into people as a tackle, crowd stealth system (no more 'blend' auto stealth), less regenerating health (think rid######:efbb), smarter guards who first take a good look at you before they try killing you (depending on infamy status and where you are), BIGGER guards, more varied side quests, loot ability, carry corpses to hide or draw attention somewhere particular, city investing and management, pick pocketing everyone, cloth coloring, better dodging, steal weapon grabbing, overall better fighting system, and less long winded speeches from stab victims.
Most likely much more so which I have forgotten.
Discuss.
[Edit] I see topic spelling error just as I click submit, agh!.
[Ninja-double-edit] Fixed. -Scythe
Comments
What I didn't like about ACI, is how you were virtually invincible despite being in a 1vALL THE CITY GUARDS situation. Also, the whole "go around the corner and jump in the haystack to vanish" thing. I saw the second half disappeared. The first one seems somewhat better too.
I have a PS3 and I could get ACII, but I don't really want to pay $60 and then have to use a controller in that game. Plus I heard ACII comes out on PC in February.
So far I still havn't gotten myself into a hard fight, having 10 guards surround you is still just a matter of countering (though none of them have that skill themselves yet) or climbing above them and stab/slash their throat as soon as they are climbing up, insta kill every time.
Jumping in haystacks, well, now they put up a search perimeter where you were last seen and search haystacks with their weapons. It's still rather easy to just outclimb them though, especially with the new speed climb you get if your character has a straight path right up. Stay out of sight for 20 seconds or less and they give up. Sometimes they don't even get up in time... The point is not to fight like that during assassinations irregardless, so failing stealth you should reload instead of hammer your way through hordes of soldiers. But I must say those fullplate armor guards with two handed axes look rather frightening to fight.
Plus the god damn assassinations were never assassinations. Half of the people saw you coming no matter how sneaky you were, and they legged it. You're not really an "assassin" if you kill people by chasing them through the streets and tackling them to the ground, in front of a crowd of witness. You are a rather brainless murderer.
Anyway, the repetition isn't bad at all, at least not yet. I've held pretty strongly to the story objectives though. Things you can do as far as I've experienced is:
Get assassination on a noble from dove cages (go to x area, use eagle vision to find y, kill y, so far. Might get harder).
Random events as pick pockets stealing your/others money (chase around on roofs and tackle/kill and loot)
Find feathers (same as flags basically but you have to gather them for someone in a chest)
Delivery (give envelopes to people scattered around with time limit)
Find codex pages (after getting a certain amount your health will increase, kind of story related though)
Find assassin tombs (jump puzzle places, story related)
Discover eyes/odd symbols (locks up audio for the 'real world' story)
Treasure chests (buy maps to get them targeted or look for yourself, contains money)
Climbing towers to sync environment
Upgrade 'your' town to earn status and income.
To be honest, the most enjoyable part is just screwing around with all your abilities and items. Remember beggers from AC1? Now they are singers who block your path and try to play a tune, you can either grab them and head butt them into submission (or knee or punch while grabbed, combos ftw!) or throw money on the ground and stick em with poison in their back (or xyz choices). After a while of walking around coughing they will draw any weapons they have and go complete limb swinging berzerk and finally slowly fall on their face and die.
Picking up corpses and see how long you can walk the street with crowds looking at you in terror while backing away before guards ruin it is also fun.
Failing a jump and landing on a 40kg noble woman to soften the impact... sadly unharmed afterwards.
anyway, I really wanna play AC2, but I think I'll wait for the PC version, if I can hold out. I wonder if the PC version just isn't ready yet, or if releasing it late is a way to fight piracy? A lot of impatient people who might have pirated the PC version might cave and buy it for the xbox over the next couple of months.
My memory is clouded by that ###### with the bow.
I'm a god damn super assassin guy, I shouldn't be walking into obvious traps set by some merchant who is good with a bow.
Speaking about assassination places, I was always somewhat annoyed by the fact that you choose public areas to do it (even if you manage to get in and out without raising an alarm). Why should I break into a castle, climb up the wall, climb *down* the wall again, and stab a guy in the neck while he's in a guarded office? Why not just wait in his toilet and stab him in the neck when he gets up at 2am for a piss.
Why not just stab him in his bed. I can scale a verticle wall quite easily, getting to his bedroom window wouldn't be hard. But no. I have to wait until he's doing a tour of a hospital, surrounded by guards and witnesses. Or I have to wait until he hosts a party and gatecrash it. Or I have to *kill him on a stage in front of a crowd and his personal bodyguards*.
Hitman let you kill people in their own bedrooms :(
I was called out to a monastery by my associates who briefed me some distance before I would arrive to my target. He told me that there are undercover guards, dressed as monks and I had to use my keen sense to find them (eagle vision). He also gave me smokebombs<img src="http://www.cbarks.dk/Digital/seraa197645.JPG" border="0" class="linked-image" /> to stun guards with, should they blow my cover. After sneaking past a three man patrol on the outside by idling on a bench I manage to slip in to the courtyard. The area wasn't very big but shockfull of people, probably 50 walking in and out or looping patrols. I squeeze myself between five monks to gain anonymity and take a look around with eagle vision. Almost a third of the people inside are guards but I see a opportunity, my target is walking around and talking to several groups in a certain pattern. If I could just hold my cover outside my group for a few seconds I could reach one of those he would stop at. I walk out and right off the bat the nearest guard start contemplating who I was, luckily he was not a seeker and thus could not break the group I entered, and 'lost' me. I ponder for a while how I would do this without gouging eyeballs or throwing knives all over the place. I did stand in group who would see everything I did. I remembered the poison blade, it can gently stick someone in the back without anyone taking notice. So I wait, and surely, after a while he drops by and says a few words (with a bodyguard less than a arms length away from him) when he turns around and his guard looks someplace else, I make my move. I walk out of stealth and slash him silently in the back. He keeps walking but this time slightly bent and with shakes, soon he began coughing, then came illusions which he tried to wave off with both hands. Shortly after he draws his sword and facepunch his guard, walks out of the courtyard with his sword flailing at anyone coming near, he kicks a nun who came in his way and walks straight off the wall which was normally passed on right or left to access the stairs down and falls flat on his face with some twitching afterwards. Mission complete, now I just had to get out of there. No biggie, I basically just walked straight out, with a slight eye on the patrol outside the door. Good times.
Speaking about assassination places, I was always somewhat annoyed by the fact that you choose public areas to do it (even if you manage to get in and out without raising an alarm). Why should I break into a castle, climb up the wall, climb *down* the wall again, and stab a guy in the neck while he's in a guarded office? Why not just wait in his toilet and stab him in the neck when he gets up at 2am for a piss.
Why not just stab him in his bed. I can scale a verticle wall quite easily, getting to his bedroom window wouldn't be hard. But no. I have to wait until he's doing a tour of a hospital, surrounded by guards and witnesses. Or I have to wait until he hosts a party and gatecrash it. Or I have to *kill him on a stage in front of a crowd and his personal bodyguards*.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In all fairness, this part is historically accurate. The hashashin typically favoured public slayings, presumably both to cultivate their image and to demonstrate their resolve.
They also used to spend months or even years as a sleeper agent in the employ of a potential target or high ranking individual, just waiting to be told to strike.
The game involves hunting some kind of weird miracle relic that is possibly alien or something, using a machine that recreates immersive virtual reality from memories implanted into your genetic code. It is not a game that prides itself on realism.
My favourite assassination in a game is the second mission (I think) in Hitman 2. There are two ruskie bigwigs walking and talking together in a park. The way you're supposed to kill them is to put bombs under each of their cars. Instead I wandered a fair way away and climbed a water tower. I sat there watching them through my scope for a full five minutes until they were aligned *just right*. I fired one round from my rifle and shot them both through the head. So awesome.
--Scythe--
The game involves hunting some kind of weird miracle relic that is possibly alien or something, using a machine that recreates immersive virtual reality from memories implanted into your genetic code. It is not a game that prides itself on realism.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It IS however a game that prides itself on being historical, even if it falls laughably short a lot. The hashashin also did stuff like placing a dagger on an enemy's pillow while he slept to show that it would be a good idea for him to start making friends fast. They could've done some of that rather than completely missing the point of centering the game on the hashashin by having you slay people in secret.
We're talking about the same people who made Far Cry 2, Rainbow Six Vegas, and the Prince if Persia game. Not exactly a bunch of intellectuals.
Several of the people you kill in the game weren't assassinated. They just died. One of the points of the game is that the templars have been screwing with recorded history to make everything all weird. It is far from historically accurate, other than having the names of real people.
I still want a sneaky assassination game. Like Thief, only instead of stealing silver goblets (which everyone has for some reason), you kill a guy in his bed.
The Hitman games don't count.
And by "bizarre" I mean "stupid."