Dragon Age: Origins

Bioware loves its fantasy settings Lionel likes a security blanket. If they’re not enraptured with dragons, dwarves, demons and debauchery, then its spaceships, science-fiction, strange aliens and…well more debauchery. Mass Effect was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic with hot alien sex, and now we have Dragon Age: Dungeons and Dragons with hot interracial elf/dwarf action.

I kid. There’s more to Dragon Age than underwear-sporting intercourse, just like Mass Effect had more to it than LSD-induced sex with the blue alien chick. I’m just a bit surprised that Bioware has made little effort to stray from the all-too-familiar paths of either sci-fi or Tolkien fantasy. It’s as if fifteen members of the team died during the development of Jade Empire and the staff is scared of peeving the gods of pen and paper RPGs. Of course, my surprise could also stem from my constant attempts to woe over Morrigan, the slutty evil mage, only to discover later that she only goes down for male characters. Alas, my female elf character was, at best, “friend material” for her. (Yes, I’m one of “those guys” that always makes female characters in RPGS and MMOs. If you’re going to stare at something’s ass for 40 hours…)

So the Dragon Age experience starts with you crafting a character. He, she or it can be either human, elf or dwarf, and can run the occupational paths of either warrior, mage or rogue. Your race and career path determine your run through one of six origin stories. I am fairly certain that, after playing though two of these origin stories, that they all involve a whole lot of killing. After said loss of life, your character finds him/her/itself in the ranks of the Grey Wardens, an order of Fighting Irish ass-whooping machines determined to oppress evil demons.

Okay, there’s a lot more to the plot than that. Oodles and oodles and oodles more. You’ll pick up many books, letters and stray articles about the fiction of the land of Fereldin for the player to ignore. Much of the game is spent travelling all across this fancy, fictional, Tolkieninian land, where you’ll do such D&D-like acts as: talking to villagers, engaging in conversation trees, doing quests, doing side-quests, looting the corpses of your deceased enemies, looting the property of your living villagers and selling all the crap resources you’ll never use because herbalism without pot is no fun.

For the most part, the story as a whole is interesting (or at least the main bits. I can’t speak on whether or not the sheer quantity of tomes I picked up about the lore of the land are potentially gripping. I wish I could sell those codex pieces, turn my mage into a travelling World’s Largest Bookstore.) Like other Biogames, there comes a point where your journey splits into 4 different sub-quests, built around recruiting for a makeshift army, which can be tackled in any order. During these sub-quests, you’ll get the vibe that the developers were hellbent on shoving every human injustice, political controversy and sociological issue in the game short of Apartheid...and there’s always the sequel. Elves are the segregated Afro-Americans that can’t drink from the same water fountains or urinate in the same restrooms as their human counterparts. There’s a religious order that forces their beliefs (and swords) down the throats of all the land. I laughed uproariously when I heard that dwarves were governed by a caste system. Castes! With dwarves, the least Indian of the Tolkien tribes. But the overabundance of morality plays actually makes Dragon Age work from a story standpoint.

Gone is the forcefully black and white “good or evil” system of RPGs past. Your character no longer has a “good/evil” meter like in Knights of the Old Republic. You are free to make moral decisions based on how you personally feel about a given issue, instead of forcing yourself to side to just side with either good choices to get the “good guy ending” or vice-versa. (And none of that nonsense from Infamous that FORCED you to play one side or the other in the name of unlocking abilities. Therein is a sigh of relief.) Rather, each of your party mates has a “relationship meter” that affects how much they like you, dislike you, or are willing to fornicate with you. And even if your partner is upset that you slaughtered his or her entire race, you can always win them back over with them presents. The Dragon Age world is realistically shallow indeed. It also helps that your decisions have a sense of weight to them, affecting the storyline in their own ways. (And I assume affecting the storyline of Dragon Age 2, which is kind of neato if you think about it.) In particular, you’ll often come across factions in conflict, and the decisions you make will affect which party aligns with you in the final battle. You’ll be made to choose, for example, whether you want the aid of an army of Elvin archers or werewolves, and I think that decision will be a no-brainer.

You know how in real life, people generally befriend people with similar interests, styles and personalities? And you know how, in RPGs, the opposite is always true? Dragon Age is akin to every RPG in history in that your character builds a party of eclectic characters whom would never, ever band together in a real life situation. You’ll recognize certain Biowareisms in your cast of characters; the straight-as-a-pole male, the innocent, promiscuous school girl-like figure, and the obligatory monster figure that seeks comedic relief through psychopathic tendencies. Shale, the golem that you need to download (and potentially pay for) will get some laughs with his odd quirks but I was just waiting for him to call my dog a meathead. Actually, this is a small complaint, they’re largely a likeable bunch, in particular said pet dog…mostly because he is a pet dog and you can win approval points by petting him. I may have treated my dog better than I treated the entire kingdom of Fereldin.

I guess I should talk about the gameplay at some point. Dragon Age is like any Bioware game in that your true gods are not deities or mythological figures but rather behind-the-scenes dice rolls. Battles occur in pseudo-real time, with your characters casting spells, attacking enemies and being attacked in a rhythm and flow akin to that of those pesky MMORPGs. At any given point, you can freeze the battle to assign specific orders to yourself and your team, though I would have rather not. I can’t call this a flaw with the game so much as it is a flaw with me losing the patience to strategize, but I’d rather focus on what my character is doing than any of my teammates. Hence, I found myself occasionally tweaking the Gambits…I mean Tactics settings of my teammates, which affect how they behave in combat situations (like, for example, HEAL when you’re about to die so that you don’t freaking die.)

Really, the only times I wasn’t enjoying Dragon Age was when I was forced to micro-manage. And it’s not quite heavy micro-management, either. It’s not like there was a pesky sphere grid or one of those needlessly convoluted leveling systems that so many JRPGs like to confuse me with. (The leveling up process is rather traditional, easy to interpret. More in line with other Bioware games or World of Warcraft than some kind of Junction nonsense from Final Fantasys past.) That said, I hated trying to figure out the inventory system of the game. You can’t assume that the next town you go to will be selling the next best set of armour like most RPGs defy real marketplace logic with. Rather, like Mass Effect, you have to examine every bit of armour, and wrap your mind around what all the fictional buzzwords mean in relation to each other. How am I supposed to know if Red steel chainmail armour is better than Veridium chainmail armour? All I got going for me is the prior knowledge that Red Steel was a crappy game. I ultimately gave up on the concept of armour altogether, through using a party consisting of two mages, my dog, and the stone golem, all of which can get by just fine fighting in their birthday suits.

So my biggest issues with the game were more to do with the re-education process of learning to play an RPG than in-game faults. But there are a handful of flaws that beg to be picked at like a scab. Some of the game’s dungeons just seem to last longer than Everlasting Gobstoppers, breaking both my jaw, my patience and my inventory; far too often I would run out of space from collecting loot I intended to sell, often right before a boss fight (and the subsequent treasures that come with.) There is one particular NPC that should wear a striped shirt and be labeled “travelling salesman”, for he follows your party around, begging you to go on particular quests that involve buying downloadable content. Also, this being the console version, you’ll have to adapt to the radial menu for in-game attacks and clumsy fumbling with the shoulder buttons to navigate your management menus. I imagine the PC version of the game being easier to comprehend, but I’d rather adapt to these quirky menus and play my 40 hour RPG on the comfort of a sofa anyways. And finally, you can’t have a Bioware game without glitches and bugs. The game froze on me twice…which I guess gives it a better track record than games of past. Who else encountered that save-erasing glitch from Knights of the Old Republic?

But ultimately, Dragon Age is worth getting for several reasons. It’s a big game that you’ll (mostly) enjoy from your bloodstained beginnings to the ending that you’ll choose based on your whims and not the whims of a good or bad meter. It took me 30 hours to finish on the first playthrough, missing several sidequests, and I’m already toying with the possible crimes against humanity I’ll commit on my next game save. It’s an evolutionary RPG that intelligently matures the genre without mucking it up through convoluted gimmicks like too many other contemporary releases. And finally, Dragon Age is the game that convinces me that Bioware is amassing a real legacy of RPGs. Where I used to dread the monotony of seeing sequel after sequel, I now find myself intrigued by what awaits me in Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2. A rare feat.

4 ½ stars

New Super Mario Bros Wii

A rotund, European blue-collar worker with both an obscenely low center of gravity and yet a shockingly high vertical leap teams with his lanky brother. Both are twins so therefore must dress identically in fashion but different in colour. Both have a strong resemblance to Ron Jeremy. They exist in a land paved and constructed almost entirely of bricks and sewage piping is used as transportation. These European plumbers must leap on top of unassuming turtles and teeth-boasting plants while seeking power from mushrooms and flowers with presumed hallucinogenic properties. Their goal is to rescue a teeny-bopper princess from a giant, fire-breathing turtle king.

Find someone you know who doesn’t follow video games at all, preferably a movie buff. Tell them that the above synopsis describes the Citizen Kane of video games. I know, the Mario games are a bit…imaginative, but the wacky sense of drug-induced creativity has always been part of the fun. Most key Mario platformers have a demented sense of personality, flavour, identity, IT, whatever. Something that makes it a unique and beautiful snowflake in the pile of slush that is the video game industry. It’s a certain intangible, an immeasurable combination of solid jump-driven gameplay, apeshit creativity, nostalgia and zen-like harmony that New Super Mario Bros Wii is trying too hard to obtain.

New Super Mario Bros Wii (a tongue-twister if there ever was one) is trying its sweet little heart out to be a Mario game. It’s like your daughter, sneaking into mother’s drawers and wearing dresses and high heels too big for her little soles; it only looks cute until she finds the cigarettes in her purse and imitates smoking. In this game, the Princess gets kidnapped yet again (by virtue of Baby Bowser and a cake being a lie, go figure) and Mario will have to traverse a series of stages, castles and ghost houses to unkidnap her.

The core mechanics of a Mario game are intact; you run, jump, smash blocks with your head, smash enemies with your feet or rectum, you collect stars and mushrooms to power up and you traverse pipes to collect coins. If you’ve played New Super Mario Bros on the DS, you’ll find a very similar game here. There are 8 worlds, including the obligatory ice world, water world, desert world and lava world. Many of the obstacles facing the player are throwbacks to other Mario games, namely Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World.

Which, in turn, is part of the problem with New Super Mario Bros Wii. It relies almost entirely on nostalgia, which feels redundant since just about every Mario game before it played a nostalgic fiddle. (Well, almost every Nintendo game does too, but that’s another discussion for another day.) The difference is that past games, and in particular the outstanding Mario Galaxy, merely use those throwbacks as either pleasant surprises or conventions for which many new and exciting ideas can be built upon. Those games have identity. New Super Mario Bros Wii merely tosses one old Mario-ism after another in some kind of strange platforming mixtape; one level will pit you against the spiked ball-throwing lizards from Mario 3, the next will be built around Yoshi eating the red berries from Super Mario World. Even the Koopa Kids drop out of community college to make their return to gaming as each world’s easy end-boss. The game feels like a fan-made Flash version of a Mario game, but with an out-of-place soundtrack that belongs more in a fabric softener commercial.
Oh, there is waggle in there, too. That waggle jumping mechanic that was a minor nuisance in Mario Galaxy is swarm-of-mosquitoes-annoying in New Super Mario Bros Wii. You’ll have to waggle to pick up some items, tilt the remote to manipulate platforms and shake it to fly using the new propeller-pajamas powerup. The motion controls in the game are about 65% responsive (which I guess is better than most Wii games. Better in my mind than freaking Zelda) and they’re not a deal-breaker, I just would rather be able to play the game lying on my arms than sitting upright.

Now, keep in mind that the game is completely devoid of merit. The platform jumping sequences are appropriately hefty. There are plenty of obstacles to test the spring in your step. The levels scale in difficulty at a suitable pace, starting out as inviting but becoming true tests of one’s leaping prowess. And the game is, if anything, more lengthy and beefy than most platformers. It should take about 5 hours for a seasoned platform leaper to hop, skip and jump through all of the game’s stages, so at least the $60 price tag is halfway justified. And just like the DS New Super Mario Bros, the stage-based nature of the game makes it ideal to pop in and play at any given moment in time. We’ve all had those moments before, where we want to play a video game but just don’t know which one, and most of the games in your collection require hearty multi-hour sessions. In that regard, New Super Mario Bros Wii has them beat.

There is also a multiplayer component. Up to four players can control Mario, Luigi and two coloured Toads (because presumably, Wario or any character that could be considered more interesting than a blue and yellow toad were out vacationing in better games.) It’s the LittleBigPlanet kind of multiplayer where all the players run through the stages in tandem. The theory behind this mode is that players can either 1: co-operate to reach the end of a stage and collect the rare coins, or 2: sabotage each other like jerks. The answer will almost always be either 2, or 2 by accident. Characters on screen will bounce off each other like you expect fat people in Looney Tunes cartoons to bounce off each other, and the stages feel designed for the specific purpose of having multiple on-screen casualties. So you’re stress level will reach unwelcoming levels if you treat the multiplayer component as a serious mission like the Modern Warfare 2 Spec-Ops mode, or if you’re a firm believer in the power of teamwork. Rather, I think that there is potential fun to be had if you bring out the multiplayer mode in New Super Mario Bros when your friends are drunk. Hell, you can even turn it into a drinking game where shots are to be had when someone loses a life. I can’t, however guarantee that there won’t be fatalities as a result.

New Super Mario Bros Wii is a safe purchase for platforming fans to be sure. You’ll get a decent amount of content, your wits will be challenged, and you’ll get to hear Mario’s pudgy voice chant “Lets A Go” enough to fill your heart with nostalgic joy as you’re reminded of better games. But most major Mario platformers and even recent games like Trine have New Super Mario Bros’ number. I feel no obligation to collect all the star coins and unlock the hidden levels, and I would sooner unleash Mario Party 8 or Tiger Woods at a social gathering than the four player mode here. (No, really, Tiger Woods on the Wii has alarmingly wide appeal as a multiplayer game, and not just for all the infidelity jokes that it will now inspire.) So think of this as a trepid recommendation; buy it if you crave a new platformer, but don’t make it a priority on your to-play list.

3 ½ stars.

EARTHWORM JIM 2~!

Remember how we all thought Tiger Woods was this clean-cut sports role model so wholesome that even the thought of him having facial hair was appalling to people? Remember how that whole image evaporated when word let out that he had a mistress or twelve? And now how his prowess as a golfer was thrown into doubt because his trainer possessed growth hormone? That is almost somewhat kind of like my situation with Earthworm Jim right now. I used to think that the first two Earthworm Jim games were the bee’s knees, the tip of the top, the jolliest of the jolly. A pair of platformers so wonderful that they motivated me to collect all the action figures as a youth (including “Battle-Damaged Jim”, “Underwater Jim” and the rarity that was “Regular Earthworm Jim.”) But then I had an affair with just about every better sidescroller released in the past ten years, and my pituitary gland naturally released growth hormone that, in turn, made me no longer a child. Thus the Earthworm Jim games don’t quite have that same appeal that they used to. So indeed, in the vaguest way possible, me and Earthworm Jim are a lot like Tiger Woods and his vices.

Ever since Earthworm Jim 1 was released on the Virtual Console last year, I’ve been in a state of unseeing denial, telling myself “it’s okay that it didn’t age well, Earthworm Jim 2 was always the better game, everything will be right in the universe again.” And now, Earthworm Jim 2 is out, and while I enjoyed it plenty more, I doubt the rest of the world will share my enthusiasm.

Earthworm Jim 2 stars Earthworm Jim (I know, shocking, but in this day and age, games aren’t always named after their mascot hero. You don’t play as the god of war in God of War, nor do you play as a supernatural law of matter in Mass Effect.) He is a worm in a giant armour suit with a ray gun and a hard-on for an alien woman thingy called Princess What’s Her Name. The Princess gets unceremoniously kidnapped by Psy-Crow during the Sega Logo screen and Jim must make things right before Psy-Crow gets hitched with the princess on the Planet of Quickie-24-hour-Las-Vegas-Weddings. That is the honest-to-goodness plot.

In retrospect, if Earthworm Jim 2 has a flaw, it’s that the game lacks narrative. The above-mentioned plot, I took from the instruction manual…the original game’s instruction manual, not the Wii’s online instruction manual thingamabob. There’s no in-game story progression, just a series of random stages placed together with seemingly no rhyme or reason. I distinctly remember the instruction manual having some funky explanations for each stage (to be more specific, the levels are the summer-home of Jim’s arch-enemies.) that makes some sense of the impending madness. But without those explanations, the game is but a series of random sequences, all very different from the stage before them…though I guess the quirkiness can be viewed as a strength too.

Earthworm Jim 2 is a 2-dimensional sidescrolling shooter...sometimes. You’ll run, jump, whip your head out in a manner less revolting than I made it sound, and stand perfectly still while firing your giant machine gun. This isn’t so much Contra where your commando can leap and fire his gun in any direction while barrel-rolling in the air. Rather, this game is less about skill and reflexes than excess machismo for using too much firepower to destroy a small flying penguin. Earthworm Jim 2 lets the player collect new weapons, ranging from “useful” (like a homing missile shaped like a house. Get it?) to “useless” (A bubble gun!) and the thing about the Wii version that confuses me is that it’s a port of the Sega Genesis game. Why the Genesis version, I wonder? Why use the port of the game that didn’t have shoulder buttons to switch weapons with? Why the version of the game where you can’t press buttons between levels to make the end-mission cows say “Well Done” in different tones of voice? Why use the version of the game with the less-clear audio? The game’s famous Tommy Tallarico soundtrack doesn’t quite translate so well on the Sega Genesis’s ringtone-like audio system. My ears were in pain during the “cow level” and how its once elegant background music has become a high-pitched glass-shatterer.

The upside is that, as a Wii Virtual Console game, the once-pointless “password system” now makes sense. The game lets you start your adventure after any stage that you’ve collected three hard-to-find flags in. The issue was that the game never saved this progress, so flipping the system off meant that players had to start each new summer home-tour over. Now, with the Wii has it’s funky save-state system, Earthworm Jim 2’s password system will actually work when you walk away from the console to live life.

I mentioned before how Earthworm Jim 2 is only sometimes a shooter, because the game has a habit of transitioning into a completely unrelated gameplay sequence with different mechanics. One level, called “Earthworm Jim is now a blind salamander” has Earthworm Jim playing as a blind salamander, swimming through the innards of a giant pinball fish thingy. Another level has you flying on your spaceship through a medieval Warfield filled with mucus. And there’s on particular stage that you’ll have to learn to love or face the consequences; it’s called “Puppy Love”. Here, Psy-Crow is throwing hundreds of Peter Puppy’s children out the window, and Jim has to catch them with the MARSHMELLOW OF LOVE, lest they go splat on the floor in the most cruel of manners. If your apartment landlord forbids pets, it’s because he played Puppy Love as a child. Should one puppy too many taste concrete, Peter Puppy flips his lid and whoops your ass in a billowing dust cloud of Looney Tunes pain. And you’ll have to grin and bear this agony for three separate stages. The only relief to this pain and repetition is Mr Tallarico serenading your ears with a charming Italian medley.

So, is Earthworm Jim 2 worth purchasing? If you were a fan of Earthworm Jim 2 the first time around, well sure. It’s as effective a nostalgic release as any, even if it’s not exactly the right port of the game. On the other hand, I feel as though the oddball humour and random gameplay will be lost on today’s generation of level-grinding deathmatch players that crave either familiar military shooters or familiar space military shooters. But let us look at the glass from a half-full perspective. An upcoming remake of the original Earthworm Jim could make the series relevant again. The Earthworm Jim cartoon, a product of the Animaniacs-generation of WB shows, is still a fun, 90s rendition of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And in my time volunteering for a holiday toy drive, I had found that one person had donated an unopened Underwater Action Earthworm Jim action figure. I sure as hell hope that whatever kid that winds up with that present has a Happy Holidays. Even if he has no idea what an Underwater Action Earthworm Jim is supposed to be.

3 ½ stars

Assassin's Creed 2

Assassin’s Creed 1 starred a preachy, philosophical, emotionless, characterless unibomber-lookalike named Altair. Killing was his business, but business was not good. First he had to pickpocket, eavesdrop and stalk random targets to obtain “information”, or rather grind missions to extend play, time about his victims-to-be. He would then proceed to attempt an assassination on said targets, one that would involve stealth and cunning…on paper. In practice, they usually ended in extended fight sequences, combating both a tiresome barrage of respawning enemies and cumbersome climbing mechanics and a dull combat system. When you finally killed your last target and a grand unveiling of the true nature of the game’s sacred artifact was about to occur, the “flashback” was cut off. Players were brought back to the present day storyline, of Altair’s descendant, Desmond, being held captive by templars and…the game ended with him continuing to be trapped. Many questions were thrust on the player, and the only surefire answer provided was “buy our sequel two years from now.”

And now we have Assassin’s Creed 2 to address some of those annoying cliffhanger questions…while providing plenty more mysteries anger players with the notion of waiting another two years. But while the first game was a wholly aggravating experience from beginning to end, Assassin’s Creed 2 only has slight growing pains and issues with modern times. Rather, unlike ex-girlfriends and boyfriends everywhere, Assassin’s Creed 2 thrives when it lives in the past.

The game begins with Desmond being liberated from his prison by that blonde chick, whom switches from cliché empathetic scientist girl to cliché ass-kicking woman in leather. After the breakout, Desmond finds solace in the assassin’s headquarters…or rather, the apartment of some preppy British geek and his stoned best friend science girl who moonlights as the the girl on change room duty at Urban Behavior. They have an Animus of their own, and they’re going to use it to Matrix-ise Desmond into an assassin. Honestly, everything about the “present day” plot sucks, and I mean everything. It’s hard to accept the struggle between assassins and templars as some kind of history-shaping struggle when the assassins look like Chess Club members and the templars like mall cops with batons. The almighty templars with infinite resources can’t afford guns. Despite centuries of history, neither party would survive a night in Compton.

Bear with me when I say that the game as a whole is more interesting when dealing with the past storyline. And I really do mean “bear with me” because even that aspect takes awhile to build steam. You alternately spend most of the game as Ezio, a noble paysan in 1400s Italy. He’s young, brash, charming, and you’ll have to go through a series of tutorial missions to get these points across. The tutorial is long. Lengthy. Unending. Verbose. Extensive. Substantial. Hulking. Massive. Voluminous. Elongated. Mammoth. As fun as watching Italy play soccer. And any other word for long and drab your thesaurus may boast. The Grand Theft Auto 4 tutorial cowers in comparison, feeling ashamed that it cannot ever aspire to be as extended and boring as the Assassin’s Creed 2 tutorial. You have to undergo tutorials on how to jump, climb, fistfight, swordfight, bribe prostitutes, pickpocket your money back from them, taunt, flail your arms, and explain the many different forms of side-quests. It took me about a week of casual play (about 1-2 hours a day) before I got to partake in my first assassination. You can understand why I empathize the importance of bearing with me when I say that this game does eventually become great.

Somewhere within that lengthy tutorial process of making Ezio pay his dues, his father and brothers are unjustly killed and thus begins his descent from cheery nobleman to ruthless-but-still-cheery assassin. The Italy storyline then bases itself around Ezio’s quest to dispatch the conspirators responsible, all of whom just happen to be templars.

And the revenge quest part of Assassin’s Creed 2 is really where the game shines. Ezio is an appealing character that never falls in the same religious/ideological preaching sessions that Altair spent too much time being pre-programmed into mechanically spouting. You’ll witness his development over a ten year span, including positive and negative thoughts, and he’s surrounded by a bustling Italian landscape filled with poor people, prostitutes, that jolly next door neighbour Leonardo Da Vinci and his own little code… more poor people and plenty of lively characters and lavish buildings to climb. It’s hard to not get enraptured by the game’s scenery. That this is the only game with this unique European setting gives Assassin’s Creed 2 a wonderfully unique sense of style and immersion.

Just be sure to play the game with subtitles turned on. The characters have a tendency to slip between English and Italian as often as Italian grandparents. Even though most of the Italian spoken word consisted of prayer and swearing, sometimes in combination, it’s still nice to have the translation.

Oh, and there are religious themes. This game was made by that very same multi-cultural team of various religious beliefs, after all. Keep that in mind during the…final sequence.

Assassin’s Creed 2 is a sandbox game, though a sandbox game where you cannot kill civilians without punishment. (For you see, Ezio never harmed a civilian in his entire life, which I have a hard time believing.) You run around, you climb structures with the same Prince of Persia/Assassin’s Creed 1/Tomb Raider/Imfamous/Uncharted/Uncharted 2 climbing system that’s starting to get a bit tired in games. Most of the climbing is automated, but Ezio’s pathfinding can be a bit suspect at times. He has the occasional habit of jumping off his ledge and in the wrong direction, sometimes to his untimely dea…I mean desynchronization. This is especially profanity-inducing during certain timed platform sequences. And the sword combat isn’t particularly exciting. It still comprises mainly of timing button presses to execute combos and counters, and while there are a few new moves (mainly the ability to jack another fool’s weapon) you’ll most likely employ a mindset of “attack a lot, then block when attacked” in combat. It’s not a bad combat system, just one that lacks the flow of Batman: Arkham Asylum, and to be fair, Jackie Chan and Jet Lee as martial artists don’t quite have the flow of Batman: Arkham Asylum either.

I hope at this point you’ve bore with me up to now, because even though the platforming seems drab and the combat average, the rest of the game is quite entertaining. Those annoying pickpocket/eavesdrop/stalking missions have vanished altogether. The next story mission is almost always at accessible immediately, only asking the player to grind a fetch quest near the game’s end. (There are codex pages scattered around the world that you can collect on your own throughout your journey, and getting them is a simple matter of distracting the guards with hired floozies. So this fetch quest as a whole is harmless.) Most of the story missions are varied and enjoyable, offering a much higher ratio of time spent killing to time spent not killing than in the prior game. You’ll kill plenty of guards, often by sneaking up to them and hidden-blading their asses, and the variety of challenges that await you ensure that the campaign never grows tiresome.

Now, not all of the missions are great. The game doesn’t quite approach the same ratio of great levels to wastes of time that Grand Theft Auto 4 achieves. In particular, Assassin’s Creed 2 may feature the lamest rendition of Capture The Flag in the history of video games, and that may actually be a rare achievement. But the post-tutorial game moves at a consistently brisk pace, assuming that you even want to play the story missions. The optional side missions, including assorted assassinations, muggings, races and so forth are exciting enough to occupy your attention. In particular, there are six set-piece “tomb” levels that will have you traverse a specific platforming sequence, giving chase or solving weird timed puzzle sequences. This isn’t like other games that rehash side missions to artificially pad out the game’s length. It just happens that you’ll feel more inclined to take time away from the main plot to indulge yourself, and time will just magically fly by. The money earned can be spent on assorted upgrades (and you’re always going to need the best sword available if you want to have fun with the combat) or renovating your home villa, for Ezio is the Mike Holmes of assassins. Renovating your village is intended to be an investment; money made from tourism goes into a chest that you subsequently and unethically pocket yourself, the corrupt politician you are. The issue with this whole system is that “quick-travel” stations are scarcely scattered around the map, hence you’ll waste an unnecessary amount of time just to collect your paycheck.

Back on the positive side, the game gives you a greater sense of control. New abilities like the pistol upgrade give you more options for dispatching your fellow goomba. The addition of two hidden blades lets you feel more like Steven Segal in allowing you to end the lives of two soldiers simultaneously, and from different positions. Whether it’s killing from ledges or while hidden in a haystack, the game puts a greater emphasis on stealth kills. The guard AI is kind of dimwitted in a variety of ways, most notably how they’ll never notice how one of their fellow workers has suddenly vanished, but their ignorance provided me with great bliss as I picked them off one-by-one. And should you decide to run from the large flock of guards giving chase, new options like the ability to hide in any crowd and not just four strategically placed scholars give you a greater sense of control. Gone are the days where you ran around blind, hoping the guards would suddenly lose sight and you just happen to notice a pile of hay to slip into.

So Assassin’s Creed 2 is a great game…all the way to the end. As I and most anyone else predicted, the game ends with another cheap cliffhanger, opening up tons of questions and completely reworking the plot in the name of building towards an Assassin’s Creed 3. Without elaborating too much, the “plot change” is cheesy as all hell, and almost puts a damper on the Ezio revenge quest that I fell so in love with. But the damage done at the end doesn’t quite sour the experience the way the first game’s ending did; rather, it merely kills off whatever enthusiasm I could’ve held for Assassin’s Creed 3, knowing the direction the story will follow now.

But let us live for the moment instead. Standing on its merits as both an action game and an immersive experience, Assassin’s Creed 2 is a treat. It isn’t perfect but is perfection something that exists anyways? The redeeming qualities are worth experiencing for yourself in spite of the flaws. Just remember that if this is your first experience with the franchise, to not give in to curiosity and play Assassin’s Creed 1. You’re not missing much.

4 stars

Actually, there is a few flaws in the game I should mention, but it’s more an issue with me than the game itself. The characters in the game revere Altair as some kind of legendary prophet or hero. I disagree with them. I did not want to see anything from the first game revered as sacred.

Also, I have beef with any game that feels it should have an achievement system separate from the Xbox one. Now Ubi Soft has to have its own online achievement system. Why?