(Rant incoming)
From the reviews I've read, people seem to be of the belief that Assassin's Creed 1 was more of a flawed experiment, whereas Assassin's Creed 2 is the fully thought out game. I was even going to skip the first one, but since both were on sale on PSN, I downloaded both just so I didn't miss out on the story. I could see a lot of the technical complaints in the first title, especially the screen tearing and the framerate problems. I also didn't like the ending, when suddenly you can't hit certain characters and the only way you could beat them was by countering over and over again. The final boss was especially cheap since you had to do something like five counters in a row, and if you messed up, you had to do it all over again. Then the game just ended with him looking through glyphs in the lab. It was very lame. Overall, I liked the game a lot, though. The idea of sneaking into a city, gaining the trust of the citizens, investigating the targets, forming a plan, and utilizing resources. There was more than one way to execute a mission, like Hitman 2, only less cryptic.
So I hurried up and decided to check out the second game, since I liked the first one so much. The first problem was that they kept introducing more and more collectibles, sidequests, items, and minigames. Then I didn't like Ezio. Before we had a conflicted complicated character, but in this game we have a typical Disney male protagonist. He's handsome, he's out for revenge, and he'll do anything anyone tells him to do. I also didn't like the way they changed Kristen Bell's character from a stern and mysterious lab assistant to sexy badass killer, and gave her two stereotypes for assistants. Oh, a caustic Englishman. Oh, a butch Joan Jett wannabe who loves technobabble. Never seen one of those on the CSIs and NCISs before. The story missions were incredibly straight forward. There's no room for experimentation or planning. You pretty much have to do exactly what the designers intended you to do. The graphics don't have the screen tearing like the first one, but it has ridiculous amounts of pop in and textures flicker constantly. It's distracting, especially when this is supposed to be the superior title.
Considering the title of the game is Assassin's Creed, it's frustrating that it's been two hours since I've done anything relating to assassination. I just got through a part where I had to play capture the flag and time trials to win a golden mask. Just kill the guy and take it! There was also a problem in the first game of Altair not always cooperating with me when he was climbing. I thought they'd fix this in the second game, but instead they added way more ledges and platforms, making it worse. There are even timed platforming sections of the game that are maddening because he won't do what you tell him to do. Then you have to do the whole thing over again. I home alone right now, so you can imagine the obscenities that are flying at the TV.
I started playing these games because I wanted to catch up by the time Revelations came out, but it seems like there were too many cooks in the kitchen (to borrow a Yahtzee sentiment), all randomly throwing vegetables and ingredients into the pot, so it doesn't taste like anything resembling what it should be. Does Brotherhood fix this in any capacity? Or is it more sidequests and pointless repetitive bullshit?
From the reviews I've read, people seem to be of the belief that Assassin's Creed 1 was more of a flawed experiment, whereas Assassin's Creed 2 is the fully thought out game. I was even going to skip the first one, but since both were on sale on PSN, I downloaded both just so I didn't miss out on the story. I could see a lot of the technical complaints in the first title, especially the screen tearing and the framerate problems. I also didn't like the ending, when suddenly you can't hit certain characters and the only way you could beat them was by countering over and over again. The final boss was especially cheap since you had to do something like five counters in a row, and if you messed up, you had to do it all over again. Then the game just ended with him looking through glyphs in the lab. It was very lame. Overall, I liked the game a lot, though. The idea of sneaking into a city, gaining the trust of the citizens, investigating the targets, forming a plan, and utilizing resources. There was more than one way to execute a mission, like Hitman 2, only less cryptic.
So I hurried up and decided to check out the second game, since I liked the first one so much. The first problem was that they kept introducing more and more collectibles, sidequests, items, and minigames. Then I didn't like Ezio. Before we had a conflicted complicated character, but in this game we have a typical Disney male protagonist. He's handsome, he's out for revenge, and he'll do anything anyone tells him to do. I also didn't like the way they changed Kristen Bell's character from a stern and mysterious lab assistant to sexy badass killer, and gave her two stereotypes for assistants. Oh, a caustic Englishman. Oh, a butch Joan Jett wannabe who loves technobabble. Never seen one of those on the CSIs and NCISs before. The story missions were incredibly straight forward. There's no room for experimentation or planning. You pretty much have to do exactly what the designers intended you to do. The graphics don't have the screen tearing like the first one, but it has ridiculous amounts of pop in and textures flicker constantly. It's distracting, especially when this is supposed to be the superior title.
Considering the title of the game is Assassin's Creed, it's frustrating that it's been two hours since I've done anything relating to assassination. I just got through a part where I had to play capture the flag and time trials to win a golden mask. Just kill the guy and take it! There was also a problem in the first game of Altair not always cooperating with me when he was climbing. I thought they'd fix this in the second game, but instead they added way more ledges and platforms, making it worse. There are even timed platforming sections of the game that are maddening because he won't do what you tell him to do. Then you have to do the whole thing over again. I home alone right now, so you can imagine the obscenities that are flying at the TV.
I started playing these games because I wanted to catch up by the time Revelations came out, but it seems like there were too many cooks in the kitchen (to borrow a Yahtzee sentiment), all randomly throwing vegetables and ingredients into the pot, so it doesn't taste like anything resembling what it should be. Does Brotherhood fix this in any capacity? Or is it more sidequests and pointless repetitive bullshit?
