Always make a good first impression : AC2

So friday rolled on by and so did AC2, like previously stated I had been looking forward to this game and hoped it would build upon AC1's successes and get rid of the numerous flaws, has it so far?

Yes and no.

Ive been playing the game for roughly 3-4 hours and have noticed a huge improvement over the first, for one, it seems like the repetitive nature of the first game has been removed with different missions replacing the structured and boring nature of the first AC1's "listen and follow" information gathering that really didn't show off what Altair could do. Speaking of Altair, I miss him. Altair was a cold blooded killer who didn't care who he killed aslong as he got what he needed, whereas the new main character, Ezio, whilst cold blooded, still is given a weird introduction involving errand running and womanizing, giving him this sort of emotional approach may work fro some games but in this one, I want less emotions are more stabbing in the face, this also means that for about 90 minutes of the game you'll be bored. Its a real slow starter that had me glancing at MW2 more than once. On the not of character one of the most unlikeable characters appears in Shawn, a British modern day assassin who has one of the loudest voices in the history of video games.

The graphics are still incredibly impressive for a game of this scale, with every building and everybody being superbly detailed, that is until you watch one of the in-game cut scenes which are at best passable and at worst laughable. Every character appears to be suffering from some sort of facial deformity with the best having to be Lucy's Stillman's huge mouth, also a weird birth scene at the start which really looks terrible. 

 

The combat also appears to have had very little changed, this being a good and bad thing, whilst its still fun to jump on dudes and stab them in the back, its really tedious and boring to hammer X for all of eternity to kill guys although being able to disarm guys is a plus.

 

The controls are responsive and have been refined to make climbing that bit more fun although at the start it felt like Ezio was allot clunkier than Altair and the climbing appeared to have lost its flow that AC1 beautifully had, whilst thats sort of improved as I've been playing it, i still feel like Altair is the more agile and for me, more fun assassin. Also, the game has this weird habit of  making you jump in totally the wrong direction another issue I never remember having the AC1, this is down to the game assuming where you want to go , whilst the majority of the time this works just fine, its also not working  on enough occasions to get me annoyed about it.  Ezio also feels quit clunky whilst just running around with sharp corners taking much longer than the need to to get around and usually ending with me running into a wall. 

 

So far AC2 is looking like a big improvement upon AC1, and whilst its taken longer than it should of to get going its currently a very fun game to play. I said at the moment its a solid 7.

Post of twos!

Not long now till one of my most anticipated games of 2009 appears on my door step!

AC1 was a weird one for me, out of ten id give it a three, due to how boring the game got within about 2 hours yet for me, id always seen something special in it, like a gem in the rough. The climbing for example is spectacular, and jumping on peoples faces never got old. One thing that particularly pissed me off no end about AC one was the ending, id drudged through hours of listening to people, stabbing, listening etc, for quite frankly the worst ending of all time, I hope AC2 justifies the ending of the first. All the trailers have looked incredible and it really looks like Ubisoft seem to have listened to the criticisms and reviews have so far been extremely good, looks like this will be the game to pry me away from...

Of course it is. The game that you cant avoid. I was never a big fan of the first, I thought it was a vastly over rated decent FPS, so I was pretty adamant about MW2 until about the 8th of November when I caved in and put some monies to the side for it.

Well, its allot better than the first packing far more punch into a shorter, much more disjointed campaign. Each mission feels like its own cornered off action movie and the cut scenes inbetween does so little to help its a wonder they just didn't have a picture of a sandwich appear. The one thing MW1 has over 2 is the fact that it actually manages to get you to care for the character whereas in 2, it seems far more detached and therefore means its harder to actually care for the people you play as. As for "that" level, for me, its nothing deserving of the controversy it stirred up but thats down to your own opinion.

The real meat of the game lies in its vastly improved multi-player. Despite being a decent distraction for all of 5 minutes, MW1's multi player never grabbed me like it seemed to grab so many people maybe it was because it felt much more of a spray fest than Halo 3, which I much preferred at the time, this time though thats all changed. The MP has been improved dramatically becoming a much faster and much more brutal game. The first few matches I played were horrific after about 5 games i had a kill to death ratio of around 0.1, but once you get into the rhythm of it, something I imagine MW1 veterans will find allot easier than new players, and get a feel for a certain gun it becomes a very fun and more importantly very addictive multi player experience.

The graphics appeared to have stayed static from MW1 to MW2 with little improvement over the 2 year old game something which is slightly disappointing given the amount of time and the amount of money they had to spend on the game.

A much improved experience and one that deserves to be played be everyone, except maybe PC gamers.

8 out of 10.

P.S too tired to be uber critical but damn it its a pretty good game aswell! 

So..This is the first post.

Not much to write really, just here to say Hi, and welcome to my blog, just a place where i can dash my uber-critical thoughts down and stuff!