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.