Assassin's Creed 2 finished!

So with this update I bring the news that I have finished Assassin's Creed 2. It is a pretty fantastic game and it improves almost every aspect of the first game. There were a few minor annoyances in the game which I think I will just get out of the way right now. The race events just suck in my opinion. If you mess up one little thing while racing it can potentially screw you. Like you can be running along and just barely face the wrong way then all of a sudden you are either jump the complete wrong way or just fall. The time it takes to get re-situated can potentially just ruin the run. And if you fail you have to restart and the game likes to point you in a different unintuitive direction at the start of the race which can potentially mess up the start.

The other complaint I have revolves around a very particular mission where you have to grab a flag and bring it back. You are against a NPC player and if they get it you have to tackle them to get it back. Tackling in this game just kinda sucks in my opinion and I'm glad they don't usually use it because it feels really crappy. Another very minor complaint is that it's hard to target assassination targets while dealing with guards. There is a specific mission where you have to kill like 4 guys in a courtyard and once you kill 1 or 2 of them guards come after you. The way my mind works is that I want to kill the targets then either deal with the guards or run away. I think this is a sound plan and try to do this but every time a guard takes a swing at me he is auto-targeted so I can't just go after the assassination target. Kinda annoying but a very specific problem that only happens like 1 time in the game (at least from what I remember). More about Assassin's Creed 2 after the break.

The part I loved about the first Assassin's Creed was actually the story of Desmond and what was going on in the current time. The stuff regarding Altair was interesting but I kept looking forward to finding out why Desmond was forced to relive this genetic memories. The first game ended up being really cool at the end (at least I thought it was really cool). Apparently most people didn't really like all the Desmond in the game and just wanted to past stuff so there is definitely less Desmond in this game. Needless to say that was kinda disappointing to me. Granted the parts where he is featured were really really cool but I just kinda liked visiting that character more in the first game but the story is definitely stronger in this game.

About 98% of the game you are playing as Ezio who is a dude that lives in Italy. You start out the genetic memory as Ezio being born and then you are a teenager and a lot of your family dies. You, your sister and your mother all survive and go to your uncle Mario's house and this place is kinda a hub city. In this location you can upgrade shops and make the town prettier. If you do this you get more money all the time which I really like (money is deposited every 20 minutes). Money is never really a issue in this game if you invest all your money into the town. But you find out that your dad was an assassin and you are going to get vengeance on the people who wronged your family. This is the main storyline of the Ezio part of the game, it's just a revenge story which is by no means a bad thing. I found this stuff really interesting but what I really liked was finding these hidden glyphs.

There are these glyphs (20 of them total in the game) that you can only see in "Eagle Vision" which is this vision mode where you can see people or things highlighted. But on certain buildings there are glyphs that if you look at them unlock a part of a video that a previous person programmed into these memories (the complete video is sweet). Kinda confusing but these games do stuff like that and I like it. During these you are finding these lost pieces of eden hidden in photos. These segments are really neat and kinda bring the story back to Desmond. The game does kinda get crazy-go-nuts on the story toward the end. It just kinda takes this awesome right turn at the end and everything clicks together. I really thought the end of this game was just fantastic. It makes me want a lot more Assassin's Creed and what I hope they do (and it looks like this might be the case) is play as Desmond in the modern time period. I think this is the most logical choice once Assassin's Creed 3 comes out. With that being said some game designers like to do things that I don't understand sometimes.