Assassin's Creed II is a trophy of the modern age of gaming - an improvement, a pleasure to play, and very, very fun.
Assassin's Creed was one such title – released in 2007, it promised freedom to move and climb everywhere, supplemented with smooth animation and combat, as well as a quirky storyline that mixed historical crusading with science fiction. And, for the most part, it delivered: the first three hours of the game were very interesting, with a simple series of tutorials followed by a bit of back-story, a bit of delving into the reasons behind why your target deserves to die, concluded with your character, the hard-as-nails Altaïr ibn La-Ahad , driving the blade concealed in his wrist through his target's throat, before having a frank discussion with them regarding their death. Those three hours will have been filled with twists, turns, and all manner of shenanigans. Unfortunately, those three hours promptly repeated themselves for the (very long) duration of the game, meaning only the most determined (or genuinely interested) would be able to see the game through to its baffling conclusion.
So, then, anyone who had experienced the first game will have been scratching their head looking for answers regarding the plot, and will likely be considerably apprehensive about signing up for more of the same. It is absolutely fantastic, therefore, that Assassin's Creed II picks up only the good parts from its predecessor and runs with them on a fantastical journey of wonder, discovery and laughter and never looks back.
If you're unfamiliar with the story behind Assassin's Creed, you aren't actually playing as the weapons-strewn badass on the cover. You're actually Desmond Miles, a bartender in the year 2012 who is a distant descendant of the weapons-strewn badass on the cover. Through an invention known as the Animus, Desmond is able to access the memories of his ancestors and essentially play as them in an effort for Abstergo, the company that has captured him, to locate a mysterious device known only as a "Piece of Eden".
The second game picks up with Desmond breaking out of Abstergo with Lucy, a technician from the previous game who was actually on Desmond's side. Not only do you see more of Abstergo in these fleeting minutes of the second game than you ever did in the first, it is immediately apparent from just looking around the room in which you spent the entire of the last game that the graphical quality has been markedly improved. Assassin's Creed II is a gorgeous-looking game. Characters move freely, changing direction and pace freely with no jumpy animations, and everything moves and reacts as it would in the real world.
Upon escaping from Abstergo, Desmond meets up with the other Assassins. All two of them. There's Shaun, a British (yay!) historian who you will find either incredibly funny or intolerably annoying after listening to him talk for a minute, and Rebecca, who has created a better Animus. Some techno-babble later and Desmond is off into the Animus 2.0 to explore his ancestors' memories.
The Animus is effectively a universal goof sponge – any errors with the game are explained away by characters as being technical faults in the fictional device itself. But a lot of these errors are intentional and are inserted into the game both to give a realistic feel to the sci-fi aspects as well as the historical ones. Any improvements are likewise explained away as updates to the Animus's software.
After the sci-fi calms down a bit, we are introduced to Ezio Auditore da Firenze. And if you didn't guess by the name, Ubisoft have hit the nail on the head: Ezio is an infinitely deeper, more interesting and likeable character than Altaïr ever was. It's helped a lot by the fact that not only does the game feature proper cutscenes as opposed to the original game's "walk around this predefined area while I talk to you" approach, you control Ezio from the time before he is an Assassin. In fact, Ezio is not an assassin for the vast majority of the game, and is in effect learning how to be one from the ground up – as, indeed, are you. Whereas the first game started you out with all the weapons then took them all away, Assassin's Creed II will still be rewarding and congratulating you for your efforts even after you've watched the end credits fly by and are just careening across Italy having fun.
And by that, I do mean "fun" – above everything else that has been given to the game, from the ability to swim to the ability to change the colour of your outfit, the most important addition is that the game has a sense of humour. You will genuinely laugh as Ezio quips back at other characters and enjoys himself – and this also makes the game's more solemn moments especially hard-hitting. He'll also develop true friends – including the charming and well-realised Leonardo da Vinci and loveable rogue Rosa – and not just in Ezio's world. As you free-run through streets and clamber up buildings, the game will constantly label important buildings and historical figures, reminding you that you are in a living, breathing world. The database is also written (and in some cases voiced) by Shaun the Brit Historian, and, regardless of whether or not you like the character, is funny and interesting to browse through at your leisure.
The investigation missions of the previous game have been completely removed; instead, you are given a huge number of missions to accomplish which realistically fill you in on your target, as well as some not even focused on assassination at all. Indeed, the first chapter of the game feels exactly like what it is: playing as a young man without a care in the world. And on top of this, you'll never, ever get bored. Perhaps you'll even get so embroiled playing it that you'll completely become absorbed and get almost the entire game done in a few days like I did – any objective is now within reach, and there are no glitches to catch in the cutscenes, no minutes to last in open combat and no required assassination methods: achievements are distributed evenly and it's most likely that you'll get most of them for just having a whole lot of fun – which, at its heart, this game is all about.
Assassin's Creed II is everything its predecessor was, everything its predecessor tried to be, and a whole lot more besides. It's interesting, charismatic, heartwarming, and even heartbreaking in places, but above all, it's exactly how it should be: heaps and heaps of fun.