Assassin's Creed 2 - thoughts, opinions, comments?

This thread will be for gameplay discussion of Assassin's Creed 2 for the PC - please keep any discussions about Ubisoft's DRM confined to those threads. Thank you. :)

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My first impressions, after playing for a couple of hours, are extremely positive. For me, the original game was really an exploratory game - but here in the sequel the gameplay, at least in the initial hours, is much richer and deeper. The story is unfolding very nicely, and the missions themselves are hugely enjoyable, and don't feel repetitious at all. So my biggest complaint about the first game has actually been addressed. Hooray!

I'm a bit of a graphics.... horse... so you'll have to forgive me for shouting with joy about how this game looks. The 360 version is antiquated junk in comparison with this. I've seen the 360 version and it's not even close. The colors in this game seem much richer than in the original (for the PC) but somehow everything looks a whole lot sharper as well. I also love the way certain NPCs are highlighted slightly - it's a charming effect that really catches your eye. The art style, this time out, is much more interesting than it was in the original game - you really feel like you're wandering through Italy during the Renaissance: the clothing that people are wearing, and the style of architecture is all amazingly well done.

With all the sliders maxed out, and 4X AA, at 1920x1080, the game not only looks fantastic but it runs like butter (Core i7, GTX 275, VISTA 64). At first there was a slightly jittering sensation, which was really annoying me a lot, but this was completely resolved when I turned off V-sync. Also, I'm using a 360 controller and it's fantastic. I can use the analog movement to glide Ezio around corners while I explore Florence.

All in all, this has surpassed my expectations so far. I'm only a few hours in, but this has already got game-of-the-year written on it for me personally.

I have to agree with you about the combat - right away, early on, the combat is just so much more enjoyable than the first game. But there are just so many obvious improvements in this game. I have to agree as well that this is maybe one of the best sequels I've played in many years.

The only thing I don't agree with you is about whipping through this game! I want this one to last.

It is an Amazing game i have it for the PS3. I wish ppl would just shut the hell up about DRM its not that bad.

If I were searching for something to complain about, the left and right triggers don't work for the wireless 360 controller. I've since discovered that the wireless controller isn't even supported for this game. The wired controller - yes. The wireless controller - no. That said, I've been using the wireless controller and apart from those two trigger buttons, which I re-mapped right away, it works perfectly. The wireless controller is even listed in the main menu.

I also notched the AA up to 8X and it's still running like butter on my system.

But my god is AC 2 ever an atmospheric game - I can't wait to get to the Tuscanny map. This is where the countryside opens up around a much smaller town, which obviously never happened in the original game. Florence is pretty cool though. :)

Started playing yesterday the camera is not perfect also i saw there were certain frame rate drops i got fps from 50-24fpsdinjo_jo

I have C2D 2.4Ghz , 2GB DDR2 , Palit GTS 250 1GB i'm running it on 1440X900dinjo_jo

[QUOTE="dinjo_jo"]I have C2D 2.4Ghz , 2GB DDR2 , Palit GTS 250 1GB i'm running it on 1440X900WufusRainwright

His C2D is only 2.4, and he has only 2gbs of ram. Up that to 3.0ghz, and 4gbs of ram and I bet it would run much smoother.

Great game so far. Much improved over the 1st one by about 1000 miles. Mouse and keyboard support is horrible in this game. Story holding strong.

Graphics are kinda meh. Not great but not bad either. I see some sort of distracting weird shadow lines being rendered constantly as I get closer or farther away from objects and walls. Hey, at least antialiasing works.

Respectfully, I'm going to have to disagree with you about the graphics - I'm pretty much floored by them, especially in light of how much better they are than the 360 version. And in my opinion, they're better than the original PC version as well. Quite a bit better, actually. I've just gone back to the original, to have a look at it, and for me, there is no going back.

You have to make sure your monitor is calibrated properly - I even had to adjust the in-game gamma setting to 5. But what surprises me is how much sharper the graphics are in this game - what's going on here? Is this some sort of a texture thing? If you look at the side of a building, say, where there's scrollwork carved into the wood, it's just incredibly crisp and clear. The NPCs are also much more detailed than the NPCs in the original game - you can walk right up to a person and see the intricate threading of their clothing! Also, the colors are richer. It's almost like some sort of filter has been removed from the screen. The colors are less muted somehow?

But anyhow, after more than 3 hours of playing I'm pretty much blown away by this.

There are so many little things happening, which are difficult to explain, precisely because there are so many of them - here's just one example of what I mean though. Remember in the original game, how the first time a woman came up to you and said: "Please, sir! I'm sick and my children are starving! Please sir, give me some change!" Remember how impressive that was the first time it happened, and how you were already sick of it the second time, and how by the one hundredth time all you wanted to do was punch her lights out? The frustrating thing of course was that you actually couldn't give her any spare change. In this game, not only can you throw your spare change at people who look like they need it (and, no, they don't annoy you by coming up to you and begging for change), but if there's a choke-point where some rival gang members or guards are standing, you can hurtle some change onto the ground, and those gang members or guards will get right in amongst the populace and scramble for the coinage - meanwhile, you slip on past. It just makes the game less tedious to play. And it makes sense as well.

Just so many things happening in this game. Seriously, game-of-the-year for me so far. Better than Mass Effect 2, which I loved.

EDIT: You can put me on ignore if you want to. I just get very excited about games like this, and sometimes I can't help myself from posting about it. Assassin's Creed 2 turns me on, and this game is the perfect example of how much better PC games are, these days, than their console counterparts. I played 2 hours of this game on the 360 when it was originally released and it did nothing for me. Console players, in my opinion, don't understand image quality. They don't 'get it' that a powerful PC can display an image that's just way, way sharper and more detailed than anything you'll see on hardware that's now undeniably long in the tooth. This is a wonderful game.

Have only played the xbox version, but it was very dissapointing to me personally. Might be the most overrated series to me this gen.
A cool setting and nice graphics doenst cut it for me these days.

Better then the first AC game, but thats not saying much. This is just my honest opinion

And, jesus, I can't believe I forgot to mention the day/night cycle. It's much more realistic now. As twilight descends, all the lights start popping up around you. You can only wonder why this wasn't in the original game as well.

A few other comments:

Remember those little hiding places that were on the rooftop buildings in AC1 - the ones with the drapes covering them, which you would jump into in order to hide from guards who were pursuing you? In the original game, those things were everywhere. In this game, there are far fewer of them, meaning that it's much more difficult to evade guards (it feels more realistic to me). I tend to want to fight the guards more in this game anyhow, since you have more options available to you during fights, such as stealing their own weapons and stabbing them with them.

The so-called landmarks are much more enjoyable to climb now. In the first game, all you had to do, really, was just start going up. In this game, you have to think more. There are sometimes three or four different layers to the landmarks, some of which you even have to enter inside of before you can continue to climb. You really get a sense of vertigo when you're way up there.

I can see now that the facial work of the NPCs is much clearer than what we saw in the first game (in the first game the faces of the NPCs were just downright fuzzy, and lacking in any sort of detail). In the mission 'Friend of The Family', for example, when you're walking along with your mother to go pick up some paintings painted by a young upcoming artist named Leonard Da Vinci, pay attention to Ezio's mother's face - we saw nothing like that in the first game. Her face is sharp and really well defined. You can even make out the engravings on the brooch around her neck if you zoom in close enough.

I still can't quite explain though, why this game doesn't feel repetitious. It's more plot oriented, I think. The missions sort of follow a story arc, rather than a kind of looping algorithm. It just works.

Game of the year all years.

I'm glad to hear that AC2 doesn't have the same damn repetitiveness (missionsand stuff )as the first one. It was the only thing holding back AC from becoming so amazing.

Reading all this is making me itch for it!

I was so hyped back last year when it still had the multi plat release date, but my enthusiasm dropped as each new bit of news about the PC version was released.

It seems the online issues have been somewhat ironed out, is that right?

If so i may pick up this game sooner than i thought.

Does it support any USB gamepad like the first one? I don't have an Xbox controller, and I'd rather not play with KB/M.

I wouldn't normally ask but more and more games are only supporting xbox controllers (Batman AA, Just Cause 2)

AMAZING!

I'm in memory sequence 7.

Sometimes it lags a bit though, which is surprising because I can run games from 2010 on high, with framerates at 60fps.

If I were searching for something to complain about, the left and right triggers don't work for the wireless 360 controller. I've since discovered that the wireless controller isn't even supported for this game. The wired controller - yes. The wireless controller - no. That said, I've been using the wireless controller and apart from those two trigger buttons, which I re-mapped right away, it works perfectly. The wireless controller is even listed in the main menu.

I also notched the AA up to 8X and it's still running like butter on my system.

But my god is AC 2 ever an atmospheric game - I can't wait to get to the Tuscanny map. This is where the countryside opens up around a much smaller town, which obviously never happened in the original game. Florence is pretty cool though. :)

WufusRainwright

I heard that it's pretty much like the first game, but with only different look and moves. This and the DRM might make me not buy it at all.

Will wait and see.

I know I'm probably in the minority, but I found the game rather dull. The mechanics and controls were all spot on, but the story bored me to tears. With the exception of Leonardo, the characters were just so uninteresting.

Not sure if this is helpful since I haven't played AC2 yet, but my friends that have played the original and the sequel, all say the sequel is better.

[QUOTE="WufusRainwright"]

If I were searching for something to complain about, the left and right triggers don't work for the wireless 360 controller. I've since discovered that the wireless controller isn't even supported for this game. The wired controller - yes. The wireless controller - no. That said, I've been using the wireless controller and apart from those two trigger buttons, which I re-mapped right away, it works perfectly. The wireless controller is even listed in the main menu.

I also notched the AA up to 8X and it's still running like butter on my system.

But my god is AC 2 ever an atmospheric game - I can't wait to get to the Tuscanny map. This is where the countryside opens up around a much smaller town, which obviously never happened in the original game. Florence is pretty cool though. :)

tghm1801

Core i7 - GTX 275 - VISTA 64

I'm using the wireless 360 controller and I've never dipped below 30 fps (most times I'm way above it) - all sliders maxed at 1920x1080. I had a problem with V-sync, which caused weird stuttering whenever I swiveled the camera, but that issue went away after I disabled it.

This game feels slightly more optimized to me than the original. And I've gone back and looked at the original game twice now, and this one is just better looking - to see this, all you have to do is examine the face of Ezio's mother when you're walking along with her in-game, and then exit and start up the original game... you'll see how that detail and clarity is just missing. I have no idea how the developers create this stuff but I'm guessing it's some sort of texture thing that's going on.

Anyhow, I stayed up until 2 o'clock in the morning last night playing AC2 (and am paying for it now quite frankly). But I was enthralled by it. If there's one thing people need to know about this game it's that the mindless repetition of the first game is just gone - you're constantly moving forward and doing new things.

That said, it's still very much an exploratory game. I could walk the streets for hours, just exploring the world, and accepting the missions as they're presented to me. The missions, by the way, such as the timed running missions, are more fun in this game, because they're actually challenging. If you fail on your first try (and you likely will) then you're taken right back to the start of the mission, and off you go again. Usually when you finally do succeed you have only seconds to spare. And these types of missions, by the way, are no longer connected to the main quest - they're entirely optional this time.

The diversity of the maps is not to be taken for granted either. Remember how the cities in the first game all looked alike - not so in this game. You know you're always in Italy, but Tuscany is Tuscany and Florence is Florence, etc. etc.

[QUOTE="tghm1801"][QUOTE="WufusRainwright"]

If I were searching for something to complain about, the left and right triggers don't work for the wireless 360 controller. I've since discovered that the wireless controller isn't even supported for this game. The wired controller - yes. The wireless controller - no. That said, I've been using the wireless controller and apart from those two trigger buttons, which I re-mapped right away, it works perfectly. The wireless controller is even listed in the main menu.

I also notched the AA up to 8X and it's still running like butter on my system.

But my god is AC 2 ever an atmospheric game - I can't wait to get to the Tuscanny map. This is where the countryside opens up around a much smaller town, which obviously never happened in the original game. Florence is pretty cool though. :)

WufusRainwright

Core i7 - GTX 275 - VISTA 64

I'm using the wireless 360 controller and I've never dipped below 30 fps (most times I'm way above it) - all sliders maxed at 1920x1080. I had a problem with V-sync, which caused weird stuttering whenever I swiveled the camera, but that issue went away after I disabled it.

This game feels slightly more optimized to me than the original. And I've gone back and looked at the original game twice now, and this one is just better looking - to see this, all you have to do is examine the face of Ezio's mother when you're walking along with her in-game, and then exit and start up the original game... you'll see how that detail and clarity is just missing. I have no idea how the developers create this stuff but I'm guessing it's some sort of texture thing that's going on.

Anyhow, I stayed up until 2 o'clock in the morning last night playing AC2 (and am paying for it now quite frankly). But I was enthralled by it. If there's one thing people need to know about this game it's that the mindless repetition of the first game is just gone - you're constantly moving forward and doing new things.

That said, it's still very much an exploratory game. I could walk the streets for hours, just exploring the world, and accepting the missions as they're presented to me. The missions, by the way, such as the timed running missions, are more fun in this game, because they're actually challenging. If you fail on your first try (and you likely will) then you're taken right back to the start of the mission, and off you go again. Usually when you finally do succeed you have only seconds to spare. And these types of missions, by the way, are no longer connected to the main quest - they're entirely optional this time.

The diversity of the maps is not to be taken for granted either. Remember how the cities in the first game all looked alike - not so in this game. You know you're always in Italy, but Tuscany is Tuscany and Florence is Florence, etc. etc.

So what do you guys think about the new blending mechanic?

At first, I was searching all over the place for the blend button, only to realize, foolishly, that there was no blend button. You just move Ezio into a group, any group, and join them, at which time Ezio turns black and white and a gray bordered area appears on the ground. All you have to do is stay within the bordered area and you'll stay blended. Of course you have to go where the crowd goes - but it's like swimming with a school of fish in that you just hop from school to school. IMO, this mechanic is yet another improvement over the original game. In AC 1 you had to wait for a certain group to come along, and their destination was pre-set. Here, rather, you can go wherever you choose, as long as you can continue to successfully blend. I think it works well.

Also, did anybody here forget about the Assassin's clothing? I got so used to wearing Ezio's regular street clothing that when I donned the Assassin's uniform it was almost like finally getting a light saber in one of the Star Wars games - I suddenly felt more powerful, and of course you're finally given a blade.

All in all, pretty damned cool - and nope, after hours and hours of playing I've not been kicked off once, nor ever had a problem launching the game. Although that's DRM talk isn't it? Doh! I'm breaking my own rule!

Gawd... the Tuscanny map, when you're out in the Italian countryside, looks like a water-color Renaissance painting come to life. It's staggeringly beautiful.

I wish ppl would just shut the hell up about DRM its not that bad.

mattuk69

I liked it - you can't go in any buildings - the voice acting & characters are pretty generic - the sidequests still have that mechanical feel of the first - the information on thebuildings& characters was pretty interesting -

I wished it had more of an Oblivion feel to it - in Oblivion each city has some kind of mystery to it - because you dont know what yourgonna find, in thisthere is no depth to it - it still feels like an a city which you can't sorta break through - i think more sidequests would make a great difference

And er the story is alright I guess - I would prefer the game to just be set in the past without the memories

It remindsme ofThe Godfather in it's style ofgameplay layout which is I hate the most about this game -

I loved the city art & the game is beautiful, the customization was great & the prince of persia tombs were awesome

I wish they would add more to it in a GTA/Oblivion kind of way or if it had more stealth like Hitman with choices

Wandering around the Tuscany map, all I could think was thank god Oblvion's engine didn't look this good - because if it had I probably would have lost my life to it.