There will be spoilers here, in that the entire second game spoils the promise of the series.

Assassin's Creed was a game of truly next-generation potential. From its control-scheme to the depth in which your character could scale walls to its surprisingly subtle and well-paced story, the game was everything it should have been. You rode a horse, fought templars and killed currupt men. Some could call it repetitive, but I call it focused.

And assassinations were actually the main point in the original game. It's what everything built up to. In the second, I spent as much time assassinating as I did upgrading brothels and chasing pickpockets. And you also witnessed I also enjoyed the treat of witnessing my targets being evil and curropt before I killed them. In AC2 you just take people's word that the baddies you kill are, in fact baddies. You're not nearly as engaged with the people you take down. And everything, whether you're eavesdropping or pickpocketting, is connected and related to the story or your assassinations to make you want to kill those you're after in the first. In AC2, you're doing a hundreed irrelevant things that have nothing to do with the story at all, or the gamplay, for that matter, since it's as easy as it gets. They give you a gun for god's sake and you can use it to assassinate your targets.


Ezio shoots first and asks questions later...Literally.

The worst offence to the series was the story, though. The writers of the game decided they didn't want to do things subtly and dark this time around, so they gave away all the plot points and did it with as little taste as possible. I mean, you know the story has taken a hard left turn when it expects a forced-in utterance of the word" vagina to get a shock-laugh.

So, this time, the villains are just some guys who killed your father and are also greedy. Oh, and the pope...
Now as far as the memorable heroes go, you've gotten quite an upgrade in quantity, though in absolutly no way did that transfer into quality: You have a nerdy girl who is basically a clone of Keria from Jak and Daxter, just minus the ears. Then, you have a cynical British guy who would have been original over a decade ago and you also have an assortment of hookers and theives... Oh, and Leonardo Davinci

The game decides to take this inexplicable route where every villainous person in the world is in politics and all the most good-natured people of the world and theives and whores. That's right, they're all smart, they're all strong, they're all looking out for the greater common good. What's wrong with this? Well, it's simple: Theives steal from people and whores have sex for money. Neither of these profession take much brains or strength and they both do the least for the common good, especially stealing form people. That's, in fact, working for the opposite of the common good. You think there'd be a knight or banished royalty or someone who tries to do things for the common good that Ezio could fight along side, but nope. It's theives and whores all the way. Let's save the city!


"Before this, I spent my time having sex in back alleys and robbing my costomers while their pants were down, obviously."

Then, there's Leonardo, who is in the game only becasue it takes place in Itally during his life and that is the ONLY reaosn. Does he add to the story? Nope. Does he make sense as a part of the story? Nope. He's simply there becasue people can recognize him and be like, "Hey, that's that guy who paints!" For a series that, up until this entry, took itself very seriously, you'd think this would seem a little amatureish, but they run right along with it. The only thing he gives Ezio is the ability to not-chop off his finger in sacrafice for the hidden blade. I audiably groaned when this happened. I didn't know Ubisoft was suddenly aiming for a light-hearted, G rated, assassinating adventure. Well, maybe that's why half of the assassinations were missing, you never saw anyone being evil and the last thing a theive or whore would do is hurt anyone or have any sex. The sly devils!


For Assassin's Crred 3, Ubisoft intends to remove all weapons and refer to fighting as "dancing."

The plot itself has only gotten worse, as well. The first game never gave all its secrets away, left you in a mystery. It left you with obscure images covering a floor with you wondering what it all meant. That sparked internet buzz like the second game never did, because it was well done. What did the second game do? It slapped you right across the face. It was like it was mad at you for wanting to know what happened next and was just like "You want to know so badly? Goddamn, we're aliens! Alright? You get it? We're f***ing aliens!" It went from an intriguing and complex work of Science Fiction to poorly paced B movie in a single game. They didn't try to tease you anymore. They just said it all in the most broken diologue humanly possible. There was nothing more heart-sinking than putting hours into solving all the puzzles and expecting some amazing clip for all that work just to get: "Adam, what happened?" "Eve, look out!" Followed by the British guy asking, "Is that what I think it was?" Because the developers did a really subtly job of sneaking in that it was Adam and Eve and the question was totally worth asking.

It's like they just stopped trying.