transient thoughts

After Uncharted 2, I made my way back to the Sony area to queue for Assassin’s Creed II. I could have tried it over at the Ubisoft booth, but I was lured by a shorter queue (only 15 minutes in the end!).

While not necessarily a reflection of the game itself, I have to say that this was, for me, the most disappointing demo of the show.

Why? There are a few reasons. For one, I don’t think this is a game well suited to a 12 minute demo. The first Creed was, in many ways, quite a slow game, or at least a game that emphasised un-hurriedness as a major design element.

The demo featured a single mission – go an meet an informant, killing 5 potentially troublesome rooftop archers on the way. The demo was only half hands-on – first I had Sony Demo Guy show me a few things, and take out the first of the 5 archers, before handing the controller to me. From then on, he was leaning over my shoulder, pointing things out, commenting on things, and so forth. It’s not a situation I particularly like at the best of times, but it really left me feeling unable to just roam around and explore the city (especially with him periodically checking his watch). Simply rushing from objective to objective in the first game killed a lot of the experience, and that’s exactly what I ended up doing in this demo.

My other criticism of the demo was that it didn’t really show me anything I didn’t know from watching trailers and playing the first game. About the only thing new I saw was that you could change the colour of Ezio’s outfit at the shops I knew were in the game, although Demo Guy did point out that it doesn’t actually make you any stronger or anything, it’s purely cosmetic (incidentally, I remember reading somewhere else that it actually may have some slight effects on your conspicuousness in certain situations).

All of that said, there’s still a lot that’s exciting about this game. It’s impossible not to notice the huge graphical upgrade over the first game – Venice is significantly more detailed and impressive than the Holy Land was. Ezio seems to have a great many more nasty tricks up his sleeves than Altair did – I did enjoy pulling guys of ledges in the demo. And there is the promise of a much more varied gaming experience than the first one delivered. And for all it’s shortcomings, the first game was still a reasonably interesting and entertaining experience. Taken together, these are all reason that I will more likely than not pick up this title.

It’s just a shame that the demo of the game really didn’t do much in the way of reinforcing those points.

written by .klik2