Review: Assassin's Creed II

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, and probably some other one, I don’t really care. I played it on the Xbox 360.
Release Date: November 17th, 2009

When I first found out about the game several months ago, I was a little skeptical about what was going to be happening in it. The first one started out really interesting than sort of got really repetitive. It was rather annoying to wander around in the real world at a slow pace and then when you went into the Animus you had to sit there gathering information by either pick pocketing, sitting on a park bench or beating people. The worst was that you didn’t do it once, you did it for every assassination target and had a minimum number of events you must do before you could actually get out. However, that was Assassin’s Creed, and when I saw the trailer for Assassin’s Creed II it gave me some optimism that the game had changed.

I did get the game for Christmas and I started playing it a couple days later.

Storyline

Luckily, I was right in my optimism. The storyline of this game was a lot more interesting than it was in the first one. The missions were actually different and a decent amount of fun. Be it there was some repetition, but of course that’s going to happen. The dialogue between the characters actually gave purpose and meaning to the missions that you were doing. You wanted to kill the assassination targets not because you wanted to, but because you hated them for what they did to you. Well… you in the sense of the character Ezio.The ending was incredibly interesting and perfectly sets up Assassin’s Creed III. Again I like to keep this section short, because other gaming websites tell you about the storyline and personally I wouldn’t want to give out any spoilers.

Graphics

They aren’t the best I’ve seen, the thing that bugged me the most was the mouths of the characters. The artists tried to make the mouths look/move realistic but it just kind of looks a bit goofy.

Controls

The controls of the game system seem to be rather interesting. The truth of the matter is they were simple to use, at least the basics were. Horse riding was still a huge problem from the first game and they were a bit sensitive for my tastes. What I mean by sensitive is the fact that you could be running full speed down a hallway, attempt to turn into a doorway only to make a sharp turn and run up the wall. This kind of happened a lot to me when I was depositing the feathers in the Villa.

Achievements

This is the first game in awhile that has no multiplayer to it, so all the achievements were based on the campaign. This allowed me to actually focus on some stuff and actually get 1000/1000. The most difficult/tedious achievements were the “No Hitter”, which is fighting 10 guards and killing them without getting hit., and “In Memory of Petruccio”, where you collect all the feathers. My last achievement was the No Hitter.

One achievement I wish they carried over from Assassin’s Creed was the synchronize the view points. Maybe they took this away to get rid of some of the repetitiveness, but this time there was a reason to go up onto all of them. All the view points were in the city and in order to make your way around the city effectively you would want to see the mini-map.

Review: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

So I’m really bored at the Learning commons, and figure why not do a post about a game that I’ve been playing a ton of since it came out. That would be Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

At first I was very skeptical of the game, there wasn’t much about it before it got released but then again I wasn’t really looking for anything. I was paying closer attention to Halo: ODST and Assassin’s Creed 2 and Left 4 Dead 2.

I’m actually glad I got this game. I played through the storyline twice, and it’s simply amazing. I love the places you fight, and the plot is just simply amazing. I cannot complain whatsoever with that. I’m not going to give away any spoilers, but then again if you wanted Spoilers you’d probably go to another site and read their review (Why are you reading this anyways are you crazy?)

My biggest gripes with the game is the multiplayer.

There are a lot of problems just with guns. First thing, Akimbo shotguns… Really? As if a shotgun needs to become anymore powerful. I understand Halo did this too with the Maulers but there is  a big difference between the two. In Halo the effective range of the mauler is really short, whereas give someone the high class shotgun, and make it akimbo, it becomes a freaking sniper rifle. I’ve been killed with Akimbo 1887 from like 30-40 feet so many times it’s not even funny. The worst part is when you walk around a corner you have zero chance. I mean, I’m not going to lie one of my 5 custom classes has akimbo rangers but those are sawed off shotguns and between the two of them have 4 shots. The Akimbo 1887 have 12 shots between the two of them.

Not to mention the Javelin. They fixed the javelin glitch, but there is still the problem of a gun that is supposed to be for vehicle use only getting fired when it’s not locked onto anything. It’s a little annoying when you are spawning and then all of a sudden you have a javelin missile land on your head and destroy you.

Another thing is the maps. There are some decent ones. But there are some that just allow one team to Dominate way too easily. The map I’m thinking of is Karachi. In Domination a good team will just take Points A and B and allow the other team to take C. This forces them to spawn in a place where there are only 3 exits, two of which can be covered by one Tower, and the other that can be covered by a long street.  This sucks if you’re on the team that fell into that trap, because there is little you can do to get out of it except be extremely efficient with an M16 (I’m talking headshots only on everyone there.)

The customizable kill streaks are really cool, the death streaks are okay, but I’d rather have something point out that I am on a death streak and I’d rather not get screwed out of a kill because someone is on one, but I guess it prevents veterans from destroying a team with some newbies on it, so  it has it’s pluses.

The coolest kill streak I have seen would definitely have to be the Nuke. I’ve only had it happen twice to me, and I haven’t even had it unlocked yet but it’s just kind of epic to see happen.

Special Ops are… annoying I guess. I hate how if I get 99% of the way there is always one guy I miss and death brings me back to the beginning. I spent 10 minutes getting that far and now I have to start over. More often then not I just say screw that and go back to the beginning. I guess it would be easier if I hate a teammate but let’s be honest, I work better alone on these sort of things. The only person that would probably work well with me would be Avi