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I approached this game with the utmost caution. After all, the first Assassin's Creed was uncomfortably close to a critical disaster, with reviewers finding themselves as annoyed by the repetitive missions as they were awestruck by the lifelike graphics. The bad press was made that much worse when a webcomic surfaced portraying lead developer Jade Raymond as a mindless bimbo, willing to do anything to please her undersexed fans. Ubisoft unwisely threatened legal action, giving the distasteful drawing even more exposure and leaving gamers with the impression that the company was run by humorless bullies. (People tend not to buy games from humorless bullies. Unless it's Rockstar.) When the sequel was released, I watched Metacritic like a hawk, pouncing on each new review and carefully gauging public reaction to the game. It didn't take long before I noticed a pattern in how Assassin's Creed II was perceived. The critics who were unimpressed by the original sang the sequel's praises in pitch-perfect harmony, offering every assurance that the game was an improvement over its predecessor. The critics aren't always right, of course... in their rush to praise Batman: Arkham Asylum, they glossed over its most aggravating flaws. However, critical opinion of Assassin's Creed II was so uniformly positive that taking a risk on the game didn't seem like that much of a risk. I never played the original Assassin's Creed, so I can't tell you how the sequel improves upon the first game, or which flaws have remained constant. However, I can say as a newcomer to the series that Assassin's Creed II brings welcome changes to some well-worn and increasingly threadbare styles of gameplay. It's a game that's heavy on killing but mercifully light on testosterone, with an open-ended world that rarely seems aimless and stealth action scenes that aren't rigid or frustrating. The visuals are so beautiful, the atmosphere so convincing, and the storyline so carefully constructed that you'll never doubt for a second that over two hundred people were responsible for its design. The game begins with you running for your life alongside a mysterious female accomplice, who takes you to an abandoned warehouse. During the trip, you discover that you've been training to join a league of noble assassins in its eternal struggle against a sinister shadow organization called the Templars. You've learned a lot about the bloody business by playing a distant ancestor in a virtual reality simulation. However, you'll need to round out your knowledge by strapping yourself into the Animus one more time and stepping into the leather boots of Italian renaissance figure Ezio Auditore Di Firenze. Roguish and handsome, Ezio has no greater aspirations than chasing some Florentine tail and getting into occasional scuffles with the spoiled sons of the city's aristocracy. His priorities change in a hurry when his family is railroaded in a trial by Italy's powerbrokers. When his father and brothers are hanged in the town square and his mother is left speechless from the shock of their deaths, Ezio abandons his childish pursuits and begins a twenty year mission of vengeance against the men who conspired against his family. You'll hunt for these scoundrels in twelve missions, split equally between nail-biting platforming and the most refreshingly dynamic stealth action since the last Sly Cooper game. Unlike Batman: Arkham Asylum, which viciously punished the player for stepping outside the boundaries set by the designers, Assassin's Creed II gives you remarkable freedom in how you can take out your next target. Should you take refuge in a haystack and wait for him to walk past, or find sanctuary in a crowd and stick a blade in his throat when you cross paths? Maybe you'd rather deliver death from above with a throwing knife or your wrist-mounted pistol. It's your call, and there are only a handful of instances when that choice is taken out of your hands. While you're thinking about your next move, you'll want to take the opportunity to look around and sample the local color. I've never visited Venice, much less 15th century Venice, but I have to imagine it would look a lot like this. There are ornate churches towering over densely packed strings of houses, waterways with manned gondolas and cargo ships, and a cast of hundreds including crowds of bystanders, obnoxious bards (outta my way, bitch!), and the world's most modestly dressed prostitutes. There's even a celebrity appearance by Italian super genius Leonardo da Vinci, who helps you defy both the corrupt town leaders and the very law of gravity as you inch ever closer to the leader of the conspiracy that claimed the lives of your family. Assassin's Creed II comes so close to perfection, but drops the ball in one very crucial area... control. It's too clumsy and too contextual, giving you the nagging feeling that you're never completely in charge. Buttons on the face of the controller are assigned to Ezio's head, arms, and feet (uncomfortably reminiscent of Strata's ancient arcade flop Time Killers), and the function of these keys changes depending on the situation. In other words, jump doesn't always mean jump, and assassinate won't always yield the intended results. The game's "pathfinding AI" goes one step further in wrenching the control from the player's hands. Ezio climbs walls at frustratingly uneven speeds, and won't even attempt to grab footholds seemingly within his reach unless you attempt a wall-hugging jump... a skill you won't learn until late in the game. Finally, your speed is not dependent on how far you tilt the left thumbstick, as is common in action games, but how many buttons you're holding down while moving. If you've got an Xbox 360, your finger will ache from holding down the right trigger after an hour of play. If you've got a Playstation 3, heaven help you, because the triggers on its Dual Shock 3 are so slippery as to be finger-proof. Either way, you'll curse the designers for breaking with tradition in the worst possible way. Surprisingly, the awkward control isn't a fatal mistake. It could have been in a less ambitious game, but Assassin's Creed II rises above it by being nearly flawless in every other respect. All right, the ending is pretty stupid too, but that's two shortcomings in a game that addresses not only the issues of its predecessor, but the more deeply rooted flaws of the past ten years of game design. It features characters you won't regret saving, sandbox gameplay with main objectives you'll actually want to complete, and stealth action that won't whip you bloody for coloring outside the lines. If all this doesn't convince you that Jade Raymond has earned her place among today's leading game developers, you might as well turn in your Xbox Live membership, that God of War T-shirt, and the little stuffed Yoshi you've got hiding in your closet. You're out of the gang!
BORDERLANDS TRAVEL LOG FOR MORDECAI
D. HUNTER, CIRCA 2XXX JULY 17th,
2XXX: Just touched down on the planet Pandora.
Just lookin' at this place makes me thirsty... it's dry, it's
dead, and the closest thing I've seen to civilization is the
sad little shanty town where the ship landed. I'll
be honest with 'ya... this place is a dump. I've seen
better truck stop bathrooms. I wouldn't even be
here if it weren't for all them rumors about a
treasure buried somewhere on this dirtball. They call it
the Vault, and it's big... real big. Big enough for me
to retire a hundred times over. Big enough for the whole
galaxy to talk about it. Big enough to bring me here
along with who knows who else. JULY 18th,
2XXX: Taking the bus to Fyrestone. There's a
guy there who's got all the equipment I need to start lookin'
for the Vault... Zed, I think. Right now, I'm squeezed
in here with a bunch of other treasure hunters. The
chick's not so bad to look at, when you can see her, but these
big meaty guys scare the hell outta me. I think one of
'em's from the army, while the other one looks like he could
rip you in half if you got him mad. The bus stinks
somethin' fierce and the driver won't shut up... the sooner I
get off this tin can and stretch my legs, the
better. JULY 19th,
2XXX: I'm here at Fyrestone, and being shown 'round
the place by some damn robot. It's gripin' that the
bandits here like to shoot at it for fun, and after listening
to it for the last fifteen minutes, I can't say I blame
'em. The only other thing I remember it telling me is
that these green posts will bring me back if I get killed
somehow. Guess it makes a copy of you, and spits you
back out in one piece if you get your head blown off.
Gotta love technology! JULY 20th,
2XXX: Got my first toys from Dr. Zed, along with
a job... he wants me to pick off some of the skags outside his
shop. What's a skag? Imagine the ugliest dog
you've ever seen, with the biggest jaws you've ever
seen. Yep, that's a skag. I got a pretty sharp
aim, and the skags ain't too tough if you keep your
distance, so I'm not expectin' any problems. JULY 23th,
2XXX: No problems with the skags, but the
bandits! Damnation. Got blindsided by a pack of
'em and was gunned down in a hurry. The New-U works
great, though... it was like nothin' ever happened.
Guess I'm gonna have to get better guns to handle these
guys. This rusty 'ol revolver just isn't getting the job
done. Also, I sure wish I had a better GPS
system... this thing don't work worth a damn so I
gotta pull out a map every ten steps. Gets real tiresome
after a while, 'ya know? JULY 24th,
2XXX: The other folks on this planet- the ones who
ain't tryin' to kill me, I mean- don't seem to do much but
give me jobs and crack jokes. Seemed kinda strange at
first, but I guess you gotta have a sense of humor if you live
in a place like this. Also surprised that Pandora wasn't
as dark as I thought it'd be when I first came here. You
could spot a skag comin' from a mile away... and when you find
a nest of the varmints, you'll be glad you
can! JULY 27th,
2XXX: Just took out Nine-Toes and his pets, and I'm
feelin' a lot more confident about my chances here on
Pandora. Took all his money and his favorite weapon
as my reward. Not like he's gonna miss it where
he's goin', right? Lemme tell 'ya, I can't imagine how
a gun can get any better than this baby... it shoots a
half-dozen bullets faster'n you can blink, and the
bullets set anything they hit on fire! I got a
shield now too, so I'm not wastin' so much money at the New-U
stations. JULY 30th,
2XXX: Remember when I said it couldn't get better
than the last gun I had? It got better. I betcha
this place has more ways to blow bandits up than you can
count, and believe me, there's nothin' I love more than
killin' bandits. Blew the leg right off one of the
sonuvabitches with my sniper rifle... he never knew what hit
'em! Also got a Bloodwing, which is kind of like a crow
with a really big beak and really sharp teeth. Gentle as
a lamb with me, but he tears up skags like nobody's
business. AUGUST 2nd,
2XXX: Thought I was a goner last night. Got
into a fight with a bruiser... he smacked me around and tossed
a rocket my way. I was face down on the ground
and the lights got dim, but I figured out that I could still
use my guns while I was dyin'! So I filled the dumbass
with lead while he was standing there laughing. As soon
as he died, I came back to life right on the
spot! It was the damnedest thing. Sure wish I'd
known about this before! AUGUST 8th,
2XXX: Skags and bandits, bandits and skags!
Ain't there nothin' else on this planet? Only thing that
keeps me here are all them different guns... and oh yeah, the
Vault. Completely forgot about that. Whatever,
it'll be there tomorrow. AUGUST 15th,
2XXX: I'm comin' home. I'm tired, and the
bandits just get meaner 'n meaner the further I go. The
Vault can wait, and the guns can wait too. Next time I
go to Pandora, I'm bringin' some friends along with me.
Can't imagine why I came here without 'em.
It's probably not ethical to review a game you
haven't completed, but I'm so eager to put the smackdown on
this one that I'll use a convenient alias. Not for
me, mind you, but the game itself. Instead of
its actual title, which is nothing exciting anyway, I'll just
refer to it by the name it should have been given...
Quicktime Wankfest. See how long it takes before you can
guess which game it is! Give yourself bonus points if
you already
know. Back in 2009, veteran game
developers From Software decided to create an exclusive
for each of the current generation consoles, except the Wii,
which always gets stiffed when big-name publishers make
big-budget projects. The Playstation 3 received Demon's
Souls, an expertly crafted but viciously difficult action
RPG that became the abusive love
interest of countless gamers. The Xbox 360 got
Quicktime Wankfest, a case study in everything that's wrong
with video games today. You can tell who got the better
end of this
deal. Anyway, Quicktime Wankfest
begins with you, a faceless member of an elite team of ninjas,
preparing to purge Tokyo of a parasite infection imported from
the jungles of Africa. Hmm, the most overused video
game trope this side of the captive princess coupled with a
plotline stolen wholesale from Resident Evil 4... you haven't
even gotten past the first cut scene and things are already
starting to look grim for this
one! The real problem with Quicktime
Wankfest is that the opening cut scene never
ends. Once you leap out of the plane to confront
the Plagas, er, Alpha Worms, you're locked into the first of
many, many quicktime events. First introduced in Sega's
Shenmue, quicktime events clumsily merge real-time gameplay
with cut scenes for a hybrid that's not really
interactive, but too distracting to enjoy as a purely
cinematic
experience. When the lead character crashes
through the glass wall of a skyscraper and hits solid
ground, the gameplay switches to a beat 'em
up in the vein of Ninja Gaiden or God of War.
Unfortunately, the action is kind of pedestrian and
doesn't really stand shoulder to shoulder with the games that
inspired it. Your surprisingly meek ninja is stuck in
two gears, shifting from "slightly constipated" to "ludicrous
speed" with a tap of the right trigger, the ninja vision
is rarely as useful as similar gimmicks in Batman: Arkham
Asylum or Assassin's Creed II, and finishing blows aren't
as user-friendly or seamless as the ones in the God of
War
series. Just when you think you've adapted to
the quirks of the game engine, it grinds to a sudden halt with
a close-up of the hero's masked face and
another marginally interactive cut scene. Just tap
the buttons when they appear onscreen to proceed... or don't,
and watch the footage rewind back to the start of the
sequence. You never actually seem to die in these
quicktime events; like history, you're doomed to repeat them
until you get them right. No, you can't rewind to the
minute before you rented this and make the right decision
then. It doesn't take long before the game dissolves
into a schizophrenic farce, much like that
Tex Avery cartoon where the bulldog
maestro adopts six different personalities
while conducting an orchestra. It's a game!
It's a movie! It's back to a game again! After an
hour, you'll scream at the television to make up its damn mind
and give you one or the other. While you're making
furious, impotent demands of an inanimate object, you might
also ask for a reason to care about the atom-thin characters,
or the gravity-defying but largely hands-off fight
scenes that seem more trite than outrageous in the wake
of
Bayonetta. Ultimately, Quicktime Wankfest is
doomed not only by an identity crisis, but by a lack of
ambition in all its multiple personalities. It's not
compelling cinema. It's not a satisfying action
game. Frankly, it's not much of
anything.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD is already in a
precarious position, and it doesn't do itself any favors with
its demo. Not only does it fail to make a strong first
impression with prospective buyers, it's so completely gimped
that it's hard for them to come to any conclusion
about it. It's no surprise that the trial is limited to
the plain vanilla Ken and Ryu, and that some of the modes are
greyed out in the title screen. However, while other
Xbox Live Arcade demos let you enjoy a couple of stages
against a computer opponent before shutting off the tap and
prodding you to pay for the full version, Super Street Fighter
II Turbo HD limits you to local multiplayer fights. If
you're not living next door to a fan of the series, you can't
play the game, making this the stingiest demo since War
World's meager thirty seconds of gameplay or the constant
registration nags in Fireplace. What the hell,
Capcom? Even after you drop the 1200 Microsoft Points on
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD, there's no guarantee that
you'll fall in love with it. First, the difficulty in
the arcade mode is just short of ridiculous. The stars
from previous Street Fighter games have been replaced with
four difficulty levels, which all greatly underestimate their
challenge. "Easy" is normal, "Normal" is hard, and
"Hard" drops an impenetrable brick wall in front of you at the
third stage. Wait, when did this suddenly become Mortal
Kombat? It's also worth pointing out to purists that the
Classic mode is a complete joke. If you've come to play
Super Street Fighter II Turbo without the added bells and
whistles, you're better off sticking with Street Fighter
Anniversary, which features a faithful conversion of the
arcade game along with the flashier Street Fighter III: Third
Strike. What you get here are blurry arcade sprites
carelessly dropped onto the same high-resolution
backgrounds. Ooh, less classic than
advertised! Despite these (largely unnecessary) shortcomings,
the game does deliver the goods for Capcom fans who aren't
quite ready to step into the third dimension with Street
Fighter IV. The new hand-drawn sprites are faithful to
the originals, while offering added detail and subtle shading
that's easy to appreciate even on a standard definition
television set. The animation is a bit stiff and the
artists at Udon sometimes interpret the characters
strangely... for instance, Ken's gravity-defying mullet gives
him an eerie resemblance to Lion-O from the Thundercats
cartoon. However, even with these occasional missteps,
the sharp new artwork more than justifies the delays that kept
the game in limbo for almost a year. As for the gameplay, well, that's exactly the way
you remembered it from 1994, with a handful of new moves that
elevate it over the slightly underwhelming Super Street
Fighter II. These range from E. Honda's humiliating
Oicho throw (the original teabagging!) to the incredibly
satisfying super combos. They're finely tuned to be
useless against blocking opponents, but brutally effective if
you can squeeze them past your rival's defenses. These
powerful attacks must be earned in battle, making them
preferable to the easily abused desperation attacks in SNK's
South Town series. While the gameplay is largely the same, the key
difference between Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD and the
low-def original is online support. Although the arcade
mode lets you sharpen your skills against capable computer
opponents, you'll never fully master the game until you match
wits with unpredictable human players... and you won't have
any trouble finding them on Xbox Live! Whether you take
it easy with a laid back Player Match or claw your way through
competition-caliber opponents in the Ranked Matches, you can
be sure that each fight will be fast-paced and exciting.
You'll sometimes find poor sports who disconnect while on the
edge of defeat, as well as latency issues that take some
matches on a guided tour through the Twilight Zone, but
they're rarely more than a minor and infrequent
annoyance. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD is a worthwhile
purchase for the right audience... but after fifteen years of
advancements to the Street Fighter series that extend far
beyond pretty graphics, that audience is starting to
shrink. If you prefer the purity of Street Fighter II to
the expanded gameplay of its sequels, or are a rabid online
gamer hungry for new challengers, your fifteen dollars will be
well spent. However, if neither apply, hold onto your
cash... something better is just around the corner, as it
always is in this
business. |
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The video game industry is
a cutthroat business... competition is always fierce, and
there's never a shortage of products on store shelves.
Throw in a weak economy, and it can be difficult to persuade
customers to purchase even the better games. Super
Street Fighter II Turbo HD is one of those hard sells; a solid
21st century remake of a game that's already available on a
half-dozen systems, and which toes the edge of obsolescence
thanks to the looming Xbox 360 release of Street Fighter
IV.