Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Review (360)

Whilst Ubisoft are to be applauded for adding even more variation into the gameplay as mentioned earlier, renovating the city of Rome quickly becomes repetitive and money becomes meaningless very early on in the game (certainly if you follow some of my tips for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood). The economy is so bad, just like in the Fable games from Lionhead, that on my first meeting with Leonardo da Vinci, I bought everything he had to offer for the entire game. You simply earn too much money if you have spent a modicum of effort renovating bits of Rome. I would have expected Ubisoft to have addressed this problem by now as it first reared its ugly head in Assassin’s Creed II.

Easy Pickings

Ubisoft have made the flag and feather collecting stupidly easy too. Where as in previous instalments you had to scour the huge maps – or ask Google – to find the flags, now you can buy a plethora of maps showing you every one. In addition, the flags aren’t even difficult to spot or find. Ok, I still found it fun collecting all of them, but it was hardly challenging.

Previously I’ve extolled how wonderful Ezio is to control but all is not perfect in paradise. Ezio still has problems with ladders (either misses them completely or climbs up the wrong side) and likes to run up bits of buildings he thinks he can climb. Wrong! There you are in the throes of a full on chase, just about to pounce on your victim and you turn a corner and Ezio runs up a bit of wall instead. Gaaahhhhh.

Boom, Boom?

The much vaunted – in the press releases at least – Leonardo da Vinci weapons, like the tank and upgraded flying machine, are sidelined to what effectively are add-on missions. They are superfluous to the main plot, even though the game’s narrative tries to give them a purpose. I’m surprised Ubisoft didn’t rip them from the game and sell them as downloadable content (DLC). You can’t even drive a tank around Rome blowing the Coliseum to pieces. Rubbish.

In keeping with Ubisoft’s borked DLC policy which started off with ripping content out of Assassin’s Creed II and selling it as separate DLC, we now have to contend with system exclusive content. The PlayStation 3 edition of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is the only edition to contain the Copernicus Conspiracy missions. Whilst I have no doubt that this content won’t be platform-exclusive forever, Ubisoft continue to fragment the Assassin’s Creed games. Before long we will be downloading the first few levels or first 30 minutes of a game and then buying extra time or levels using micropayments.

Et Tu, Brute?

Ubisoft have done a fantastic job in implementing what is a really good and innovative multiplayer component into the Assassin’s Creed universe. Not only is it really well designed (the UI is clear and informative and the menus are intelligently organised) but it adds a whole new dimension of gameplay to the Assassin’s Creed. There are 3 main types of game on offer within multiplayer – wanted, alliance and manhunt across the current tally of 8 maps.

In wanted mode rather than just being the big, bad Assassin, suddenly you’re someone else’s target and they are hunting you. I can’t describe how annoying it is to be stabbed in the back just when you’ve lined up your target and are homing in on the kill. Also running around like a headless chicken trying to stab everything makes you a really obvious target and quickly killed. The aim of the game is to kill your target quietly. The stealthier you are the more points you get. It all sounds very easy, but when you add in the various different abilities like disguise (change your appearance to another character), things get a little harder. I have, on many occasions, stabbed the wrong person. Whoops, my bad.

Alliance and manhunt modes are both team based, so now you have the added problem of team mates to work with. No more lone wolf killing for you. Alliance mode pits 3 teams of 2 against each other, but you can only kill 1 of the other teams. Score the most points to win the game. In manhunt mode 2 teams take turns in being the hunters and hunted. The hunters get points for assassinations and the hunted get points for escapes, stuns (i.e. stunning your attacker before they get a chance to kill you) and remaining incognito (i.e. hidden in crowds or places like benches or haystacks).

To get the most out of multiplayer Assassin’s Creed you have to invest in some serious gameplay time. More experience points equal more skills and weapons and the only way you get experience points is by playing lots of games. Stealthy kills net you loads of points and these are not kills that can be rushed. It is slightly disappointing to play a pick-up game where everyone insists on running around everywhere. For a start it makes it almost impossible to kill anyone with any degree of stealth and secondly it’s blindingly obvious who’s an non playable character (NPC) and who is a player. Half the fun of the game is tracking a group of people and trying to work out which one is your target. Fortunately, there are plenty of other matches which don’t have players running around like madmen.

The only problem I had with multiplayer was the time it takes the matching system to find you a match. Waits of up to 5 minutes are not uncommon. There are times when you find yourself joining one of the Alliance or Manhunt games that have been in play for a while. This tends to guarantee you last place in the overall scores. It’s not a major problem, but I do like to start games from the very beginning. Overall through, the multiplayer experience is way better than I expected.

Summary:

This is a truly wonderful game, even with its few foibles and slightly repetitive renovation tasks. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood not only builds on and improves almost every aspect of Assassin’s Creed II but also adds a whole new type of gameplay with the addition of multiplayer. Highly recommended.

Buy Assassins Creed: Brotherhood from Play.com

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