I've been playing Assassin's Creed II for so long because I can't stand to play it for more than a couple of hours at a time, once every month or so, such are its many, many, irritating flaws. Look, here’s a list:
THE FUCKING PUZZLES - I can't see any purpose in them other than to flatter the gamer. They're not difficult. They're pointless. The only challenge lies in keeping yourself awake whilst you tediously solve slidey jigsaw puzzles of jumbled-up Renaissance period art and tediously manoeuvre a cursor around a painting until you highlight an apple or something that Ubisoft have arbitrarily declared the “hidden clue”. What the fuck? Seriously.
CLIMBING/JUMPING CONTROLS - By far the most frustrating aspect of Assassin’s Creed II is the hit or miss platforming and climbing. Bearing in mind that this is essentially the bread and butter of the entire series, combined with the fact that it's a lot of fun when you can do it right, it's all the more annoying when things go wrong. Throughout the cities in the game, there are obvious routes that Ezio can "free-run" across - there'll be a beam sticking out, followed by a post, followed by a wall and then a hanging pallet, and it all unfolds in front of you as you race across the rooftops with ease, taking each obstacle in your stride.
So why, then, does it sometimes completely fuck up? You'll see the route in front of you, and all you have to do is press "up" on the stick and hold the free-run buttons, and you're off. Quite often, I found - and it might just be me - Ezio would veer off to the left or the right, and because you're already moving with a bit of momentum, there's absolutely nothing you can do other than sit there, screaming at the TV screen, watching Ezio plummet to his death, or even worse, landing with his life intact necessitating a tedious scramble to get back up to the rooftops before the mission timer runs out.
I think this is the main reason I've taken so long to complete Assassin's Creed II. This is what happens to me one too many times every time I play, and I wind up throwing the thing back on the shelf for another month. If the route I want to take is so obvious, and it is - it's either keep running over the rooftops or fall off - why can't the designers make it a little less twitchy up there? If I accidentally nudge the stick to the right by a millimetre, chances are I didn't want to jump to the floor in the middle of a rooftop chase. This frustration is further compounded when, for some unknown reason, it's actually fucking difficult to get Ezio to jump down from, for example, a wall you accidentally ran up whilst moving around on the ground. The game will let you walk up to an edge with the stick fully shoved in a direction, and Ezio will not walk off it. But when it really matters, he’s more than happy to take a swan dive into the piss drizzled streets.
CONFUSED CONTEXT SENSITIVE CONTROLS - It's rather telling that the same button used for "grab" is also the button that is used to "drop", dependent on context. The unfortunate thing is, the context shifts backwards and forwards as you climb up any given obstacle.
SAMEY PLOT-CENTRIC MISSIONS – More or less all of the major storyline missions involve an assassination. Fair enough, it’s Assassin’s Creed. But how about a bit of variety? Aren’t assassins supposed to be stealthy? How about letting me choose if I want to create ruckus or silently kill the target? As they stand, the missions are not as much about stealth as they are about stabbing someone then running away. The whole thing plays out like a Renaissance period Benny Hill chase scene every time.
Other storyline missions generally involve tediously "tailing" someone for what seems like miles (with particularly stingy checkpoints if you do manage to lose the person you're following - which can happen if you're inexplicably attacked by guards) or "free the prisoners" tasks, which involve heading to a point on the map, killing a number of guards and freeing some people from jail, and repeat. Surely in such a richly detailed game world with so many gameplay possibilities from a sandbox point of view, the developers could've mixed it up a little bit. The missions where you attempt to win the golden mask are a good idea, but they are, at the end of the day, just non-violent variations of the stuff mentioned above - barring the final task which is fairly tedious bare knuckle fighting.
PROGRESS IS SLOW - Getting anywhere quickly is an exercise in futility. The “free-running” system seems to pick the most awkward route for Ezio if you take to the rooftops forcing you to scramble over small ledges that you didn't even know were there, and grabbing horizontal bars instead of running under them. But what if you decide to take to the streets instead? Good luck - they're so packed full of NPCs you can't turn a corner without running into someone and falling over. And you're shit out of luck if that person happens to be a guard, who'll give chase, along with his seemingly infinite number of chums. You frequently find yourself boxed in by the impressive architecture, but it's a six and two threes situation - run through the streets bumping into people, or take to the rooftops and have Ezio fondle every possible obstacle before falling back down to street level. Either way, it’ll take you a while to get from A to B.
ASSASSIN TOMBS – Now I know this one isn’t just me. This is one thing most people seem to agree on. Some of the platforming sections – particularly the timed ones – in the Assassin tombs are atrocious. Without a doubt I can credit these sections to the majority of my rage quits. They made me so mad I’m not even going to attempt to describe them. Fuck Assassin tombs.
THE REVIEWS - Why did everyone else neglect to mention the poor controls and the awful combat system? The game was universally praised by the gaming press, but not one of these major websites bothered to criticise the controls and combat. Whilst I generally agree that overall it's a great game, the niggles can be absolutely infuriating at times, and it beggars belief that nobody else seemed to pick up on this. Is it really just me?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/assassins-creed-ii-console-review
http://uk.xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/assassins-creed-2/1046747p1.html
http://www.gamesradar.com/xbox360/assassins-creed-ii/review/assassins-creed-ii/a-2009111710286778008/g-2009012817011326046 http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Games/A/Assassins%20Creed%20II/Everything%20Else/Art/Finished/111709_asscreed2_obs01v2--article_image.jpg - Sorry - MINUS repetition? It's incredibly repetitive. This is just plain bullshit.
http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/104/1045745p2.html - they mention that the combat can be pretty much button bashing "for novices", but cop out on actually criticising it by convincing themselves that there is some sort of "zen-like" skill level that pro players will eventually reach, enabling them to make Ezio actually fight instead of twatting someone's sword with his own sword repetitively until eventually managing to land a blow on some flesh and knock a health point off.
http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3176964&p=4 - This one is interesting. 1up manage to turn what is probably the game's biggest negative point into, well, something not really even worth mentioning.
As for the limitations of the control interface? Ubisoft's workaround was to create a game that's almost preposterously easy. Constant in-game text prompts guide your actions from start to finish, generously placed checkpoints soften the blow of screwups, and Ezio can build up his health and healing items to the point where the prospect of losing in combat is unthinkable. It's definitely the right approach, since failure in AC2 so often seems in no real correlation to player error, but it makes for a game you play to have a bit of carefree escapism rather than a challenge. The tricky Assassin's Tomb platforming missions are a welcome change of pace, albeit few in number.
Note to games journalists: Making a game easier is not a fucking "workaround" for "limitations of the control interface". It's a fucking cop-out. And for the love of god, even if it is a workaround, at least criticise the fact instead of fucking praising it as game design genius. JESUS. And they wanted MORE Assassin tombs?
It was only Destructoid who seemed to pick up on some of the negative aspects of ACII. Unfortunately, they gave the game to Jim Stirling, who decided, as usual, to defy all logic and give the game an attention seeking 4.5/10, which is just wrong. He also seemed to actually enjoy the combat and bizarrely took umbrage at every single other aspect of the game.
http://www.destructoid.com/review-assassin-s-creed-2-155807.phtml
It's almost certainly just me, isn't it?