Thank you Samhain!

[erastes]

Just had an amended royalty cheque – seems they’ve been underpaying its authors for a good while and I got an extra lump sum. This means I can afford Assassin’s Creed 2!  Hurrah!  (which is just as well as I bought it yesterday…)

And WOW. What a game. I played it for hours last night and again this morning and I’ve hardly scratched the surface – it’s HUGE. Not Oblivion huge, I think, but bloody enormous all the same.  Gone are all the little irritants that some (not me) found annoying in the first game – the repetitive game structure of “arrive at city, find a viewpoint, find targets, do jobs, kill target.”  This has a definite story line and you are so busy trying to keep up with the storyline itself that you find you hardly have time to find a viewpoint, let alone do anything else of the hundreds of things you can do.

It's actually based on real life events - the Pazzi conspiracy in Florence in the 1470's - the protag and his family aren't real (I think) but many other people are - the Medicis the Pazzis and the environments are A-MAZE-ING. The cities are enormous and you can clamber all over the Duomo, swim in the Arno....There's SO much to do it's just mind boggling. What I like particularly is that in the first game you had to walk slowly to avoid detection - with this one, if you are being looked for, you are "notorious" and there are steps you can take to reduce that down to zero, such as bribing the heralds who are slagging you off in the public squares, killing officials (which generally involves a chase, so I don't bother) and ripping down wanted posters.

I love it. LOVE. IT. Best game EVER. Sorry, Snake. Sorry, Sam.  I love you guys, and Enzo isn't anywhere near as hot as either of you (I don't like his Roman nose for a start) but it's so much FUN!!

They've even made a 35 minute prequel film which is so gob-smackingly good I wonder why they stopped at 35 minutes, didn't add an hour and release it in the cinema because it's incredible.

http://www.megavideo.com/?v=SQFP79WC

OK Shutting Up Now.

Comments

[beckyblack]

Yay! Unexpected money! Always good.

[liriaen.livejournal.com]

As the resident Borgia nut on your flist I can safely say LIES ALL LIES but yeah, nice CG.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It's an era I know absolutely nothin' about - but I did look up some details of the Pazzi conspiracy, and several of the things that actually happened (Lorenzo's brother being killed for example) are shown in the game. It's just... fabulous. just my kind of game.

[liriaen.livejournal.com]

Yes, the framework is quite accurate. Except the Borgia bits. *gnash* I formally protest the way they're protrayed. Also, the game's use of Italian has my Italian f-list torn between laughter and racking sobs. *g* But nevermind. I'm anyone's for a decent bit of historical ogling.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

oh yes, the Italian is driving me mad. Not that i understand what they are saying but - and i feel the same about books too - if we are in italy, why are they speaking english AND italian??

[liriaen.livejournal.com]

Well, there's that, plus it often seems to be either incorrect or completely anachronistic Italian... but to the Italian contingent it mostly sounds like this... :)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Oh that's brilliant!! LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!