Assassin's Creed II

Format Xbox 360

Developer Ubisoft

Publisher Ubisoft

Genre Action, Adventure

Repetition. Beggars. Dawdling present sections. Repetition. A combat-crazy ending. No swimming. Getting chased through the Kingdom. Repetition. Forced plot developments. Little creative incentive during key kills. Did we mention repetition?

We're still proud to call ourselves huge fans of the original (a recent return to the Holy Land reaffirmed our love for the first game), but that doesn't mean we're blinded to its obvious shortcomings. Assassin's Creed had many, and nobody knows this more than the team in Ubisoft Montreal. For two years they've been working to weed out all of the first game's problems, and the result is one of the most shocking sequel turnarounds in memory. Hold on tight, because Assassin's Creed II isn't what you expected...

The game begins with a bang. Two years ago we predicted Desmond would eventually use the bleeding effect (the phenomenon of past assassin powers 'bleeding' into Desmond's abilities) to break out of Abstergo's base and fight back. He does. In the opening five minutes. Both Desmond and Lucy escape the base (yes, running now exists in 2012), meet up with new characters Shaun Hastings (historian) and Rebecca Crane (tech expert) and relocate to a hi-tech assassins' hideout. There a plan is formed: relive Ezio's life to teach Desmond the art of an assassin via the bleeding effect, and then fight Abstergo once he's all ninja-ed up. That's the story, but the real motivation behind the explosive beginning is something quite different. It's all about introducing a feature which changes everything. The Animus 2.0.

This new piece of kit, pride of the assassins' den, is the perfect excuse for many of the sequel's updates. "We wanted to make adjustments to the game structure, and to do that we needed a new Animus; one that's on your side," reveals Creative Director Patrice Desilets as we stare at the bastard cross between a dentist's chair and a jacking station from The Matrix. The new Animus is Ubi Montreal's ticket to wholesale changes: the perfect excuse to redesign the entire database, and the chance to blend both timelines into one larger story. You'll be returning to present day much less this time as the ability to communicate with Lucy and co from within the Animus negates the need to leave the DNA memories.

Our favourite Animus 2.0 feature has to be its encyclopaedia. Every important building has extra information tucked away in the database; find the building and hit the back button to access this info. More than simply a history lesson, the text and videos often provide clues to future hits.

Sit down, strap up, travel back: it's time to rewind. In what appears to be a nod to Fallout 3, life as Ezio begins as a baby cradled in the arms of his father. Thankfully this is a brief quirk more to do with narration than the actual gameplay, and time soon fast-forwards to 1476 where a teenage Ezio is roaming the streets of Florence. Responding to criticisms of the first's structure, Ubisoft Montreal has created the very antithesis. Assassin's Creed II spans three decades of Ezio's life (four counting the playable baby section), from troubled teen to forty-something, and the plot development is now comparable to the narrative structure of Grand Theft Auto IV, which the team admits is a major influence.

Gone are the nine targets, the investigation stages, the lectures and anything that even resembles a familiar pattern: that's all been bundled up and dropped off the side of a gondola. In their place are naturally systemic missions which do much more than just pad out the time in between assassinations - they form a coherent tale in a rich and diverse world. The lengthy build-up to each kill is binned, as are the camera-swapping walkabout scenes (cut-scenes in ACII are either QTEs or the bog-standard sit-and-watch type). In fact, the only returning idea from AC's assassinations are the death rattle chats.

Ezio's early hours are relatively slow. He isn't an assassin to begin with, and for two hours there is no killing whatsoever. Instead the young Italian must explore the city - completing courier tasks for his parents, racing with his older brother and punishing the scumbag who cheated on his sister. Early fights with rival teenagers are fought with fists, and when Ezio's caught sleeping with a young lady from across town (via an interactive cut-scene, no less) the guards never attempt to use deadly force. Why would they? Ezio's merely a child.

This slow-burning opening may be lacking the assassinations promised in the title but it's never dull. City elements are slowly introduced via the key missions: high reach points and shops and factions and fights. It's all a glorified tutorial but you'll be too engrossed to care.

It's needed. The amount of new content is simply staggering. Try to blend in with the crowd and you'll end up pick-pocketing them instead (blending is still an option of course, but now it's automatic); fail to hide unconscious bodies and you'll alert more guards; pay no attention to your new notoriety bar and you'll wonder why nobody ever leaves you alone. The rules have changed, and as beautiful as Assassin's Creed's world was, it's nothing but an empty husk compared to this.

Combat has also been tweaked. Familiar basics mean returning assassins should slip into the fighting without too much difficulty (although weeks spent with Arkham Asylum make perfecting the counter times tricky), but the introduction of evades, disarms and a variety of grab moves turns the scrapping from one-trick pony to a multifaceted system. Stay on the defensive and the fighting feels sluggish when compared with Batman: Arkham Asylum's, but the added offensive capabilities make for deeper mechanics once Ezio's fully upgraded. It's worth noting that dropped weapons can be picked up at any time. It's also worth noting the same rule applies for NPCs too, as we rapidly discovered when taking on a mixture of armed and unarmed guards.

Money makes the world go round, and in Assassin's Creed II money is everything. Your very first fight comes with a nasty fright: no more health regeneration. Injuries need doctors and doctors need paying. Thankfully bodies can be looted for the handful of florins needed for extra health, and pick-pocketing opportunities are endless. Petty crime will serve you well to begin with but ultimately it's small fry. Later on you can actually hold up and rob entire banks.

The cash has multiple uses. As well as paying Heralds to decrease your Wanted status (tear down posters and murder eye-witnesses to further decrease notoriety), cash is used to buy new equipment and new upgrades. Tossed coins create distractions, and pickpockets occasionally deprive Ezio of his money, instigating short sub-missions to retrieve the cash. Ezio even owns a villa in the ruined city of Monteriggioni, where you can store equipment and hang portraits of your finest kills. Invest savings here and the area will thrive, eventually giving you a healthy return on the dough.

Secrets are everywhere. Small glyphs - remnants of code left in the Animus memory core by Subject 16 - are hidden in hard-to-find places, and each one comes with its own puzzle to solve.

So what's the use? Collect them all and you'll unlock an interesting video called 'The Truth'. For obvious reasons, nobody wanted to reveal too many details about that. Locked chests are also dotted liberally about the cities. You'll need to hunt and kill free-running messengers to find the keys. They appear exactly like Burnout Paradise's 'shutdown' vehicles, so it pays to keep on your toes. And if you're bored of just picking up worthless flags there's more good news: all collectibles now come with tangible rewards.

Unquestionably, one of the biggest new additions are the secret locations, which mark a radical departure from the 'normal' game. They're short, linear areas hidden underground and inside buildings, and are what Patrice Desilets likes to call ACII's 'Prince of Persia' areas. Despite Ezio's simplified controls he's got a point, and if there's one person who has a right to make that claim Patrice is the guy: he was also the creative director for Game of the Generation contender PoP: Sands of Time.

We could continue with the improvements list but time is short. Let's answer the most important question of all: was there anything we didn't like? At a push we'd say the alternative camera angle views triggered by holding LB are pretty useless, and the fighting isn't anywhere near as fluid as Batman's... but that's the lot. If you didn't like some-thing about AC1 then it's almost certainly been fixed. A number of high-profile delays has left the 360 Christmas line-up looking lean, but after spending an entire day playing and watching AC2 we can say one thing with confidence: 2009 has saved one of its most promising titles for last.

Matthew Pellett