"Oh, you like the ceiling do you? YOU are a FASCINATING travelling companion." - Shaun
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood takes you back right where you left off, initially. You're still playing as Ezio Auditore, and you have a good 50,000 Florens in your pocket and all of your weapons from Assassin's Creed II. Don't worry, this won't last long. You end up losing almost everything, and have to start over - which is understandable. Why would you want your game to be ruined by having tons of money and everything unlocked at the beginning anyways?
Unfortunately, the game is limited to only one place this time, but it's three times bigger than Florence, Italy, from Assassin's Creed II. That place is Rome. A lot of the missions in the story take you inside some of the buildings, and you'll usually have to maneuver (and by maneuver I mean climb for an hour) your way to the top of them.
There is a large arsenal of weapons to choose from, and you'll be satisfied in terms of fighting no matter what. Whether it's swords and daggers you like, or ranged weapons like crossbows or poison darts, this game has it all. They even added in a new tool - parachutes. You get them later in the game, after completing all four of Leonardo's weapon-missions. I really had high hopes for the parachutes when I first tried them. I thought Ezio would dive, pull the parachute and gracefully glide across Rome. No, that's not what it's like at all. It's more like you jump, pull the parachute, and you quickly float down to the ground with almost no control over which direction you go in. It's like a really boring elevator-ride from Half-Life 2, except without the head-crabs.
Graphics
The game takes place in one of the most beautiful places in the world, Rome itself. they did a great job making Rome look realistic, but some of the character models are older than some of the things in Rome, it feels like.
Rome is filled with citizens, each one who lives their own life and walks around the large city. There are huge landmarks, which you can actually buy to increase your income, and also climb on for fun. You'll want to explore every part of the city many times, and you'll do so over the course of the story. Unfortunately, the story doesn't take you to every part of the beautiful Rome, but it does a pretty good job of showing you the basic sights. The water-effects are great, and the weather in the game looks very realistic.
It's disappointing that the cut-scenes look terrible, and usually don't show off the beauty of the world around you. The characters look very robotic in cut-scenes, and look like they were copied from an old PS2 game and out-lined with the Magic Wand Tool very poorly. Even Rome kind of looks bad in the cut-scenes, so much so that it's distracting from the game's plot. I spent so much time laughing at how obscure some of the characters looked in the cut-scenes that I missed some important lines. It seems that the only cut-scenes that actually look good are the ones not set in Ezio's time, but in Desmond's. Also, a few of the early scenes, like the bath scene at the beginning, looked pretty good. I thought I was looking at a prettier version of Assassin's Creed II at first, but then I saw some of the later ones and it made me feel like it was a prettier version of Assassin's Creed (the very first one).
Sound
Wow, they did a great job on the sound in this game. The sound effects are a bit better than from the previous games, the music is a lot more fitting and catchy, and the voice-acting is the bee's knees.
the sound effects are great. It reminds me of playing Lord of the Rings: Return of the King back on the PlayStation 2, when you're at the very beginning of the game, at the big battle. You can hear orcs roaring, blades clashing, arrows firing; it just feels like a real battlefield. That's what Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood feels like, during big battles. People join into your battles, and during some of the missions, you'll actually feel like you're emerged in a real battle.
The music is mostly the same as the last game, except for some of the battle music. When enemies are after you, they play this one song, that just makes the game feel so epic. While I was listening to it, I just sort of turned the camera around a few times, and looked into the sunset, and that's when I knew that this game was going to be fun (it was early on in the game).
The voice-acting in Assassin's Creed II was hit-or-miss, and I found Ezio quite annoying, to be honest. Those previous thoughts are now gone. I'm blown away by how much they improved upon the voice-acting in this game. Ezio sounds less like a pretty-boy, and more like the renowned shady warrior that he is. Every single character was voiced perfectly, and it feels like you're actually watching a good movie while they're talking, besides the bad graphics in the scenes.
Story
As I mentioned earlier, the game starts off as Desmond and co. are trying to access the 9th DNA sequence for Ezio Auditore, but they fail, and you are forced to play through DNA sequences 1-8 to get to the ninth. Yes, that's a good thing, or else the game would only take twenty minutes to beat. There aren't many new characters, besides one new female role - who is very, uhh, bodacious. There are plenty of new enemies who Ezio will meet (and probably slay) along the way, and quite a few plot twists that actually make me rethink what I said about Assassin's Creed II's story. The game actually had a decent story, and I really did like Brotherhood's story. It went all sci-fi at the end, and it was actually kind of creepy.
Multiplayer
Online is obviously new to the Assassin's Creed series, and they actually did a pretty good job. There is lots of room for improvement, but it's a solid multiplayer experience that will at least give you a few hours of fun.
There are only a few modes online, Wanted (free-for-all), Manhunt (3 vs. 3 vs. 3), Alliance (Team Deathmatch), Wanted Advanced (level 15+ free-for-all) and Manhunt Advanced (level 15+ 3 vs. 3 vs. 3). The favourite mode to play is Wanted, where you and up to seven other players walk around a semi-large map and attempt to assassinate your target, whose face appears at the top right of your screen. At any given time, you can have anywhere from 0 to 4 people trying to kill you (you have a little square that indicates how many people are after you), and you don't know what they look like or where they are until they're pursuing you. To win the match, you have to get the most points. To get points, you have to get kills. You can't just run around like a mad-man, though - you have to be stealthy and try to get as many points as you can per kill. You'll get a minimum of 100 points per kill, but you can easily get a good 400 points if you don't alert your target or jump on them from a building.
There are tons of personalization options, for adding perks that allow you to sprint faster, use your hidden gun, disguise yourself, use smoke bombs, and many other things. There aren't really different cl@sses, but there are different characters that you can choose. No character has advantages or disadvantages, besides the way they look. I find some characters blend into crowds and are harder to spot (the executioner) than characters who just tend to stand out more.
The great part about the servers in this game is that they have almost no lag ever! Of course, it makes up for that with its many other problems, such as problems with the aim and long load times. To address the aiming issues, sometimes when you go to attack your target, it'll attack the person directly next to them instead, causing you to lose your target since you attacked an innocent citizen. In terms of the long load times, it takes almost two minutes to get into a match from the main menu, and then sometimes a lot longer to fill the match up with players - so it's kind of a pain to join matches.
Overall, it's a great attempt at multiplayer, and if they do make an improved multiplayer mode for the next Assassin's Creed game, I'm sure they'll nail it, or get pretty damn close.
Longevity
All in all, it's a very short game, clocking in at about 10-17 hours (depending if you do side-quests and play around), and unless you're going for the Platinum trophy, you really have no reason to stick around after the game is over. You can go back and collect everything for your personal museum (weapons, armor, etc....), but that only takes a few hours, since you'll be making a lot of money every 20 minutes if you've been upgrading shops. There's really no point in getting all the videos, Borgia Flags, feathers, etc.... unless you're trying to get trophies - it's really boring and it takes a really long time.
If you were to get the Platinum trophy, it would probably take 25 hours to get all of the story trophies, mainly because of the videos, feathers and Borgia Flags. The online trophies are going to take probably another 25-40 hours, just because of that Level 50 trophy.
The Verdict
Pros:
• Good attempt at multiplayer
• Rome looks great
• Great sound
• Tons of side missions
Cons:
• No graphical improvement
• Technically issues with the multiplayer
• Short story
• Parachuting is a let-down
Gameplay: 9.0
Graphics: 8.3
Sound: 9.5
Story: 8.8
Multiplayer: 8.5
Longevity: 9.0
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood nailed the music, voice-acting, location and story, but it lacks in depth and fails to look as good as some other titles in terms of graphics. A solid attempt at multiplayer.
8.5/10