I ran pretty well for about 45 hours with only a handful of sidequest bugged out (although I started bugged on the tutorial! my teacher died by geckos...:)), and then I hit a wall. I can no longer play from any save for more than 5 minutes without a vicious crash (system lock up, plug puller reboot, which is hard on the hardware) and I guess that's the end of the line for my butt. So close to the end, but I can't drive this character anymore.

No reliable fixes that I've seen yet. Bethesda's had a long history of premature releases with massive bugs, but this is the worst since Buggerfall back in the 90s. I'm stunned at how incomplete this game is, especially in the back half of it.

I loved AC1 for the record, and that, too, had a nasty little learning curve. But once you got it, you got it. AC2 is many steps backwards from that. I personally think the PC version is a catastrophe. My best guess is that they didn't spend much QA time on PC platforms and didn't really give a crap about how different the game plays off console.

So, yes, the controls are terrible. The platform is even worse. The optimization (memory dumping after transition) is non-existent, which is very bad for a game designed to make you repeat sequences in order to create "challenge", which itself is a massive design fail. Your idiot assassin is very nimble the first couple of times around, but on time 10 (doesn't happen much, but the DLC content--which Ubisoft installed without my effing permission using their crappy DRM system--wasn't tested on the PC at all), poor Ezzio's dragging his feet as much as I am in the real world. We're both obviously bored and/or disgusted.

I played about half way through until I got to Venice where the game just fell completely apart. So, naturally, I switched over to a 360 controller per the box's recommendation. No problem. That solved some of the control issues, BUT it had no impact on the platform issues which are far more damaging.

Sadly, I think the PC platform for gaming is dying by design, something that even one of the EA veeps has already pretty much admitted. Which means you're going to see games come out that no one will spend any time preparing for pc use. That means controls, platforms, frame rate and other cross platform problems will be with us for the forseeable future.

Anyhoo, yes, the controls are terrible...:) But the reality is that as a pc player your needs were really never a factor in this game's release.

I've written only 3 hard letters to gaming companies in the 30 years I've been doing this. Assassin's Creed 2 was so bad that it wound up being my third.

I'll try it on a console at some point and I espect to have a much more positive experience along the lines of the majority of players than I did with this version.