Assassin's Creed 2

Raz Review:  "Ubisoft learned many lessons from their first attempt at bringing the world of the Templars and Assassins to life.  Gone is the repetitiveness of AC1, there are now enough side-quests, puzzles and details to explore that you'll have plenty to keep you occupied.  The locales feel much more organic, and the NPCs actually seem to have lives of their own that they're pursuing whilst you slip through the crowd.  You can hire people to help you, build up a huge Italian villa and make money as lord of your own little village, pick pockets, do favors, buy artwork, upgrades, weapons, armor, health potions, poison, and ammo.  Or just explore and unlock famous Venetian landmarks!  Did I mention you can swim?  You can punt around on boats, too...

Equally important, the guards aren't nearly as stupid this time - the AI has been upgraded.  There are different classes of guard - some of them have heavy armor and weapons, so you actually need to strategize your attacks; others are fast and agile and can free-run you down if you try to flee.  All of them will work together to hem you in and keep you from escaping.  I got kinda pissed at them a few times before I realized that the challenge was actually a *welcome* change.  To even things out a little, city-wide alerts have been replaced by a GTA style alarm radius.  The bigger the commotion you cause, the bigger the alarm.  It's a nice incentive to live up to the stealth part of this game.

Blending in with your surroundings is another marked difference between AC1 and 2.  You could only use specially marked NPCs to blend, previously; now you automatically blend with a large enough crowd bunched together.  This may seem like too much of a good thing, like the immortality element of Prince of Persia, but it isn't - set off an alarm and the guards will seriously hunt for you, and they *will* peer into hiding places to see if you're lurking there.  You can always pop out and yank them in with you for a quick stealth kill when nobody's looking, of course.  Or avoid them altogether by hiring a few courtesans or thieves as a distraction.

To put it simply, Assassin's Creed 2 is everything the first one should have been; bigger, better, and way more polished, it has all the elements of a first-class stealth/action title.  There's no multiplayer, but the single-player campaign should keep you busy for a while; and there are plenty of unlockables and trophies for the serious collector."

Online: No
Rated:  9/10