Assassin’s Creed 2 from greatness to fall

I heard a lot about this game, from friends, classmates, people on the Internet. I saw a bunch of memes from those years, what a wonderful hero Ezio is, how people under the posts wrote how wonderful Assassin’s Creed II is. And now, after a decade and a half, I decided to play this much-praised game, and how many sequels does it have, Brotherhood, Revelations, each of which takes an average of 12-15 hours of play, complementing our adventure, which, plus or minus, is played out in the same way.

The game has a score of 91 on Metacritic and a birth date of 2009, when it seems to you that I am being cruel to such an old game, remember that I will not forget to praise it, and I am not an opponent of antiquity, I completed DMC 2001 not so long ago, played God of War, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks and an unknown game on the PS2 emulator Genji: Dawn of the Samurai. Therefore, now that I have tried to justify myself, you dear commentators may not destroy me, because I know that among you there are the very people who praised Ezio. Or maybe there is no one left and I just made it all up for myself.

Game installation:

Firstly, as a respected adult, I downloaded the Steam version for 300 gold coins (please don’t joke about the tractor driver, although you won’t succeed, swearing is prohibited, but is the so-called “sucking the tractor driver” swearing?? Need an answer in the comments) and this version does not support the Russian language. Naturally, I started looking for a crack for text and sound, since I’m not a hacker at all. And words like “mount the downloaded disk image in any emulator program” scare me."Personally, more than one downloaded Russifier file has not opened for me; whether this is a curse or an omen of something terrible is not yet clear.

I forgot to tell you that before launching the game asked me to log into the old Ubisoft Connect (formerly Uplay). What was my surprise to see this ancient evil here and now, it was probably another sign, the horseman of the Apocalypse himself, whom I gave up on and was able to translate the game into a modern, wonderful Ubisoft Connect. You understand the irony, right??

Tired of stressing out, because we primarily play games to relax. Having thus downloaded the game from the eternally bright pirate shores. Everything worked like clockwork for me and my tongue stood up and the ancient evils didn’t come out of nowhere. I could finally start playing, but how could I. I didn’t have the opportunity to select the desired gamepad in the settings, I only had the F310, which was unknown to me, despite the fact that the game was ported to the xbox 360 and PS3, and messing around with all the controls is not exactly doing what I wanted, namely playing the game. Therefore, I decided to play on the keyboard. What will a fun trial in the control settings bring to my immersion, in the first couple of hours, and what the hell am I being asked to press a button at the moment?.

You have probably already noticed strange icons such as “hand without weapon”, “head”, “legs”, etc. The main thing begins! The buttons needed to press are not displayed in the game and this problem quickly manifests itself, literally from the birth of Ezio, the game asks us to press the keys, or rather the icons of these keys, so you know which button “make hand movements”?

Or maybe you know how to "move your legs"?

Having a hundred or more keys on the keyboard, depending on your model, the task becomes not an easy one (and there is also a mouse!). But we are from experience, this is not the first time we are playing, so we are trying the main buttons intended for the game. May the soul rest in peace of that person who has never played video games and decided to start playing Assassin’s Creed 2 on PC on the advice of friends/acquaintances.

The most interesting thing in all this obscurantism is that on the PS3 all the buttons are displayed when asked to press them, I learned this when I talked to a hookah man who regularly goes through his favorite parts of Assassins once a year. But when we were “confident PC users”, we were considered people at all? We have to guess what the game requires of us.

Having run to the settings and back to understand what is still required of me, we finally move on to the game, where Ezio already shows how tough he is, in wall-to-wall battles, although he gets hit with a fist-sized cobblestone in the face, from which he is not able to dodge, thereby receiving a scar that is motley throughout the game and which Desmond also has, apparently the scars are inherited.

Having defeated the henchmen of Patius, he runs away in fear, because for a stone in the face you can get. After which we are again asked to do the impossible, to “pick up the corpses” which, by the way, are not corpses, but they are in a stable Assassin’s blackout, just lying on the ground, because a manual fight simply knocks them out. Well, of course, the necessary button to rob corpses (they are not corpses) is not displayed. After all, learning in infancy is not a clear example in the game, there we moved our hands, and now here we have to rob corpses, there is no associative thinking.

Next, we need to play catch-up with my brother, where I basically immediately realized that I couldn’t win, I just started the game with the guys, it would be nice to teach me how to grab and climb. In addition to everything, I have to come first, the game leaves us no chance, on the second try I somehow managed to overtake him. This magnificence begins, with music and the game’s screensaver. Really cool, it would be if not for the action later.

And then the action is a https://nonukgamblingsites.co.uk/usa-casinos/ leap of faith and here it is made as difficult as possible for PC users. We need to press three buttons at once. “Ugh,” MOBA players will say, and I’ll remind you that the buttons are not visible.

I would like to finish talking about the controls, but unfortunately the game itself presents us right under our noses with the lily of the valley? No QTE element. In the love scene with Christina, which, by the way, we see for the first and last time and we are suddenly forced to press the desired control for a while, which naturally? That’s right, people shout in the comments, they don’t show! A similar moment in the cut-scene upset me when I couldn’t hug Leonardo da Vinci.

Having stayed with the lady of my heart all night and unfortunately not having an alarm clock, Christina’s father discovers us in the morning and drives us away from the warm embrace of his beloved. Where for some reason we run away from the guards, because fighting the wall is not a wall is legal, but love, it, it is not lawful. By the way, I consider all these escapes of Ezio for girls, in the future this, Rosa, Ekaterina Sforz, without ideological and empty. All these relationships are not revealed in any way and do not really affect the character; if they had not existed, then nothing would have changed. The whole message is that Ezio is such a womanizer and all the girls are crazy about him. This is what Ubisoft is promoting to us, it’s funny to look at it after a bunch of agendas, strong and independent girls, Afro-Japanese samurai assassins, although I’m not against it, because Yasuke Japanese servant and warrior of the daimyo Oda Nobunaga, who served with him during the Sengoku period. But that’s okay, we return to our Batya, who at first reprimanded us that our adventures were already being talked about all over the area, well, at the same moment he showed himself to be our friend and said, okay, I was also so wild in my youth, which reveals the character well literally from the first meeting. And actually asks us to carry out a couple of small tasks.

Here, out of nowhere, the “blunt” of the century came, the game asks me to lift the box in the first mission meeting with Da Vinci, I’ve already gotten used to it a little and understand which button to press, I press it and nothing happens. I go into the settings, see that I am pressing correctly, try again and without success. Okay, I go online with this problem and see that a person writes that you need to press shift twice quickly. Naturally, the game itself doesn’t tell me this, it asks me to just press this button, but unfortunately I’m not a psychic.

Next, our Dad stirred up his “mutki” so that the good male population of our family was hanged in the square, which I consider a very dramatic moment, because everyone, without exception, had fun, including our younger brother, but he looks 10-12 years old, and this is rarely seen in games, violence against children is a rather serious matter. But Ubisoft showed their eggs, slapped 18+ and said hi Valhalla and Mirage with their rating (M)17+

Well, we cried, pooped and were positive again. In one of the missions further, an arrogant guard kicks our Leonard, which is completely disrespectful towards the Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist and engineer of the Renaissance.

Although Mr. Vinci told us that the city provided him with corpses for his experiments. Still, walking through the main entrance, past a crowd of people, a man in a guard costume, is still a little suspicious.

Having killed the hamster, in the frame above, we declare that we are Ezio Auditore and we are alive and will avenge the death of our loved ones, after which we run away from the city so that they don’t ask us for the “bazaar”.

Literally running away on my own with my sister and mother. Our longtime rival Pazzius Jr. is already waiting for us, and wants to finish us off. Fortunately, the plumber Uncle Mario arrived in time and neutralized the enemy guards.

For some reason there weren’t enough arrows for Pazzio Jr. and he simply runs away after the entire guard was killed in one gulp.

Uncle Mario, like the rest of the Assassin brotherhood, doesn’t really like to finish off our main rivals, as if we are not the main heroes of the game, but rather the same villains who constantly have the opportunity to kill us, but for some reason don’t do it, I immediately remember Hitman: Absolution

Stopgame, don’t swear that I didn’t upload the GIF using tenor, it’s like that. It’s not my fault, honestly, it’s been like this for about 10 minutes.

Well, after we talked about “this and that,” it’s time to remember about the controls, because then our good Uncle Mario teaches us new techniques, well, as he teaches, we sit every now and then in the settings to figure out what the game requires of us, the impressions are unforgettable. By the way, here they teach us how to run away from the crowd, after they have already tried to catch us in the square where everyone was hanged and after we killed the hamster, it’s useful, of course, but I already kind of know how.

Keep in mind that I say good things, we have catacombs here. I liked this one, it was done perfectly, it made me feel like I was in Prince of Persia is back. The design is well executed, an interesting chase after the guard, when he runs away the doors close behind him as he moves, you need to think sharply about how to get around the obstacle. This is a 5+.

In a stealth game, you can’t crouch! Yes, I understand, it seems that for quite a long time in the series it was impossible to fully sit down, but starting with the troika, in the game there were bushes in which the hero sat down, but here there is none, so the target under the contract could often start scurrying away from you, only barely noticing your hood. And know where you could squat and the game was also about stealth? In Hitman: Codename 47, born in two thousand.

Benedict Cumberbatch, for the protection and liberation of the city, gives us a cloak that protects us from the guards pestering our person when we run on the rooftops or other things, but there is a nuance, if you do not have a great desire to collect feathers, “voices” or go kill this one and get money, then there is nothing more to do in the city, and we are already sent further, where the game will remind you every time after loading that Florenzo’s cloak does not work in this locations.

An interesting chase on a cart, well choreographed, we either drive across a burning bridge, then archers are shooting at us trying to set fire to the cart, the guards jump and grab onto the cart, where they can be thrown off by hitting a branch or rocking the stagecoach so that they fall down. For me it was done better than Red Dead Redemption 2010, where you usually just ride and shoot with a rifle at enemies on horseback running past.

We arrive in Forli, from where we need to sail to Venice, unfortunately we don’t have a ticket and out of nowhere Ekaterina Svorz appeared, well, how did she appear, while we were told that we couldn’t do it without a ticket, she shouted somewhere behind a small island, “help”. What the ruler of Forli forgot will remain a mystery on a piece of land, in the end we are like the Italian-heartthrob we save her and she gives us a pass.

Of all the cities, I liked Venice the most, its architecture, structure in general. In comparison with the constantly yellow Florence and other similar cities. There was something adventurous in Venice, whether I jumped from this house to another or flew down into the water, beautiful sunsets, as well as the carnival later, will imprint the city well in my memory. There were some bugs; at the moment when you jump on a guard from above, your hero seems to stand on a corpse, and he, in turn, begins to roll down, and if the late guard was at the edge of the platform, then you are like a surfer, flying from the roof. But it’s not so much Venice’s fault as this bug was encountered in other cities, but here falling into the water is quite time-consuming.

The plot of the game at 8-9 hours is based on the fact that we, in the person of Ezio, kill the Templars, because they are making some plans, we eavesdrop on their conversations, where they say, “the assassin is killing us one by one, we need to make plans faster,” and this dialogue continues literally after each of our murders of one of the Templars. What are the plans, what do they want, the motivation of the heroes, we don’t know anything like that.

We are flying on a hang glider to kill the next Templar so that he does not have time to fulfill his unknown plan. Why, by the way, do we need to fly across the entire city, flying up on the fires that we have lit not directly, but along the envelope, into a castle with high fences through which there is no other way to get over, why don’t we just fly into it from the nearest high building, because even if we dragged this thing around the city, no one would understand anything, because people in the 14th century had not yet flown and Ezio himself laughs when Leonardo tells him about a device that can fly.

The golden mask we need to get to the special party and kill another Templar planning the plans. And it can be received by absolutely anyone who takes part in a couple of competitions. I immediately had an idea, why don’t we just then steal the mask from the winner, why do we need this clownery with participation in competitions, by the way, the mask was given to one of the Templar gang, despite our victory. After which we still stole this mask, and for some reason we were not found in the crowd at the party, because the Templar realized that his mask had been stolen, came to look for us at this party, but did not find us. Although he held this mask in his hands and knows what it looks like.

The greatest delirium that ever existed was when I followed the guard who was carrying a package for Rodrigo Borgia. I killed the guard, changed into his clothes, the captain came up and told me to follow him and take the box, we go out into the open street and workers with boxes start coming at me, if I crash into them, they will drop the box and there is definitely just a street guard nearby, in exactly the same equipment as me and she starts to get at me, to such an extent that a fight breaks out and the mission fails, it is not clear who came up with this, given that when we first arrived in Venice, we are shown that the guards here treat ordinary workers poorly, they literally rob a merchant who has just paid for a place for his tent. But when I knock out a box from a fellow worker, they attack me.

If you thought the nonsense was over, then no, this is just the beginning. We get to Rodrigo, then a dozen of our brotherhood appears out of nowhere, we kill all the guards and fight with Borgia himself, he just kicks us in the stomach and runs away, and all the Assassins around from our brotherhood are like, “let him run” for the second time we act like the notorious villain from Hitman, who had a chance to finish off 47, but he let him escape, after which he dies at the end of the game. Our brotherhood has been watching us since the moment we ran after the messenger for the Borgia and they did not place a couple of people anywhere to kill the main villain and he could not hide.

DLC castle defense

Then the defense of Forli begins from a remarkable man, standing agitating in the captured castle and saying “taxes will rise” “millet prices will rise” there is no one around, just now Ekaterina Sforz and I ran past, killing the enemy guards, also all the shops with weapons, armor and healers are calmly standing in the city in which hostilities are now taking place. Completely calm as if it were a normal Monday.