Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft’s premier title was received with an array of responses that ranged from million grievances to a million praises. The bottom line that had everyone agreed on was that this was a rather solid start to an IP that needed to get better with sequels. Assassin’s Creed 2 is already in works, and is “rumored” to hit shelves in the spring of 2009. Montreal does need to make a lot of changes to make this game a unanimous AAA title.
Let’s try and outline some of the stuff that needs to changed or added to Assassin’s Creed 2 to make the experience a better one:
1. More weapons and armor: So you are an Assassin and hence need to be fast and light to carry yourself from one destination to another in quick succession, but it would be better if I could choose the kind of weapons for the assassinations. This would not only add a bit of flavor to the gameplay, which gets monotonous after a point and increases the definition of the “sandbox” within which the game is based in. The weapon system needs to be incentive based, which can be done with dealers spreading across the cities to sell their wares to your Assassin. Missions thus need to be based on a monetary system where you get rewarded with gold, which you can choose to spend on armor and weapons. Remember the Crossbow from the introduction of the game. It would be nice if developers could actually put the stuff they’ve promised and shown off in the game.
2. More stuff to do around the city: I got bored after the 4th assassination in the game because of the non interactivity of the entire city. The only reason I played through the game was purely out of my Spiderman 2 syndrome from the last generation. I never got bored of swinging in the game and I never got bored running around the cities here either. A good 80% of my playtime was spent on roof tops, which made the ground redundant most of the time. It would be applaudable if the developers could increase the amount of interactivity within the city apart from bumping into delinquents and saving citizens. Probably more targets to assassinate, different ways for gathering Intel for each assassination, more areas to explore to gather upgrades.
3. Reduce glitches: So I know this game has a futuristic twist, but the glitch problem is just audacious. The game froze thrice post an assassination which just made me switch off the console for good. Frequent bouts of irritation occurred when Altair could not recognize certain ledges that were present to grab hold on and he plummeted to death. I do expect a significantly non-glitchy game from the sequel.
4. Indoor environments: We’ve seen a lot of authentic historical outdoor environments been recreated in the game, but I would also like to see significant indoor environments present in the game as well, since it does seem a bit absurd that all assassinations take place outdoor. These guys could look up the Hitman series for some inspirational stuff to craft.
5. Combat and evasion: The combat in the game needs be diversified a bit. I found myself using the counter attack for most of the time for that was the quickest way of finishing off a foe and running off. Evasion techniques are the most horrid in the game. Granted the A.I is smart but it tends to get highly annoying post an assassination when your evasion level just refuses to go down even when you are far away from the sight for the guards.
6. Playing Robin Hood: This one is a bit off the mark but I felt that once the rich districts were unlocked it would be nice to siphon off some unaccounted gold from fat lazy merchants and give it to the poor and ailing people who inhabit the slum clusters in the city. The devs could link this up with a system of Assassin ranking or something which would make the game competitive and immersive.
–Neelesh Mukherjee