I’m borrowing Assassin’s Creed 2 from my brother-in-law, and with only about an hour logged, I am absolutely ready to give up on it. Â I avoided the first because I knew I’d get sucked into its reported repetitive, boring gameplay despite myself. Â Jumping into the AC2, I’m confronted with an array of menus, prompts and controls that are completely dissimilar to anything I’ve played in recent memory- and that includes “open world” games like Infamous that obviously took some cues from it.
The setting- Italy during the Renaissance- is interesting enough, and I’ve only been mildly embarrassed playing through it with my wife so far; but between the busy interface (completely hidden from all promotional screenshots) with its tiny prompts that go by way too fast, and a control scheme that they do nothing to prepare you for if you’ve not played AC1, there’s just not enough here to keep me going.
Case in point: early in the game you are supposed to race the main character’s brother to the top of a church, and this race is designed to show you the parkour elements of the game. Â The problem is there is nothing to ease you into the moment, you simply begin the race and try to catch any instructional prompts as they fly by. Â When you fail, you are literally pulled out of the game world and forced to wait through a loading screen to start the race again. Â It took me 40 minutes to complete was is essentially a 60 second bit of gameplay.
This comic pretty much sums it up.
I’m not the only person who’s dealt with this, for what its worth. Â I’m going to give it another try but unless it really gives me something special its on to Dragon Quest V.
Also, I just made some muffins. Â Mmmmmmmmuffins.
