Assassin's Creed 2 Catch-All

Now you've made me want to play it again. Is Brotherhood out for PC yet?

I think it might have been the same guy, they can stick around for really long, even if you don't chase them.

UCRC wrote:

Now you've made me want to play it again. Is Brotherhood out for PC yet?

17th/22nd, depending where you live. Europe gets it first.

Now I'm wondering how many awesome emergent chases I miss out on by simply crossbowing all pickpockets and messengers as soon as I see them.

Those rooftop races can be kind of weird. Once a pickpocket slipped off the roof and fell to his death. I thought it was kind of funny till the guards decided I did it.

I had that, but then I was trying to loot the corpse at the time. Hello emergent storytelling.

Scratched wrote:

I had that, but then I was trying to loot the corpse at the time. Hello emergent storytelling.

Definitely - ACII and AC:B are two games my wife loves to watch me play, mostly due to the lack of explosions and gunfire and the possibilities for doing near anything: "You should totally poison that guy, he stole your money."

Happy Dave wrote:
Scratched wrote:

I had that, but then I was trying to loot the corpse at the time. Hello emergent storytelling.

Definitely - ACII and AC:B are two games my wife loves to watch me play, mostly due to the lack of explosions and gunfire and the possibilities for doing near anything: "You should totally poison that guy, he stole your money."

Yes. I love to throw bullets and rockets around as much as the next guy, but I do love the contrast AC has, that there's a good fun challenge in non violence, and rarer fights. I struggle to think of many games where violence isn't just a constant drone. I think you could go for hours in AC without killing anyone but still making valuable progress.

Fortunately, I don't seem to have my act together, in terms of killing couriers with throwing knives, other wise the chases wouldn't last very long. In general the chases are getting shorter and shorter as I get the hang of running guys down.

I did see a guard being chased by three guards and ran along below looking for a way up. I found his body on the road, below where the guards seemed to have him cornered, so I presume they killed him or he fell. I was attacked when looting the body as well. I wonder if, in AC II, guards spawn in on occasion (as allied assassin's do in Brotherhood) but there are certainly enough guards wandering about to believe that I was genuinely spotted by a patrol (and I honestly don't mind either way :).)

I rarely use anything but hidden blades and ranged weapons in AssBros. The only reason to switch is for horses.

wordsmythe wrote:

I rarely use anything but hidden blades and ranged weapons in AssBros. The only reason to switch is for horses.

Yeah, they're too big to assassinate with the hidden blades.

wordsmythe wrote:

I rarely use anything but hidden blades and ranged weapons in AssBros.

I just love the sword fights and I enjoy the kill animations for different weapons. For a while I found myself fighting unarmed a lot so I could steal a mace from someone. In the end it occurred to me that I could just carry a mace as my main weapon.

ARISE!

Assassin's Creed 2 is awesome. I'm six hours in and barely made any progress on the story. I've been too busy buying treasure maps, collecting treasure, free running, and assassinating random people.

Yup it is awesome! If anything AC2 (and Brotherhood and Revelations) have almost TOO MUCH to do, distracting you from the main story and possibly messing up the pacing a little bit if (like me) you are easily distracted.

I've not played Revelations yet, but IMHO 2 was a better game than Brotherhood. 2 managed to have lots to do and yet not feel too much like a chore. Brotherhood crossed that fine line, and I'm not thrilled with how the tower defense part of Revelations seem like even more tedium.

I think they are all worth playing (except the first game...) but 2 seemed to be the best.

2 had the added benefit of being a hojillion times better than 1.

Yeah. 1 was like a proof of concept before they added any actual gameplay elements.

Orphu wrote:

I've not played Revelations yet, but IMHO 2 was a better game than Brotherhood. 2 managed to have lots to do and yet not feel too much like a chore. Brotherhood crossed that fine line, and I'm not thrilled with how the tower defense part of Revelations seem like even more tedium.

I think they are all worth playing (except the first game...) but 2 seemed to be the best.

I'm replaying 2 now after playing a bit of Brotherhood, and there are definitely features in Brotherhood that I miss sorely in 2. Chain attacks for example, those make combat much more entertaining and fluid in Brotherhood. In 2 I find myself just waiting for the attack to come so I can counter it, instead of going more on the offensive and reacting to attacks when they come.

Also, and this is specific to the PC, the action icons in 2 suck serious donkey balls. They very obviously took the button icons from the 360 and just pasted custom graphics on them (an open hand, a hand holding something, a head, a foot), but this means jack all when you need to know precisely what to press quickly, since my brain has to do the translation ("Oh, red open hand is my LEFT SHIFT key"). Brotherhood, by contrast, does the smart thing of displaying the key I have bound to the action, so if I need to press my "empty hand" action, it simply displays LEFT SHIFT, which means I no longer have to do the translation myself.

I'm still enjoying it even for the 3rd time, and I'm looking forward to having the story fresh in my mind for Brotherhood and then Revelations.

Yeah, the chain feature made combat quicker for sure. In 1 and 2 it all boiled down to waiting for the counter attack on every enemy which got boring after a while.

Orphu wrote:

Yeah, the chain feature made combat quicker for sure. In 1 and 2 it all boiled down to waiting for the counter attack on every enemy which got boring after a while.

Also chaining a bunch of kills together makes you feel like a total badass. Especially when you do that one move. You know the one.

Hey, stop talking about stuff I can't do in Assassin's Creed 2!

<3 my villa.

Also, the life of a rooftop guard in my world is brief and painful. What can I do? I gotta move around the city.

Most of them usually got thrown from said rooftop in my version. Something satisfying when the guard says "Hey, let go" and I oblige... right off the rooftop and into the water below.

BadKen wrote:

Also, the life of a rooftop guard in my world is brief and painful. What can I do? I gotta move around the city.

You also get the Hand of God-I mean crossbow in Brotherhood.

cube wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Also, the life of a rooftop guard in my world is brief and painful. What can I do? I gotta move around the city.

You also get the Hand of God-I mean crossbow in Brotherhood.

That thing was worth the wait.

Speedhuntr wrote:
cube wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Also, the life of a rooftop guard in my world is brief and painful. What can I do? I gotta move around the city.

You also get the Hand of God-I mean crossbow in Brotherhood.

That thing was worth the wait.

I feel like it kind of broke things. It's like a gun, except you can use it in more places, and it's silent, and you can hold way more ammo for it, and I think it aims a little faster. I have never found a situation where the gun is a better choice, except when it goes off automatically during a sword kill, which is awesome but doesn't count.

By "TOO MUCH" in Revelations I was thinking about Mediterranean Defense, which sucked up way more time than Den Defense. (I just locked all my dens after triggering three defenses; I probably could have gotten through triggering one or none.)

You know, I never really did bother with learning to do chain kills properly. I really enjoyed the counter kill system and preferred it. So BadKen, from my point of view, you aren't missing much.

I think they balanced the gun a little in Revelations so it does more damage to armored opponents, but they should have adjusted the balance a little more. Given you more damage in exchange for the lack of stealth.

Not that any of the games lack for a way to make you feel like a badass. It's more like a choice of WHICH way do you want to slaughter men by the dozens today? At its best, the series uses the Full Synchronization challenges to encourage you to mix things up without forcing you to.

Don't forget bombs. I threw a shrapnel bomb at a group of Jannisaries. I imagine that they would have been cross with me, had any of them lived long enough to realize what happened.

LobsterMobster wrote:
Speedhuntr wrote:
cube wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Also, the life of a rooftop guard in my world is brief and painful. What can I do? I gotta move around the city.

You also get the Hand of God-I mean crossbow in Brotherhood.

That thing was worth the wait.

I feel like it kind of broke things. It's like a gun, except you can use it in more places, and it's silent, and you can hold way more ammo for it, and I think it aims a little faster. I have never found a situation where the gun is a better choice, except when it goes off automatically during a sword kill, which is awesome but doesn't count.

Those are all good points. But I never really found a use for the gun in AC2 anyway (too loud!) so I didn't mind the crossbow superseding it.

All this talk of AC2 has made me want to play it again. I might actually start back at 1 after I finish off Revelations and do a giant playthrough.

So I've been watching this video walkthrough of the original Assassin's Creed (http://www.mahalo.com/assassins-cree...), since I never finished the game on 360, and I really only watched videos of the end of the story before starting 2. Now I find myself really wanting to play the original, too, despite warnings that Assassin's Creed 2 is leaps and bounds better.

Think I'll still enjoy the original? Based on the videos I've been watching, it looks like I might.