Presentation by James Kelly

Assassin's Creed II Developed by Ubisoft Montreal and Published by Ubisoft. Third Person Action-Adventure game. Released on Xbox 360 and PS3 on November 17th, Released on March 9th, 2010 for PC. At release, Retailed for $60.

Hardware Requirements The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions require the console to play. An Internet connection is required for online play and updates. (Xbox 360 also requires Xbox Live Subscription) Minimum PC requirements: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHZ or AMD Athlon X GHZ, 2Gb Ram,and 256 MB DirectX 9.0–compliant card with Shader Model 3.0 or higher Recommended Requirements: Intel Core 2 Duo E GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X or better, GeForce 8800 GT or ATI Radeon HD 4700 or better.

Summary For most of the game, the player plays as Ezio Auditore, a Assassin in 15th century Italy. In reality, the player is a character by the name of Desmond Miles, an ancestor of Ezio in the 21st century. Desmond is reliving Ezio's memories in order to discover the location of the Pieces of Eden.

UI The HUD is fairly standard for modern 3rd person games. Health bar in the upper left, contextual controls in the upper right, minimap in the lower right and selected weapon + money in the lower left. Menus and shops are list-based menu driven.

Gameplay The game is open world and allows you to explore any area you've already unlocked. You can also scale the side of nearly every building in the game. This allows for several ways to accomplish every objective. The objectives consist mostly of tracking down and killing targets.

Sound/Music The Sound in the game is very well done. When walking through town, the game sounds very much like a town in 15th Century Italy. The occasional sound glitch serves to remind you that you are inside a computer rather than actually in Italy. The music takes a back seat in game and only serves as background music in some cutscenes or menus.

Bugs Occasionally, when climbing, the game doesn't detect that the player could grab onto something but won't let them. It is also sometimes difficult to determine what will attract the attention of guards.

Review The best part of this game is the open world exploration. Most of my time is spent simply running around and seeing what the world has to offer. The storyline itself is also very engaging. The story does involve a few cliched betrayals and expected twists in the story.

Review Some of the missions in the game feel like filler and tend to drag on for two or three missions. Escaping from guards is also very bothersome. When running, the guards seem to gain speed hacks and have no trouble catching up, even when you scale a wall and run along the rooftops. Fighting guards is simple. Even when surrounded by many, they only attack one at a time. They can also be killed in one hit by countering their attacks.

Similar games A similar game is The Legend of Zelda series. Those games are also third person action adventure games. Assassins Creed II is much more violent and allows for more exploration. The Legend of Zelda also doesn't give as much incentive to explore as Assassins Creed II does. Both games have a very engaging story and balanced gameplay.

Conclusion This game is very well made and well worth the cost. The Story is very good and the controls are balanced. The combat is the poorest aspect of this game. It gets boring and repetitive to win every battle the same way. Due to the violent nature of this game, the appropriate audience is adults.