So the other day I was playing Team Fortress 2, and someone accused me of being a "free-to-play noob". I was chided as being one of the newbie players who only recently got into the game because it became free-to-play, despite my owning and playing the game since 2007.
But let me back up a little bit. I was playing Team Fortress 2 the other day, and having a less than stellar round. Some people on my team, who had been playing on the server before I got there, were using their microphones to play the game. These players were being too vocal, to the point that I couldn't concentrate on the game because of all the "mic spam". Being annoyed at my repeated effort and lack of results, coupled with the inane chirps and squeals of the mic spam, I did what any right-minded online gamer would do: I told them to "shut the fuck up".
Bear in mind, I merely typed this phrase into the game's chat; most of the time, these messages are either not read by those they are directed at, since that person is too busy playing the game, or it is swept off the screen quickly by in-game announcements. My message was immediately recognized by the person who I considered to be the primary offender, however.
What was seconds before only friendly banter and playful chatting suddenly became a shrill torrent of insults, disagreeing with my command and demanding that I "shut the fuck up" myself. The tone of voice degenerated into what I could only describe as "ghetto". It's funny how quickly someone's world can come crashing down at the slightest bit of confrontation.
So we argued a bit more, me click-clacking away at my keyboard, and the annoying mic spammer answering my few messages with an elevating level of shrieking. Another player said I should get banned.
Then, the original mic spammer decided that the best way she could deal with me was to call me out as a "free-to-play nub".
A little bit of history, before I continue: back in 2007, Team Fortress 2 used to come as a standalone inclusion in the Orange Box, with Half-Life 2. After that, it became possible to buy the game separately. Finally, as of June of 2011, the game became "free-to-play", meaning anyone could download the game and play with everyone else. Since then, the newest, greatest community-spawned insult is to call someone a "free-to-play noob", meaning they stink at the game because they've only recently begun playing, since the game was made free.
Obviously, I do not fall into this category, and I stated that plainly. Ms. Mic Spam backed off rather quickly after this, and was quite quiet after. And rightfully so, since most of my characters in Team Fortress 2 are outfitted with either The Proof of Purchase hat, my Primeval Warrior pin, or both. These items show that I bought the game back when it was still for sale, and that I have been playing since September 18, 2007, respectively. They are not tradable, and anyone who has them is very obviously not a Team Fortress 2 free-to-play inductee.
So what's the lesson here, other than that I like to have petty arguments with stupid people while I am playing games?
Simply this: if you're going to be an asshole and toss around the "free-to-play noob" insult liberally every time you disagree with someone in Team Fortress 2, make sure you know what the hell you're talking about first. It's not hard to check out people's loadouts first. Unless of course, you're some kind of noob.
Also, if you want to chat with people constantly, start up a private Steam voice chat conversation, or use Xbox Live, Skype, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, or some other chat client. You can even play games while you're doing it. Just leave everyone else out of the conversation, because I assure you, we're not interested.
So Valve finally got around to releasing one of the two final Meet the Team videos - the newest being for the Medic, and arguably the most epic video they've created so far. Watch below!
Oh, and if you didn't bother to watch all the way through, they've also just announced that Team Fortress 2 is now free to play for all! A generous move, surely, though I'm not sure if there are many people left out there who are interested in the game and haven't gotten it yet. Still, this is great news for the continuing popularity of the game.
And if it's proof of anything, it's proof that sales of virtual goods must be a profitable business for Valve. This wouldn't shock me at all.
Anyway, it's a great game by a great team. Get it for yourself if you haven't already!
Another thing that happened while I was gone was that Team Fortress 2 got video capturing, editing, and rendering tools, and me and my buddy Dave used them to become YouTube sensations!
Well, the first part happened, anyway. The second part almost happened, but alas, not many people watched our video. I've taken the liberty of including it at the head of this post, if you're interested in watching a Pyro and Medic take on a handful of bad guys. Spoiler alert: lots of people get burned.
I used a combination of Team Fortress 2's built-in tools, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Premiere to create the video. Oh, and a little help from a tool called GCFScape.
One of the things I've been doing in the time since my last major blog post was dabbling with rendering some of my Minecraft exploits.
One of my biggest projects in the game (before I started "cheating" with INVedit and MCEdit) was Skull Island. Across a wide expanse of water from my original spawn and home base, I found an island with a large mountain near the water. It could be seen faintly from the water's edge near my spawn, and I thought it'd be a cool project to carve a large skull into the cliff face. After a few weeks of work (not always consistent play, but it did take a while), I was finished. It wasn't the best thing I'd ever seen made in Minecraft, but I liked the result, was proud of my work, and have decided to post the results here, for the curious.
In order to render my Minecraft levels, I first output them to OBJ format using mcobj, which is a great little tool. I used my old 3D standby, trueSpace, to do the actual rendering, and did a little work in Photoshop afterwards for some of them as well.
Here's the final render I did of Skull Island. The depth of field effect, which was part of the original render, gives it a nice little tilt-shift photography effect that I feel is very appropriate for Minecraft. I also did some post-process color work in Photoshop.
That line coming out of the water and going into the skull's mouth is actually my mine cart track that leads back and forth between the two land masses. On the way over to Skull Island, you come flying up a long incline and immediately see the giant skull looking ahead before your cart goes sailing between the front teeth!
I also did an alternate view from my home base area on the other side of the water. There's no sky output when you export maps from Minecraft using mcobj (and I don't see how there could ever be, really), so I had to make my own. The following two images show the render with and without my faux-Minecraft sky.
I also did a render of a small lake, to test water transparency / reflectivity and depth of field.
And finally, just for kicks, here's an image of my poor computer trudging through a rendering... the phrase "firing on all cylinders" comes to mind!
If you play Minecraft and you don't mind getting your hands dirty with some simple 3D work, rendering your worlds is a pretty fun way to make the whole experience a little more artful. There's a good sub-reddit for mcobj at r/mcobj, and people have also written up some decent tutorials for creating renders with Blender too, so there are lots of resources out there to help get you started if you're interested in all of this.
Thanks for reading, and if you have any tips, tricks, or other things to share about creating Minecraft renders, be sure to add them in the comments below! And of course, if I create any more interesting renders, I'll be sure to post 'em here on the blog!
Two or three weeks after I quit my full-time job at Minecraft, Team Fortress 2 got a massive update in the form of The Mann-Conomy Update. Not only were all of the new items from the Polycount Pack included, but also a new store in which players can buy items for their roster of characters. Now, rather than having to play for hours and hours, hoping for the right random drop or collecting enough raw materials to craft, players can plunk down a wad of cash from their Steam Wallet and buy what they want, straight away. So I started playing again.
I was a bit apprehensive at first, but overall, the in-game item store is a good idea, really. It helps monetize a game that, even after 3 years out, is still going strong online, making it more sustainable for Valve to continue updating it (and for the community members creating the content, apparently). For players who don't want or can't afford to purchase items from the in-game store, the old item collection system is still in place, so they can continue to earn rewards the old-fashioned way. And for now, store items cannot be traded, so found or crafted items retain lots of value among players.
Aside from a few small balancing issues with the scout and soldier, my biggest complaints with the update revolve around Mann Co. Crates, boxed items that can be randomly "found" while you play, which require the player to pay $2.50 for a virtual key to open. Sure, the broke player can trade the crate items to others who don't mind paying to open them, but it still bothers me that they require real money to open.
And that leads to my other gripe. Unlocking crates grants players a mystery item, one of the items listed on the box's description. This includes an assortment of normal items, hats, and "unusual" rare items that don't spawn very often. This is all fine, and I understand why Valve did it; it serves to keep the money flowing in as people gamble on the contents of crates. But it further bothers me that even while paying $2.50 for every opened crate, there is still a very good chance that you're going to receive a normal item that could have cost less in the item store, or which could be found or traded for free.
I understand that there is a balance to how good the loot in the crates can be versus how much you pay to open them, but there is a premium that comes along with paying for content, and it's lame that people are receiving tons of ordinary items when they are opting to pay for the very chance to receive an item in the first place.
Other than all that, I'm enjoying the update a lot. It's nice to be able to pick up cheap items for a buck or two, instead of having to wait for days or weeks to get them as a drop. Team Fortress 2 is as fun as always, and the mayhem is only further exaggerated by all the crazy items people have.
And just for kicks, you can check out my backpack here if you like.
Continuing my string of posts about things that I wanted to talk about during my hiatus, following is a list of stuff that happened in the world of video games that I found interesting or noteworthy. And addictive. Horribly, horribly addictive.
A couple of months ago I was browsing Reddit, and I happened upon a submission about a game in its Alpha phase that people were absolutely salivating over. I posted a comment about how I'd never buy a game in Alpha, because it's bound to be bug-ridden or possibly never even finished. I was ridiculed, but held fast to my opinion.
A few days later I was lurking around Reddit again and looking through my message log. I found my anti-Alpha post, and since I was bored, decided I'd check out the game's website and possibly give it a try, if a demo was available.
That game, of course, was Minecraft.
And nothing, not even a lengthy stint with World of Warcraft, could have possibly prepared me for the vise that slowly wrapped itself around me as I loaded up the free, browser-based client and started playing around with it.
I moved around the game world. I liked the blockiness of it. Then I clicked and accidentally removed a block. Amazed, I did this several more times, and then figured out how to make blocks. Looking at the vast landscape generated before me, I quickly realized that this was a game with almost limitless possibilities.
I spent the next hour or so building a massive tower with a door in the back that led to an underground tunnel. Building was easy with infinite blocks and no enemies around.
Curious to learn more about this game, I checked out the feature set for the single player for-pay Alpha client. The prospect of building massive structures with limited or mined resources sounded daunting, but I wanted more, so I quickly made the payment, took a quick moment to note my hypocritical nature, and then plunged into a gaming obsession that lasted for weeks.
By day, I dreamed up new and unusual ideas for structures to build, and by night, I built them. I went from putting in a good deal of Team Fortress 2 almost every night to putting in a ton of Minecraft, exclusively. I created a modest safe house, a massive network of mines, a two way mine cart system that went deep underground and underwater, a huge lighthouse, a giant stone skull carved into a mountain, and the beginnings of a second home, an underground lair with trees and deep shafts carved into the hillside above for light. I even crafted a replica of Uncle Scrooge's Money Bin. Yes, I played a ton of Minecraft.
But then I just grew tired of it. I still had my massive plans for construction, and still had plenty of inspiration from the official Minecraft forums and Minecraft's home on Reddit. But I'd log in and I just didn't want to spend hours and hours mining all that stone, moving mountains, and chopping wood. To put it in short, I ran it into the ground.
I'm still looking forward to the October update, since it includes so much cool new stuff... but I'm otherwise pretty much over it. I've got too many other games that I haven't put much time in with yet, and I need to get them out of the way to make room for the holidays.
After slogging through months of other less interesting updates like the Steam port to Mac and Valve's horribly disappointing E3 "surprise" (Portal 2 on PlayStation 3... yawn), the addition of Engineer achievements and unique class weapons is a breath of fresh air. It's the patch that fans have been clamoring for since the inception of class updates for TF2, and it looks like Valve's lost no steam (pun intended!) in providing unique, fun, and rewarding additions to the game.
In total, the new update offers Engineers a new gun, two new melee weapons, a new sentry gun, a remote for sentry guns, and the ability to move placed sentry guns. Additionally included are four maps and the requisite slew of Engineer-oriented achievements.
I'm most excited about the ability to move around already-placed turrets, as well as the sentry remote control. After building a sentry gun and upgrading it to the highest level, it stinks to have to destroy it just to place another in a more active part of the map as the action moves around. Now, you don't have to do this - you just have to be careful when you pick it up and move it, since dying while carrying the packed-up sentry will cause it to be destroyed instantly.
Controlling turrets remotely is also a great addition. Though it takes the slot of your pistol to use the remote control (dubbed the Wrangler), it can be invaluable in helping to keep your construction alive while you run off to do other things. The sentry goes offline for a few seconds when you switch back to controlling your Engineer, but this is only a minor annoyance.
I played around with the new patch last night, on the new map, Thunder Mountain, but I actually haven't played as an Engineer yet. Why, you ask? A few reasons.
First, everybody is playing as an Engineer right now. It's one of my favorite classes in the game, maybe even my favorite, but I can't play on a team that is 90% Engineers. The addition of being able to move your turrets around helps make the class play a little better on the offensive, but it's still boring to sit around waiting for sentry kills when everyone else is doing the exact same thing. It also makes each round incredibly hard to win.
Second, since everyone else is playing as an Engineer, it's a great time to be other classes - particularly Spy or Soldier. I racked up quite a few new achievements last night playing as both classes, because right now there are about four times as many destroyable objects being placed in the field than normal. I actually noticed another small downside to the remote-control sentry ability here as well; as a spy, it's a lot easier to back-stab people near remotely controlled turrets because, unless the player who is controlling it is looking at you when you do it, you won't be instantly detected and can escape again much easier than before.
It was also fun to play on the new maps. Almost nobody I was playing with knew them well, so we weren't mired down in the same old tactics you see whenever you play on maps which people have ran through a hundred times.
Overall, the class updates for Team Fortress 2 have added a lot to the game, and I applaud Valve for keeping at it. I hope they continue to find interesting ways to give the game depth and add to the fun. I know one thing for sure: I'm going to have a hard time not playing in most all of my spare time in the coming weeks.
Just wanted to throw down a quick update here, since it's been quite a while, and I'm sure many people out there are sitting on the edge of their seats, wondering if I'm lying in a gutter somewhere. Many sleepless nights were had, courtesy of my lack of updates, and I am sorry.
Fear not, however! I am alive and well, and have just been busy with a lot of work and, of course, a lot of play.
I don't think I'd posted the above picture on the blog yet, so there it is - a tree painting I'd done some weeks ago for a contest and auction for the Sacramento Tree Foundation. Sadly, it didn't get accepted into the limited space of the show, but I'm glad to have made it, and I have more ideas for some other paintings in this style.
This painting was done in acrylic paint and paint pen on a 15" x 30" canvas. Here's the sketch the painting is based on (ink on 5.5" x 8.5" sketch pad):
During my time away from the blog, I got to go up to my parents' house for a bit one weekend, and went out on a small vacation to Sonoma with my girlfriend too. I had a great time with both, and the time away from doing work has been refreshing.
Speaking of work, I've got more work lined up for No Love Skateboarding - along with the rat image I posted a while ago, which was used for a shirt design and then reconfigured for a skateboard design, I've done a Denver cityscape and have a few other projects for shirts and boards on deck which I'll post here eventually.
I'm also working on a disc label and CD jacket for a friend of my dad's, Johnny "Guitar" Knox, who is a local blue guitarist in the Sacramento area. That project is going a bit slower than originally planned, but it's getting done slowly.
I've also got a logo to design for my girlfriend's cousin which I have yet to start.
And finally, probably the biggest time sink of them all, I've finally completed Dragon Age: Origins, after about 60 hours of play. The game was good, long, and fun. I'm glad I finally got into it. I've already started another play-through, but I think I'm going to take a break for a while so I can finish on my aforementioned projects, as well as re-acquaint myself with some of the other games I've neglected over the months.
After the somewhat botched Gears of War 3 announcement last week, I've been thinking about running through Gears of War 2 again on Insane difficulty, so I can grab all the collectibles I missed and have some more action-oriented fun for a change. I also want to sink my teeth into some of the Mass Effect 2 DLC that came out while I was playing Dragon Age, but I'm just not in the mood for another epic gaming marathon right now.
Anyway, thanks for checking in, hope the lack of posts hasn't kept anyone away, and (again, I know!) I shall try to be better with the updates.
In lieu of making any actual posts in February, I've been working on getting my old, outdated games page set up on the blog, and I'm just about done with it. All that's needed to do is add a few more games to the list, dress things up a bit, and maybe convert all the old games to GM8. You can find the link to the new page in the header menu, or by clicking here.
And yes, I've also been working on the Reflect Games re-design again. It's slow-going, as always, but it's coming. CSS always gets me down when it comes to turning a Photoshop comp into a working design, but I'm getting better at it. There's a lot to like about CSS - and in my opinion, a lot to hate too.
Anyway, I just wanted to explain my absence and point out the new section above - hopefully this turns out to be a better home for my games than the old site. I'll be shutting that site off and linking the "games" subdomain to that page soon. Consolidation is good.
I was thinking about doing a write-up of my favorite games from 2009, but as I was going over most of the games I played last year, many of my favorites turned out to be from 2008 or earlier. I got a few of 2009's finest for Christmas, but so far, I've only had time to play through one of them - Assassin's Creed 2. Luckily, it turned out to be one of my favorite games in a good while, so instead of doing a list I thought I'd just write a game review instead. Read on for tales of free running, theft, death-defying acrobatics, and of course, assassination.
As a note of precaution, I am going to try to keep spoilers for the first game to a minimum, but in order to talk about the opening sequence of the second game, there might be some slight spoilers for the first one. If you haven't played Assassin's Creed 1 yet, and you're planning on doing so, proceed with caution. I will not spoil the content of AC2, save for the introductory portion of the game.
A little over two years ago, I picked up Assassin's Creed 1 (also as a Christmas gift, I believe), and quickly played through it over the course of a few weeks. It was a fun game. With sprawling ancient urban environments, the visuals were particularly impressive, as were the movement mechanics for the player. In the end though, the whole thing became somewhat repetitive, with each level in the game playing exactly like the last. There were a few quirks with the fundaments of the game that could probably have been overlooked if the rest of the game had been better, but which ended up standing out instead. And the finale of the game, which was deliberately left open for a sequel, was somewhat of a letdown.
Despite the first game's drawbacks, however, I did have a good time with it. So when November 2009 rolled around and Assassin's Creed 2 was released to better reviews than its predecessor, I was excited. Unfortunately for me, I usually don't buy myself many games between November and December, just in case someone decides to get me a game for Christmas or my birthday. I waited for the holidays, did in fact, get the game, and played through it over the last few weeks. After nearly 24 total hours of game-time and collecting 47 of 50 achievements, I can say with confidence (and puns) that Assassin's Creed 2 is leaps and bounds above Assassin's Creed 1; it's truly a great game.
AC2 begins right where the first game left off. Desmond Miles, the surrogate protagonist of both the first and second games, has finished locating the Piece of Eden for Abstergo, and locked in the laboratory with the Animus. Lucy, the technician who projects sympathy for Desmond in the first game, returns to the lab and the two escape from the Abstergo building, seeking refuge with a group of modern-day Assassins. Armed with their own Animus, the group enlists Desmond to help them find out the truth behind the Piece of Eden, and we delve once more into history via Desmond's biological memories.
Almost all of the game takes place inside the Animus, in a virtual recreation of ancient Italy. The story follows Desmond's ancestor Ezio as he uncovers a vast Templar plot, and includes many historical figures like Niccolò Machiavelli, Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI), and even Leonardo da Vinci.
One thing you'll notice right from the start is that AC2 makes a much stronger effort to explain the story better than the first game. The virtual past is a bit different, it is explained, because the new Animus is more feature-packed than the one used at Abstergo. At various points in the story the other characters who monitor Desmond's progress will voice over and explain what is happening. And all the people and places of interest you visit in the game is explained in historical context via a large collection of database entries that are added to Desmond's Animus menu as you progress through the game. It's all very well done, and I spent a lot of time reading the database as entries were added to it. In many instances, the historical information is actually a pretty interesting read, and it adds a lot to the game as well.
The story that Ubisoft has woven into real-life history for Assassin's Creed, particularly this second game, is compelling. The interactions between Ezio and other characters, both historical and fictional, is very well done and does much to add a distinctly human element to the game. Whereas in the first AC game you were relegated to performing the same pattern of actions over and over with very little narrative in between, the second game gives you many more unique missions while stringing them along with strong story elements in between.
Gameplay in AC2 is varied and thoughtful. Once the initial theatrics are over and you've assumed your role of Ezio, you're given free reign to explore a sizable portion of Renaissance Florence. Similar to AC1, you're able to climb tall structures and use them to scope out nearby missions. Unlike AC1, however, you'll find that you now have access to a few different types of vendor stalls, where you can buy weapons, new armor, quick-travel to different parts of Italy, etc. Missions that do not progress the story include assassination contracts, races, and fighting. There are also many treasures scattered throughout each explorable area that pad your wallet and eventually help you learn more fighting moves and increase your health points.
Combat is somewhat basic, but less frustrating than in the original game. There are more ways to dispatch enemies, and there isn't as much emphasis on maintaining an overall rhythm, so there are many fewer times where you get caught in a string of attacks that are impossible to stop. Additionally, you can buy new weapons from blacksmiths, and you can use weapons dropped or taken from enemies as well.
Sometimes, you might not want to fight the throng of guards chasing you - not a problem! There are far more places to hide in AC2, and it's much easier to tell when you're blending into a crowd (for anonymity). You can also hire bands of thieves, mercenaries, and courtesans to help give you a little cover and distract or fight guards when necessary.
Finally, player movement in Assassin's Creed 2 seems much more refined than before. Ezio climbs and swings around structures much faster than Altaïr, and if you're like me, you will be happy to see is that swimming has been added to the game engine, so you no longer have to fear the random instant death of a bad jump near water. Overall, player movement in AC2 is very fluid, and even though you'll be spending much of your time watching Ezio perform stunts that seem super-human, the animation is so natural you'll come away feeling like it really could be possible for a person to move the way he does. With Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell, and a host of other games, Ubisoft has a good lock on games involving non-linear movement/acrobatic mechanics, and with each new game, the engine only seems to get better.
In addition to the regular assassin gameplay in AC2, there are also a good number of hidden puzzle sequences, where you solve a collection of ever-challenging puzzles in order to uncover more of the secrets about the Piece of Eden. These puzzles serve as a good break from the action now and then, and are quite devious towards the end of the game. Luckily, you can always choose to solve them later on. These puzzles, along with the collectible codex pages and all the other supplemental information included in the Animus database, are a good example of the efforts Ubisoft went to in order to explain the Assassin's Creed world better in the second game. Both the cryptographer and conspiracy buff inside you will jump for joy.
Gameplay aside, the very first thing that might draw you into AC2 (or the franchise in general) is the look of the game.
The original game, Assassin's Creed 1, had some good graphics; even playing the game today, I am still amazed at how well the game engine draws the vast expanse of ancient cities and surrounding countryside. Assassin's Creed 2 is no different - and oftentimes better! It is a visual feast, and Renaissance Italy has never looked so good. Everywhere you go, people are walking, talking doing things. The buildings in each area you visit are gritty yet fantastic. Historical sites, like Basilica di San Lorenzo and Basilica di San Marco, are recreated somewhat faithfully (at least, close enough for a game), as are the surrounding area structures. The day/night cycle is slower than most games, and both look great. Visual effects for the Animus and Eagle Vision have been ramped up from the original game. Ezio even looks wet after he climbs out of some water.
Sound is equally good. The voice acting for all the major characters is believable, and the little bits of Italian you hear now and then (attributed to a flaw in the Animus' translation software) adds to the illusion of the whole thing. I thought the soundtrack was particularly nice; it instills feelings of awe, tension, mystery, and urgency at all the right moments, and fills in the gaps between the action nicely.
Assassin's Creed 2 isn't without its faults of course, but they number much fewer than the original, and are ultimately much easier to forgive for all the greatness of the rest of the game. For example, as with Altaïr in the first game, Ezio manages to make some clumsy jumps now and then, which can sometimes result in an accidental falling death. It doesn't happen often, and I can see how the game engine can get confused about exactly which platform you might be aiming for in the distance, but it's not a fun time when it happens.
As with another game I reviewed not so long ago, health potions also seem to make the game a little too easy. Naturally, the farther you get into the game, the harder the bad guys can hit you, sometimes taking 4-5 hit points in one attack. But early in the game you gain the ability to carry around vials that can refill many depleted hit points at once. You eventually are able to carry a maximum of 15 of these vials, and with so many at your disposal, it becomes almost impossible to die, save for an accidental fall. The vials are important to AC2, because unlike AC1, you do not regenerate health over time, but it still feels a little cheap sometimes to be able to just click the D-Pad and become healed. Of course, I also like the idea of your character becoming more adept at what he/she does as you progress through a game, so I can't hate on this too much. Poor planning or lack of funds will limit your supply of vials, so I can live with it.
One final thought I had on the subject of problems is that some of the puzzles you uncover are either unclear in what they want you to do, or are difficult to devise. I didn't have many problems with them for the most part, but some of them seemed to require some very non-linear thought to be solved, and I actually had to wait for the hint to appear before I could get through (an optional hint can be given after a certain amount of time has been spent on a puzzle). This isn't really a problem with the game, I guess, but for some people who aren't very good at deciphering numerical puzzles, it could prove frustrating.
In any case, none of these things detracted from the experience much for me. The level of polish applied to AC2, especially compared to AC1, really shows in this respect.
On the whole, I really enjoyed Assassin's Creed 2. It continued the story from the first game in a smart and provocative way, it fixed many of the problems from the first game, and it did so without being tedious, and without running out of gas. There are lots of things to do in AC2, and if the story line for the series interests you, I definitely recommend giving this game a shot (and the first game before that, if you haven't played it already). I'm really looking forward to Assassin's Creed 3, which I hear is due out in about 2 years. That's alright though, because I'll probably need a while to collect all those feathers (think flags from AC1).
