By popular request, for those of you who want to collect every item, every feather, decipher every glyph in the excellent Assassin’s Creed II then these are the maps for you:

Achievementhunter.com has all the maps from the game showing the locations of all feathers, glyphs and statues. Also when you click on each of the hidden items locations you get a youtube video showing its exact location. Couldn’t be simpler. Happy hunting!

Assassin’s Creed II is out now on Xbox 360 and PS3.

Earlier on this month I reviewed Ubisoft’s excellent Assassin’s Creed II on the Xbox 360. I won’t be reviewing the PC version of this game, as I will never buy it because of Ubisoft’s idiocy.

With the release of the PC version of Assassin’s Creed II Ubisoft launched their new “online platform.” This platform requires your copy of Assassin’s Creed II to constantly validate itself with Ubisoft’s central servers via the internet. Any break, however tiny, in this connection will result in you getting kicked out of your own game. Yep, kicked out until the game can revalidate itself. Ubisoft is saying that the benefits of this online platform outweigh the hassle of your game constantly validating itself. These benefits include:

• Unlimited installs
• Play the game without a disk
• Save data that is accessible from multiple computers

According to Ubisoft’s marketing director, Murray Pannell:

We are aware that some players will not be able to connect to the internet but with the proliferation of WiFi, the majority of people can connect most of the time, so these instances should be very limited.

Quote via MCV

Personally I think this anti-piracy plan is myopic. I have no problem with Ubisoft wanting to have PC owners buying their games rather than just pirating them as they deserve to profit from their hard work. However, I do have a problem with a game that it stops me playing it just because my wireless connection dropped. When I buy a game I expect to be able to play it whenever I want, which I can on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 versions of Assassin’s Creed II.

Going back to Mr Pannell’s quote, that the “majority of people can connect most of the time”. I’m sorry, most of the time isn’t good enough. This is not an acceptable level of service. The customer buys the product, in this case £26.99 PC version of Assassin’s Creed II, and then the customer has the right to play then game at any time.

There is something I just don’t understand about both games and film companies. Why do they persist in making the legitimate purchases of their products pay for the fact they haven’t pirated them? If you watch a downloaded film from the internet, you don’t have to sit though the awful anti-piracy ads which infect DVD and Blu-rays.

Someone (via @jackschofield on twitter) has summed up perfectly the difference between pirating a movie and watching a legitimate DVD:

Does anyone else think that this approach is counter productive and just plain stupid? Stop pissing off people who buy DVD’s and Blu-ray with all this anti-piracy crap and put more content on the discs (e.g. behind the scenes stuff) instead.

So don’t buy the PC version of Assassin’s Creed II, buy the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 versions instead, otherwise you’ll miss out playing a great game.

Update 7th March 2010: Well it didn’t take long for this crappy DRM solution to prevent people from playing their game. There’s currently a problem with the Ubisoft DRM servers meaning people can’t play Assassin’s Creed II. Just buy any version of Assassin’s Creed II apart from the PC one. Then Ubisoft might come up with a less idiotic DRM solution. The post from acetken nicely sums up the whole mess:

Wow. Bought it for my brother for his birthday and now he can’t play it. Thanks, Ubi! You’ve made this a great weekend.

To quote the front page of Joystiq:
“Find a less abominable DRM policy.”

We’re done until you do. (And improve your tech support while you’re at it. It’s the worst I’ve seen yet.)

I mentioned in my Assassin’s Creed II review that 2 bits of DLC were going to be published by Ubisoft. Well, Battle of Forli (the first DLC) turned up last month to a fairly muted reception. Too easy, too short and therefore too expensive. Here’s hoping that the Bonfire of the Vanities DLC fairs a bit better.

Ubisoft’s Christophe Grandjean has posted 2 pictures taken from the latest Bonfire of the Vanities DLC via his twitter account. Take a look:

Interestingly, the action forms part of memory 13 in which Ezio gains a new move – spring jump – which isn’t available in the rest of the game. I guessing Ubisoft have come up with some suitably clever way of making Ezio “forget”" this new move before the end of the memory sequence. Mmmm, decapitation, head trauma, excessive exposure to lolcats maybe?

Update 18th Feb 2010: This DLC is now available in 2 flavours. For 360 MS points you can get the new memory sequence missions. But for 560 MS points you get 3 secret Templar lairs to explore which were includes in the black edition of Assassin’s Creed.

Assassin’s Creed II – Bonfire of the Vanities DLC is out now on Xbox 360 and PS3.

In the 2 years that have passed since my Assassin’s Creed review Ubisoft have been working on a sequel that should address many of drawbacks to the first game. It’s not like Assassin’s Creed was that bad. I really liked it, so much so I could forgive the crushingly repetitive nature of the missions and the long, and boring monologues. Oh, yeah, those drawbacks.

So what’s changed in Assassin’s Creed II? Well, the cites are much more detailed and are positively heaving people to interact (kill, bribe or buy stuff from) with. Ubisoft has done a great job optimising the Anvil game engine used in the first game. I just love the whole look and the feel of the game. It’s perfect. Wandering around Venice during carnival is just spectacular. Venice really thrives with people, fireworks, costumes and face masks. Your character, Ezio is also a joy to control. After a few hours (even if you’ve never played the first game) you will be running around rooftops and killing people like a pro! This all helps really pull you into the game.

Assassin’s Creed II has a better plot, shorter more meaningful cut scenes (thankfully!!!!) and characters in the form of Ezio and your best mate Leonardo Da Vinci that are not total arseholes. There is even more variety in the missions. Admittedly, you either kill, follow, fedex an item from A to B, chase or beat people up in these missions so there isn’t a hug amount of variety, but it is a very welcome and much needed improvement. Such is the improvement, Assassin’s Creed II becomes even more of a time killer than the first game. Entire afternoon’s will disappear playing this game. I promise you.

The music in Assassin’s Creed II is just awesome. All the tracks that Jesper Kyd has composed complement the gameplay perfectly. In fact, I have the official soundtrack on my iPhone it’s so good. My person favourite is the Venice Rooftops track (listen on iTunes).

The missions aren’t the only aspect of the game that has been expanded. Multiple weapons, armour, items, money and property development are all now included. Ezio can earn money from the various missions, or pickpocketing people in order to buy better weapons, and develop his home villa (e.g. fix up shops and buildings). Whilst all this brings another aspect to the gameplay, once you get to about half way through the game money becomes pretty pointless as you have so much of it. Well I did anyway!

The only other thing I can find wrong with Assassin’s Creed II is the clumsy way several “memories” are missing from the game, only to turn up – at cost – as downloadable content (DLC). Will I be buying this particular bit of Assassin’s Creed II DLC, well, no I won’t.

In summary: Assassin’s Creed II fixes many of its predecessor’s faults to produce an excellent game. Highly recommended.

Screenshots:

Assassin’s Creed II is out now on Xbox 360 and PS3.

Here’s a good walkthrough by one of the Assassin’s Creed II developers showcasing some of the main character’s new moves and weapons.

I like the double stab move in particular. It’s really quite effective. Also the ability to hide bodies in haystacks and swing around corners is also quite cool. The use of poison is a nice touch, bringing a little bit of variety to the assassinations. So far Assassin’s Creed II is shaping up to be a great game. Looking forward to playing it in Nov 09.

Video originally found on Destructoid.com

Update 3rd March 2010: Maps showing all of the Assassin’s Creed II hidden item locations.

Assassin’s Creed II is due for release on the 20th Nov 2009 on Xbox 360 and PS3.

Ubisoft has released a very nice looking set of Assassin’s Creed 2 screenshots. They also show various new skills and equipment from the game, in particular the glider (4th picture). The double stab looks like fun too (2nd picture) and effective. Hehe.

There is an Assassin’s Creed 2 video if you want to see the game in action and you can read my review of the first Assassin’s Creed game.

Assassin’s Creed 2 is due for release on the 20th Nov 2009 in the UK for Xbox 360 and PS3.

Here is some very, very, very tasty looking gameplay footage from Assassin’s Creed 2. I really liked the first Assassin’s Creed game, despite its repetitiveness. On the basis of this gameplay footage the sequel is looking fantastic. Coupled with the facts that your character can now swim, greater variety of missions and the eavesdropping missions are no more, I’m seriously looking forward to playing this.

Assassin’s Creed 2 is due for release on the 17th 20th Nov 2009 in the UK for Xbox 360 and PS3.

In part 1 of this review I talked about the plot exposition and death. Here, I’m going to talk about controls and movement.

Movement and Environment

I have to admit, when I first saw the visual style of this game, I thought it looked absolutely bollocks. The characters appear to be 2D cartoon models against 3D backgrounds (okay, yes, just like one of my favourite films, Titan A.E.). It looks so jarring in the screenshots. Surprisingly enough, it actually works well in-game. Great job by the art and animation teams.

The 3D environment itself is, frankly, amazing. Click on the screenshots to see bigger versions. The stuff in the background isn’t background matte-painting-style art. It’s the actual gameworld in the distance and you can run right up to it, for the most part. The only time you’ll see load load screens is during map travel, which isn’t really necessary if you plan where you’re going. The world is technically free-reign but really it follows the standard platformer design with the slight twist of “power plates” that let you fly or run from A to B. Along with Elika’s ability to point you in the right direction it’s pretty much impossible to get lost. All good by my standards.

Game controls are absolutely brilliant. Everything has been carefully designed to streamline the experience. Where moving Altair in Assassins Creed is can be painful, jumping from pole to pole is a joy in this game. The Prince is intelligent enough to automatically swing round to the other side of the pole on landing. You don’t have to jump, rotate 90 degrees, rotate another 90 degrees, jump, rotate, rotate just to proceed in a straight line. It’s jump, jump, jump all the way.

The camera does a nice job of following and if it ever moves when you’re in the middle of lining up a jump, I didn’t notice. You get a good locus of control over it and can look pretty much everywhere that is reasonable for the Prince to see. In other words, when he’s clinging to a rock face, no you can’t see what’s behind him even though it would sometimes be really, really useful. His running speed is suited to the world size as well, which is a nice and unusual touch. I even managed to get all the Time Trial achievements.

Challenge

The one thing that really affected my view of this game was the thinking. It’s wild! There are like, actual puzzles that you have to like, solve… all by yourself and everything. Nothing too mind-boggling – they’re mostly about pulling combinations of levers in the correct order to manipulate some machinery. Still, the sheer novelty of not being able to just open a locker and get a combination was impressive in a console game. Even better, Elika doesn’t nag you if you haven’t solved it within 30 seconds.

The other requirement for thinking was collecting the light seeds. (When you clear an area, glowing balls of light appear in both obvious and almost-inaccessible places. It’s apparently good to collect them, though I’m not really sure why.) Not all the light seeds were near the beaten path and some of them were postively evil to track down. I got all 1001 in the end without any help from the interweb or game guides :) See?

You can unlock the Altair costume by signing up to Ubisoft’s website and linking your account to your gamertag.

The Downside

My only real complaint is that the wall-running routes are too blatantly signposted, which takes most of the early challenge out of working out the route. There are bloody obvious scratch marks across the wall of every major path and a lot of the less-travelled ones as well. This aren’t as much help when you’re collecting light seds later in the game, but I do think they detract more from the game than they add to it.

In Summary

I love this game. You have to think a little and the penalty for failure isn’t the rage-inducing annoyance that it is in so many other games. Prince of Persia is just relaxing and fun. Everyone should buy it.

I love Ubisoft’s new Prince of Persia game. It’s not perfect, but it’s as damn near close as I’ve ever seen.

Story

There’s an actual plot with actual personalities and natural sounding dialogue. It’s like they hired a real writer and everything! Elika is a great female character with her own motivations and while yes, she is the obligatory hourglass shape, she wears clothes and has more purpose in the story than just looking pretty and supporting the hero.

Plot exposition is very well handled. Cut scenes are kept short to give you the bare minimum of information that you need to get on with the game. They haven’t let that destroy the story however – those of us who actually enjoy narrative can continue the conversation whenever we want by pulling the left trigger. Plot points are nicely interspersed with character and relationship-building dialogue. They’ve hired some talented voice actors, too. I love it.

Death

The death cutscene is barely a second long – no frustrated bashing the button to try and speed up the same slow-mo death-panning shot you’ve seen a hundred times before, a la Mass Effect. It’s quick and simple and you’re back on your feet, ready to go again. Best of all, the resume point is the last flat surface you were on which is rarely more than 30 seconds back.

Some people might complain that this makes the game too easy but I completely disagree. I think it opens up the world for experimentation that much more. In the recent Tomb Raider demo I spent more time clinging onto vines being afraid to jump because I knew I’d have to do the whole tedious climb-jump-traverse-jump-climb again and again if I was wrong. Even worse, if the camera popped over to a weird angle just as I was about to jump, it wouldn’t even be my failure but I’d still have to pay the price. In Prince of Persia, you’re not afraid to try risky moves in order to reach that light seed that seems just out of reach because the penalty isn’t so bad after all.

Combat

Battles are… interesting. Well, they were interesting for a while. I was very proud of spending an hour or so working out how to break each of the special defences used by the bosses. Then I flipped through the manual and it was right there on page 14 :| After that, the battles got a bit tedious but then, combat isn’t really the point of this game at all. Prince of Persia is all about exploring the environments, and they are beautiful indeed.

That it for part 1. Come back in a few days to read more about the environment and the sheer joy of moving around in this world.

As Weefz has previously reported, the Play.com LIVE! show starts tomorrow from 10am at Wembley Stadium. Weefz (sporting her new blonde look) and I will be there, so feel free to say hi. Heck, I’m going and its the final weekend of the RBS Six Nations Championship and I love rugby.

Essential show information:

• Tickets – Phone 0845 270 1669 (9am – 5pm)
• Times – Morning session – 10am – 2pm, Afternoon session 2pm – 6pm on both days
• Location – Go to the Club Wembley entrance next to the Bobby Moore Statue
• Restrictions – Under 16’s must be accompanied by an adult

Also if you order tickets at this late stage, then Play.com say:

COLLECT YOUR TICKET AT WEMBLEY STADIUM: Please bring a print out of your order confirmation and the credit/debit card for proof of purchase to the Play.com Live information desk at the show for entry. For lost tickets please call Customer Support at 0845 270 1669.

Now some more show information. According to ThreeSpeech (semi-official Sony blog) the following games will be on show:

• GT5 Prologue – playable code
• Everybody’s Golf: World Tour – playable code
• Time Crisis – playable code
• Echochrome – playable code
• Killzone 2 – trailer
• LittleBigPlanet – trailer
• Play TV – trailer
• Buzz – playable code
• God of War: Chains of Olympus – playable code

It’s a real shame that we can’t get to play LittleBigPlanet or Killzone 2. Ho hum. As long as I can play Ghostbusters I’ll be happy. Also ButtonBandits are reporting that there is no boothbabe ban, if you needed any more incentive!

See you all at the show.