E3 2009: Assassin’s Creed 2 gameplay
Yesterday we brought you the first trailer for Assassin’s Creed 2. Well today we bring you actual gameplay straight from the Sony conference. Have a watch for yourself and then read on for our thoughts.
Well that was rather good eh?! The gameplay starts off with Ezio sitting on bench talking to some guy, getting key information from him. It seems like you will have various sources throughout the games, giving you key information on targets and objectives. Hopefully though you don’t have to go through repetitive side missions to get this information though because that was a negative about the first game. Please give us more varied side missions!
Speaking of sources though, one major ally of yours is revealed to be Leonardo Da Vinci himself. He will basically be Ezio’s personal gadget/weapons man. We are shown one of these cool “gadgets” and my oh my does it look good. I speak of Da Vinci’s famous flying machine. In the gameplay footage we see Ezio flying over the lovely environments and using the machine to his full advantage. As he flies near or over enemies he can take them out, we guess this will be done by the press of a single button but damn it looks so cool.
Combat seems pretty similar to the original game but with some added bells and whistles. Ezio is better equipped than Altair and this is shown beautifully through the double hidden blade kill. Two enemies to take out? No problem. Get near them, activate the double hidden blades and they are dead. Superb. This time around you are also more efficient with just your hands, you can disarm enemies and use their weapons against them with considerable ease and slickness. It won’t be all about the combat though, sometimes it is best just to run away as fast a you can. Ezio also has the tools to do this, in the gameplay demo you see multiple enemies charging him after the assassination so he pulls out a smoke bomb uses it as a distraction and makes his awesome escape.
We are also very glad to see Ezio is as agile and athletic as Altair, he moves with all the grace of a super cool assassin! However we are told that Ezio doesn’t start out as an assassin, he is sort of “forced” into it by events. These events will drive forward the story in the game and build on the the character of Ezio thoughout the game. Oh and the story of Assassin’s Creed 2 takes place immediately after the events of the first game, so good old Desmond will be back one way or another.
The first Assassin’s Creed was a good game but it certainly had its flaws, this sequel certainly seems like it will right a few wrongs. Awesome.
Assassin’s Creed 2 is due to be released November 2009.
