I am really late. I have never played any of them. I have watched [people play them though.
Late to the Party: Assassin's Creed II
On 08/20/2013 at 02:01 PM by Ranger1 See More From This User » |
Seems like I'm always one of the last people to play a game. Mostly because I don't have the disposable income to buy games when they release. By the time I get around to playing a lot of games, most of my friends have been done with them for a couple of years. So I decided to start a blog series called Late to the Party so that I can rave about games that everyone else played years ago.
I recently got a free digital download of Assassin's Creed II through whatever Microsoft is calling their free games for being a gold member program. I never got around to getting it before because I'm kinda OCD and have to play things in order, and I got bogged down in the first Assassin's Creed. I wanted so badly to love that game, but the boring, repetitive nature of the missions made playing work instead of fun. And it was such a beautiful game. One of my favorite gaming moments was cresting a hill and seeing Damascus spread out below me. What a view! Anyway, not finishing the first game kept me from even buying the second game. On my last day off, I fired up Tomb Raider to see if I could finish off the main story and then go back and find all the stuff I missed earlier. After getting my ass kicked repeatedly by waves and waves of Storm Guard, I gave up in frustration and went looking for something else to play. An lo! On my hard drive was Assassin's Creed II. "Hmm...I'll just check it out for a few minutes" I told myself. Six and a half hours later, the phone rings and it's Jason reminding me I was supposed to pick him up from 15 minutes ago. Oops! What can I say, I was lost in Renaissance Italy, lol.
I'm not going to go into details about graphics, what got fixed, etc. I'm late to the party, these things have already been discussed. What grabbed me was the story and that missions are now fun (for the most part - races still annoy the crap out of me). And it's another absolutely beautiful game, full of little touches that some people probably never even notice, like the butterfly flying from flower clump to flower clump outside the walls of your stronghold. My favorite part is climbing to the viewpoints, though. I'm scared of heights in real life and I've always been a little envious of one of my youngest cousins, who is a born climber and does parkour.
It's now several days later from when I started this. I've spent more time exploring Renaissance Italy, getting lost in the game and staying up way too late into the night when I should be sleeping. The immersive nature of AC II reminds me of why I game: to become part of the story, to explore places I can never go in real life and do things I never would dream of doing, to take part in a story that makes me feel like I have an influence in the events as they unfold.
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