After the drastric improvement that was Assassin’s Creed 2 it seemed like Ubisoft would be hard-pressed to top this varied and impressive action game. And yet the live presentation of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood at this year’s E3 actually seems to demonstrate an even better iteration in the franchise. The lack of variation of the original game seems long forgotten, with assassinations, heated combat, parkour platforming segments and even a third person tower defense like segment where Ezio launches cannonballs into enemy lines.
Brotherhood also looks to improve upon the prime failing of AC2: difficulty. It’s immediately noticeable that the enemies are more competent fighters and you have to react more swiftly to their movements, which is a far cry from the repetitive counter-attack combat of the first game. The graphics unfortunately don’t look to have been touched, but at least the scenery is a lot more impressive, with the singleplayer demo involving a huge castle under attack by hundreds of soldiers with cannons and siege towers.
I’ve embedded both the singleplayer and multiplayer presentations below and added some more impressions of the footage demonstrated thus far. It’s definitely looking good, although it does look like Ubisoft’s new DRM system will put a downer on things when Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood arrives on November 16th.
The singleplayer segment on display seems to be at the very beginning of the singleplayer campaign and begins shortly after where Assassin’s Creed 2 left off. It’s a grand battle scene that sets up events to put the broterhood back in the underdog position for the rest of the game which seems to take place a few years later, but still features Ezio from AC2 as (one of the) prime character(s).
Still, the singleplayer demo does look more evolutionary than revolutionary for now. It definitely seems very similar to AC2, which is in part because it also takes place in the same timeframe in Italy. It doesn’t seem quite as big an improvement over AC2 as that game was over the original. However it does add a key new feature that looks a lot more enjoyable than I had anticipated: multiplayer.
I’m not sure whether there are any different game modes, but the one on display puts each player into a different, but equally capable, assassin role. All players are both assassins and targets, so I might have to assassinate player 1, whereas (s)he might have to assassinate one of the assassins trying to kill me. This all takes place in a city environment with countless NPCs and all the fun singleplayer abilities such as mingling in crowds, parkour platforming and stealth kills. It also awards points not only for successful assassinations, but bonus points for more impressive assassinations and foiling your pursuers.
I hadn’t expected much of the multiplayer experience when it was announced, but the live presentation actually looks very good. I think it’ll be a great game for LAN parties, but also for playing online with some friends in a private server while taunting over TeamSpeak, Skype or Ventrilo.
Singleplayer
Multiplayer
Loading ...