Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood has cause a lot of consternation and confusion in the months since it was first announced. Is it a sequel or not? Would a follow up just a year after Assassin’s Creed 2 mean it was rushed, buggy and uninspired? We’re still not sure about the former, and frankly, we don’t think Ubisoft is either. But we can allay all fears about the latter: this, friends, is game of the year. Read on to find out why in our Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood review.
It really is refreshing to be lavishing praise on a Ubisoft game. Much of the publisher’s output isn’t exactly stellar, but with this massive franchise, it just keeps listening to fans, then refining and tweaking to give them exactly what they want. Thought Assassin’s Creed 2 fixed all the faults of the ambitious original? Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is even better.
Story
Chances are, if you’re a newcomer to the series, the Alan Wake style “previously on” story recap that Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood opens with will still make no sense at all. Templars? Assassins? Don’t worry: Ubisoft hasn’t plagiarised Dan Brown. For one, dashing Italian Renaissance man Ezio Auditore, your protagonist for much of the game, could never be played by Tom Hanks. he’s much too badass.
Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood kicks off directly after the events of Assasin’s Creed 2: Ezio’s decision to spare the Pope (He’s evil, we should add) has had serious repercussions as his family goes on to seize control of the entire peninsula. Without giving too much away, a relative of Ezio is slain, and it’s revenge time again, only in Rome, which is now a vast sandbox to explore, not the closed off final level of last year’s game. What follows is a solid, winding story set in two different ages, which will have you gripped from beginning to end, and turns out to be much more than a simple eye for an eye saga.
What took us by surprise was that real thought has been given to the sections of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood that take place in the present (Well, 2012). While these interludes were just aggravating interruptions in the second Assassin’s Creed, here they accelerate the story, and more importantly are fun to play. One section early on particular feels just like you were playing Uncharted 2 – and that’s never a bad thing. In fact, we can honestly say that if Ubisoft sets the next instalment entirely in here and now, we won’t be at all peeved.
Unfortunately, there still doesn’t seem to be any opportunity to assassinate Danny Wallace’s comedy sidekick character. Ubisoft, please note: we would like to end Danny Wallace.
Gameplay
While the core gameplay hasn’t changed in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood – quietly slip into crazy rich cat’s palace, stab crazy rich cat in face, exit stage right – Ubisoft has added more than enough to make it worthy of a standalone release. This is no mere expansion pack. There’s more of an emphasis on horseback missions, and the addition of team mates you can call into drop down from the rafters lets you approach assassinations from a whole new angle.
Check out our best Xbox games Top 5 now
There are also a huge number of side quests to tackle, from discovering shrines to sending your brotherhood off on missions of their own. Even just wondering through Rome is dazzling. It’s huge and wonderfully realised: you’ll stop to play tourist the first time you run into the Colosseum, or find yourself wondering through the Forum. And as ever, you can clamber all over everything.
Visually, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is nothing short of stunning. Ezio’s garbs whip in the wind as he slips through crowds, and the opening sequence panning over the city from the Pantheon to the seven hills of Rome will likely cause your jaw to hit the floor. Considering that the PS3 version (which we tested) of a cross platform game traditionally comes off looking ever so slightly worse than the Xbox 360 version, it’s an impressive feat, and you’ll savour every moment perched on top of a tower surveying your surroundings.
Controls
While most of the controls remain the same, there have been some improvements to the combat in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. You can now kick people as a way to throw them off balance, and chain together assassinations to dispatch large groups of enemies. It sounds like a cop out, but getting the timing of the button presses (Square on the PS3) isn’t a given, so it’s still satisfying when you start dancing around in a brawl, dispensing death.
Multiplayer
The telltale Downloadable Content button in the menu of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood means there should be plenty to keep you coming back after you finish the solo adventure. But this time around there’s a multiplayer option too. It’s doesn’t feel like a lame bolt-on just for the sake of it like the deathmatches in BioShock 2 either: it’s original, and well thought out.
The premise hasn’t changed since we first went hands on with the mode back in July, but for the uninitiated, you’re stuck in a small area with hundreds of lookalikes, and given a target to kill (while someone likewise hunts you). You follow the trail, hot or cold, to find them, but picking them out from the crowd is hard: you need to spot the signs of a human player, and if you get it wrong, you lose your target. There are more points to be had for stylish rooftop kills and the like, plus abilities to help mix things up, but many of these draw attention – if you see someone climbing up a building, they’re on the hunt – so you have to be careful.
All in all, it leads to a genuinely frightening experience a world away from Call of Duty and Halo multiplayer. Admittedly, even with the ability to unlock skills as you level, we can’t say for sure that this type of multiplayer won’t eventually tire. But anyone picking up Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood needs to try it out: you’re guaranteed a blast, for a while at least.
Verdict
While part of us still wishes Ubisoft had moved the story forward from early modern Italy with its latest entry, there’s no denying that returning to the era is wonderful. For those who’ve followed the series, it’s like slipping on a glove, except this glove has a slip out knife in it that you stab people with. And for newcomers, the multiplayer means there’s something for everyone.
We said Fallout: New Vegas would be difficult to top, but Ubisoft has done it with Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. With the clock running out on 2010, we can’t see how any titles due out in the next few weeks can possibly beat this epic, beautiful action game.
