Assassins Creed II

Come my fellow gamers! For I bring a glorious review of assassins creed II. Like many of you, I pre-ordered this game many months before the game came out. Needless to say, the game lives up to everything I’ve expected and read about.

The graphics are beautiful, diving into water and seeing it splash up and watching the water ripple was just lovely. Not to mention that once you get out of the water, ezio is drenched and is dripping wet, which is a nice touch. I spent a good time just sitting on a top of the tallest part of each city just enjoying the view as the sun sets and rise. Of course there is always a down side, the shadows were kinda pixilated and during the cut scenes when people are talking you wouldn’t see their teeth and then you would after the next word, it bothered me quite a bit, but not enough to deter me away from the game.

At the first fight that you do, I just took the time to learn everything I could rather then wait for the story to teach me. This time around you have a huge arsenal at your disposal! Not to mention all the weapons you can steal from baddies. If you haven’t heard about the dual blades, then where have you been? Comes in handy a lot, either it being two guards guarding something or you need to dwindle numbers down from a group of guys. Being able to counter using all your weapons is great, its a lot easier then switching to a different weapon and being vulnerable to attack. After I learned to disarm the enemy, I spent most of my time doing that. I found it quick to deal with enemies not to mention once you have their weapon they can’t guard.

The enemy AI is amazing. They will communicate with each other when in large groups and sometimes they can counter your attack. Evading guards is a lot harder now that they put in guys that are just as quick as you are, that’s not to say that you can’t out maneuver them. Sometimes you have to catch up to a guy and kill him before he alerts more guards. Archers will stay their distance until you charge after them; do not underestimate them because their arrows can be very deadly, especially if you’re on an edge. Most guards can’t follow you if you start climbing buildings, but that wont stop them from bombarding you with stones that can be pretty accurate. When you are surrounded by a big group, they will organize and attack strategically.

The story line kept me going through the whole game; I was never bored by it once. The puzzles (truths) really made you think, especially towards the end, sometimes it just became really ridiculous and I just started doing random combinations. Boss battles were pretty much all the same; use the same tactics over and over again. There is also a small sim aspect to the game, your in charge of building up a small town so people will start visiting it again so you gain money, upgrade shops and building, your town gains money and you get to pocket a certain amount of it so your always gaining money, which comes in handy when you need to buy the next best weapon.

Ok, as much as I don’t want to, its time for the bad stuff, which happens to not be a lot. Like I said earlier, the shadows can be pixilated, it seems that at times the controls can be too touchy; sometimes I just wanted to drop down to the next ledge, sometimes he would just leap and fall to his death having me to restart at the last checkpoint. There isn't much replay value either, once you beat the game and collect everything there isn't much else to do; other then that the game was amazing. Not to mention being able to take on a group of ten guys just using a broom as a club. I’d give it a solid 5 out of 5, defiantly needed in the collection for all gamers. Expect a good 30+ hours of gameplay

Mountain Sports, Wii

For a Wii sports game that’s targeted for a younger audience, I actually had a bit of fun with most of the games. The controls are pretty easy and straight forward and using the wii balance board, the response to my leans and turns was actually pretty precise. Graphically, it’s nice and smooth and not all choppy and pointed like space camp.
I was able to beat the game and get gold in almost every event in only a few hours maybe less, But I wasn’t sitting there going this is killing me. The different games provided a different experience, especially since I got to try it on the wii board, some of the games were easier with the board then using the wii controller; for example when doing the bobsled game I felt like I was more in control and able to correct my self easier then I would on the controller and doing the biathlon was so much easier with the wii board then the controller.

There are a few games on there that can be frustrating at times. Like the tube racing, sometimes I would have issues turning my guy and once you hit something your guy will go in reverse so you can’t take the track really fast like you would want to. Curling can be a bit frustrating because I found that most of the time when I go to slide the puck my guy would either not slide it, slide it to hard, or slide it too slow because there’s no real indication on how hard you’re going to slide it until it’s already to late.

Multiplayer mode is pretty basic. Each player takes turns doing a round so you could do the whole thing with only one controller but it gives the options of using more then one. Up to 4 people can play. There are 3 modes that you can play and they are Event mode, Create tournament, and select tournament. In event mode you can just play any event you want, Create tournament mode is exactly how it sounds you select a number of events and then you do them in that order, In select tournament mode there are a number of pre-made tournaments all ready to go; each including 3 events. Over all I think it’s a good game for the targeted audience.