Assassin's Creed II: Discovery
Ok, this is an improvement over the first DS AC game, but it comes with its own set of problems. First, the basics:
Playing as Ezio, he reluctantly travels to Spain to help stop a war but inadvertently sets Christopher Columbus, or at least someone with a very similar name, off on his journey. Gameplay is switched to a side-scrolling, not quite Metroidvania style akin to Griptonite's 'Spider-Man' games. In fact, level design wise it's very similar, but we'll get to that. Everything is voice acted and the 3D models look pretty good for their time and device. Gameplay is also much quicker and makes better use of the hidden blade. Like 'Altaïr''s Chronicles,' it's pretty short (it took me less than 7 hours), but finding maps in the world opens a series of challenges. Tearing down wanted posters increases Ezio's life bar, and in a nice touch, if playing on a DSi or 3DS, the player can have their picture taken and a very crude facsimile appears on the wanted posters in-game. So much of the game is well and good, but that same design used for the 'Spider-Man games is this game's downfall.
One thing 'Altaïr''s Chronicles' got right was the lower screen map. It was overhead, but showed the whole of the area including where buildings and other platforms were, as well as enemies and civilians moving in real time. In 'Discovery,' the map is a gray square inside a larger gray square. Seriously. That's it. When close enough to an enemy, an arrow representation shows and said arrow also indicates alertness, but that distance is rather small. The bigger issues it there's no way to tell what else is in the environment. This leads to a too-large-amount of blind jumps. Ezio can land on a building, haystack (though they are few) or fall multiple stories to his death. If he doesn't die, there's a good chance of landing next to an enemy or group of enemies. Ezio has his sword and throwing daggers to dispatch enemies, but that's it. It isn't explained in-game, but according to the manual, pressing attack twice should break an enemy's block/shield, but I never had this happen once. The enemies always block unless attacking, but you can't interrupt their attacks. If Ezio is blocking, attack can be pressed at the correct time to counter. Sometimes it pushes the enemy back and other times it's an instant kill. It doesn't matter the type of enemy, and it seems random, but more often than not it took three counters to take out any enemy that wasn't an archer. And if Ezio leaves himself open, he goes down in a few hits easy, because as long as an enemy is attacking, Ezio can't block if not blocking already. This wouldn't be so bad, but if you want a full sync, you also have to beat any given mission within a certain amount of time. And these are ridiculously short times, sometimes as short as 30 seconds, but usually around 2-3 minutes. That renders a mostly stealth approach, even in explicitly stealth sections, nearly impossible. I didn't replay any levels, so maybe all the objectives don't have to be completed in one go, but if so, the frustration isn't worth it.
And unfortunately that's where 'Discovery' stands: another exercise in frustration. Sure, platforming is better and in theory combat is too, but the level design was designed for a different series of games. In the Griptonite's 'Spider-Man' games, Spidey can usually web swing out of a bad jump or area and land somewhere safer, but Ezio can't. And when Ezio dies, that typically means replaying most of a mission over. It makes cheap deaths sting even worse, and 'Discovery' becomes a giant trial-and-error campaign reminiscent of poorly designed 8-bit games; hard for all the wrong reasons. It's a shame because the rest of the game and presentation is really great! And like 'Altaïr's Chronicles,' when 'Discovery' clicks it's really fun. But it's clear the game ended up being designed with cheap deaths to lengthen its campaign.
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10/10 Truly a GOAT game. I mean, I've bought and beat it on three different systems now......
- 10/10
- 8/10
