Review: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

Hey folks.

Now for a review that I have been waiting a long time to play. We return to the 16th Century as Ezio Auditore Da Firenze in the epic series, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

The very first thing I noticed was the complete overhaul of graphics. Assassin's Creed 2 had brilliant graphics but Brotherhood almost seemed real as I started once again in the Animus. 

Once again, I loved the voice acting and a return to Kristen Bell making snappy comebacks and flirting with Desmond. Even though they are not really together, the actors obviously have some kind of relationship to be able to act with some emotion.

I also want to mention the musical score. For what my musical ear can tell, for Brotherhood Ubisoft have taken both the musical scores from AC 1 and 2, including a few new scores and taken some of the older versions and making a new version (For example, from Assassin's Creed, they have taken the score for Acre and made it just for an acoustic guitar and violin)

To be perfectly honest, there were so little small annoyances that I can't even think of how to voice them. For one, while the horse has been upgraded to be able to ride it within city limits (thus making travel much more simple) unfortunately they have taken out the Gallop feature except for specific missions. This was slightly annoying, but Ubisoft made up for this for the Jump feature (enabling the AI to jump via horse back onto ledges being unreachable.) as well as making the AI able to kill a soldier on horse back either from ground, air or from another horse.

One of the other small annoyances was the Leonardo "Store". I was a little disappointed with the lack of Leonardo in the game, yet I was slightly annoyed with the purchasable items, in particular the "Climbing Leap" glove. Seeing as this feature was learnt by Ezio from Rosa, I find it a little hard for this to be a purchase. However, I was satisfied with the other purchases, especially the parachute feature.

The game is brilliantly designed from head to foot. I particularly love the Crossbow (A weapon originally featured in Assassin's Creed but taken out for unknown reasons), making it much more satisfying to wait for a guard to move from his patrol, climbing up and waiting for him to turn to shoot him in the throat and watch the horror in his eyes as the blood pours. I don't know if this makes me sadistic or not, but I like it.

Out of 10, I gave Assassin's Creed Brotherhood a 10/10!

A first that will be a very select group

PS: To my knowledge, Gears of War 3 has been pushed back to "polish" the game. This has ticked me off slightly but I still cannot wait!