Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood has a lengthy, entertaining single player and a unique and fun multiplayer; it's worth paying for new.
The story is the least important factor but seems to get the part most harped upon. Yes, it's still gay, no it doesn't really matter. In a show of arrogance not seen since Lucas gave screen time to Jar Jar in Ep. II, Ubisoft immediately starts with recapping the hoodie wearing faggot space alien adventures that ended the last game. You can skip cutscenes, problem solved. For what I imagine are IMPORTANT STORY REASONS you are killing people in Rome now. Out the window is playing one of the Iron Fist-like lineage of murderers descended from murderers through the ages, you are the same greasy stinking wop from the last game.
There are no amazing innovations in the running, climbing or killing people area, but they've been pretty solid since the first game. It's the everything else they've put all the polish into. Animations more fluid, greater mission variety, and increased checkpoints.
Most missions now have side objectives or restrictions like no alerts caused or never touching the ground. You aren't punished for ignoring it, but its a nice little bonus challenge for actually doing things stealthy and assassin-like instead of walking in the front door with an axe and killing people in a straight line as usual.
You can ride horses into cities now, which is great, but its more difficult now to knock people over by galloping over them so :( As many improvements that may have been made, getting on a horse is a constant disapointment after Red Dead Redemption -- it's hard to go back to this.
Killing people remains awesome. If your pussy is still sore from the canned animation in the first few games you may want to invest in some ointment or salves before playing this one, as your pussy is going to be especially inflamed and painful because these animations are canned as hell. The interrupts for the kill animations are handled well. If you're attacked in mid-swing you get hit. If you just killed someone you can immediately move to defend/counter an incoming hit instead of going through the usual flourish of the running someone through animation and it still looks smooth. They've added a crossbow, so if you got after people for using throwing knives in the earlier games instead of doing it the right way, prepare to go crazy.
Assassin recruits are one of the better additions to single player. A civilian getting his ass kicked by some guards is all it takes for him to throw his life away and pledge his allegiance to you. They can be used like tools, hit a button while targeting someone and they'll come running from around a corner and start stabbing. As they get more experience points they can get better armor/weapons and abilities in a very simple level up scheme. Even better, you can send them off on faraway missions they have little chance of surviving for the possible returns of XP and phat loot, rare items that can be traded for superior equipment. These people are worthless, the Indians of Rome. If one or two or all of them die you can quickly replace them, I stopped learning their names a long time ago. Sometimes I'll point one of them against a group of giant brute guards armed only with a knife and a caped hood just to see how long he lasts.
Stabbing people to death is great, if you only rarely get the chance in real life, Assassin's Creed multiplayer is the next best thing. Wanted is a group of 10 people each assigned at least one of the others to kill in a map filled with NPC duplicates to hide in. You're given a picture and a radar vaguely points you to the general location of your target. Running, jumping, climbing or anything supsicious will get you noticed, at first with a red mark over you head and if you persist a full fledged warning siren and arrow telling your target how close you are. Points are awarded for variety, subtlety and awesomeness of kills. So an asshole who sits on the rooftop shooting 6 people in a row won't get as many points as the guy who gets one kill-poisoning you while walking past undetected, inside a crowd of people. You choose a loadout of abilities for offense or defense based on game type. Leveling up gets you more and expanded abilities and bonuses for achieving a kill streak or loss streak (to dig yourself out of the hole). If you start doing well you can have up to 4 people targeting you at one time, while playing shit will give you more targets for your stupid slow ass to choose from.
A second game mode has you on a 4 on 4 team, alternating turns between attack and defend. Another puts you on one of 3 teams with full disclosure on the avatars (whores vs doctors vs priests) with each team hunting one and avoiding the other.
Brotherhood was well worth the effort but the next game can't be another variation of this. Put it in space or give him some tits, I can be more than easily fooled into liking something with a nice new coat of paint.
An important message from typical opponent "Kyle fer"
Special behind the scenes access to this post: I tried for over 5 minutes to embed the audio all fancy like, its not going to happen. I had wanted to use it to one-up Fussbett's wall of anger Street Fighter replies but I forgot about that until just now. If you're curious about the superior sound quality I was able to capture, its equal parts headphone mic and angry impatient clumsiness.
Special thanks to sigma training for being so boring I had time to type this entire thing out.
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