When that first footage of Ubisoft’s Jade Raymond playing one of the first demos of the original Assassin’s Creed came out, I was immediately interested. In fact, it’s the game that convinced me to buy an Xbox 360. The game had some really interesting mechanics like the passive and active modes of the face buttons for combat, take downs, and just plain old walking around, some free running elements that felt really good, as well as some new takes on stealth. But not all of the elements of the original Assassin’s Creed were as compelling or polished.

While Assassin’s Creed was touted as an open world experience, and while that was fairly true the game tended to swing wildly between heavy-handedly guiding you through a situation and giving no direction at all. The main assassination target missions were fun, but the extremely repetitive nature of sub missions it took to get there were excruciating, and when you finally were able to take out a major target, the game backed off a bit too much. I found myself struggling with taking out a target in any badass manor. All too often I had to take out guards to get to the target, and by the time I reached him he was long gone. Most of the time I killed these main targets by being persistent and chasing after them and then killing them when I finally caught up. Continue reading All I Want for Christmas is to Murder People with Da Vincian Gadgets: An Assassin’s Creed 2 Wish List →