Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is the latest installment of the Assassin’s Creed franchise developed by Ubisoft. Brotherhood is a direct sequel to Assassin’s Creed 2 and picks up Ezio’s story right after the end of the second game. Through a series of unfortunate events Ezio loses his gear and the money he made in the second game and ends up in Rome. Rome at this time is in a sad state and Ezio must renovate it by fixing up properties and opening shops so he can get the people of Rome on his side. Ezio must make allies and build up support so he can take down the evil Borgia.

Brotherhood takes place in Rome, which is different from the other Assassin’s Creed games since they took place in multiple cities. Just because it only takes place in one city, Rome doesn’t mean the game is any smaller. Rome is absolutely huge with the actual city taking up about half of the map and there being ruins and smaller villages on the outskirts. Rome looks great from synchronization spots and actually feels like a live city. There are citizens walking around in groups, people standing around talking or buying stuff from merchants and there will be people breaking away from groups or joining them for a chat and there are also couples you’ll see hugging or a man kneeling down professing his love to a young woman. The guards will also patrol around the streets checking piles of hay by poking it with their weapons and peaking down wells to make sure no one is hiding in there. A big change in Rome is that horses are actually allowed in the city so you’ll see civilians and guards riding around on them. This time around they allowed horses into the city because it is so huge and it allows players to get around more quickly but the horses just seem out of place. Most of the city doesn’t seem well suited for navigating around in with a horse and a lot of the alleyways seem cramped with the horse and pedestrians.

The game play remains mostly the same from Assassin’s Creed 2. Ezio can still expertly climb up buildings, jump great distances, climb along the sides of buildings using only his fingertips and make leaps of faith into piles of hay. The free running is still solid and I had only a few issues with it from time to time. Every once in a while the character I was controlling would just jump in the wrong direction or jump down instead of up but those things didn’t happen often enough to diminish the enjoyment of the game. Ezio can still go around the city and pickpocket every person he walks by and almost all of the time no one would ever catch him even though he sticks out like a sore thumb. Ezio can still blend in with groups of people, sit on a bench and hide in hay, wells and the hiding spots on rooftops.

Combat in Brotherhood is still really fun and still at times too easy. The game gives the player plenty of different weapons and tools to dispatch of enemies. There’s the main weapon which can be a medium weapon like a sword or mace or it could be a heavy weapon like a two-handed sword, spear or pole arm. A cool part of using a heavy weapon is that if the attack button is held the player can throw it at an enemy and it just looks awesome. There’s also the wrist gun, crossbow, short weapon, poison and poison darts, and smoke bombs. Combat normally consist of enemies surrounding the player and them just countering the enemies like past Assassin’s Creed games. While the counter move does make combat very easy the kills just look so awesome it sort of makes up for it. An improvement over the last game is that enemies seem to attack more often so you’re not left sitting there staring at an enemy waiting for them to attack. Another improvement that makes combat faster is the ability to chain finishing moves from one enemy to another so that it’s not necessary to wait for each enemy to attack and counter them individually. A cool feature that returns from the second game is the ability to steal an enemy’s weapon and use it against them if you counter them while using only fists.

There is a lot to do in Brotherhood other than the main story. There are shops all over the city that are closed up that can be bought and opened up to make money and provide increasing discounts the more of the type of store that is renovated. The stores include doctors, blacksmiths, tailors, art merchants and stables. Landmarks can also be purchased such as the Roman Coliseum and The Pantheon but buying them doesn’t really do much besides increase the percent that Rome has been renovated. There are also old tunnels that can be renovated and used for fast travel around Rome. In certain areas around Rome there are places that are controlled by the Borgia and it prevents the player from purchasing shops in there until they remove the Borgia influence. It is removed when the guard captain is killed and the big Borgia watch tower is burned down. There are also side missions and challenges that can be done for the three factions in the game, Thieves, Courtesans and Mercenaries. Other than factions side missions there are a ton more that can be done for different allies and random strangers around the map.

A very cool new addition to the game is the ability to recruit assassins for the Assassin Guild. Recruits are gained when you save citizens that are being harassed by guards and they’ll agree to help you fight. These recruits can be leveled up and upgraded by sending them out on assassination contracts that make them unavailable for anywhere between 4 to 20 minutes. Assassin recruits can not only do assassination contracts but they can be used to help in combat or to take out guards. You can have up to 3 groups of assassin’s stored up for use and they are very useful in combat using weapons like the hidden blade, sword, axe or wrist gun. When all three groups of assassin’s are available one of the coolest moves in the game is available, Arrow Storm. Arrow Storm takes out all enemies and guards in an area with arrows from above.
The main feature touted for this game was the new multiplayer where players get to assassinate each other and when I first heard about it I was very skeptical. Once I booted up the multiplayer and played a few matches I was very pleasantly surprised at how much fun it was. There are four different game modes; Wanted, where each player has a target to assassinate and someone that has to assassinate to them, there’s Manhunt, which is a 4v4 team match where one team is hunting and the other team needs to avoid and hide from them, there’s Alliance where players play on teams of 2 where they need to watch each other’s backs while hunting down their own targets and then finally there’s Advanced Wanted, where it is like wanted but spotting your target is a lot harder and encourages a lot more stealth and strategic game play. The game does a very good job at making the multiplayer experience very intense and nerve wrecking. I found myself constantly looking over my back and suspecting that any of the NPCs walking around could be the assassin assigned to me.

Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is a great game with a fully fledged single player story that spans more than 15 hours and a robust multiplayer. There is actually so much to do in the map sometimes I had a hard time finding symbols because there were so many other things to do. The underground platform puzzles are brought back and if they’re all completed Ezio unlocks some cool armor. Old friends from the second game return like Leonardo da Vinci and Caterina of Forli. Multiplayer provides hours of intense action that I will enjoy for a long time.

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Buy Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Online for the Xbox 360 from EBGames.com
Click here to buy Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood Online for the Xbox 360 from EBGames.com

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