Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Review
You haven't heard the last of Ezio Auditore
by Andrew Hallam
reviewed on X360
Keep Your Friends Close And Your Enemies Closer
One of Brotherhood's most prominent features is the inclusion of the Brotherhood of Assassins system. Throughout the game Ezio can recruit random citizens, male of female, to his merry little band of assassins. By running around the city of Rome you'll occasionally run into distressed citizens who are making a nuisance of themselves with the local guardsmen. Its Ezio's job to swoop in like some medieval Spiderman and save them. After doing so, they will pledge their lives to Ezio and will in turn work in the Guild of Assassins.
The guild mechanics are what make Brotherhood truly unique. By interacting with pigeon coops around the city you'll be transported into a unique set of menus where you can customise all the assassins in the guild, of which they can be up to 12 at a time, and level them up. Each assassin gains levels by completing contracts around the western Europe, from pickpocketing a local guard to assassinating a nobleman.
Each contract varies in the time it takes to complete and the rewards you gain from sending your minions off to do them. With each contract completed, the player will receive some florins as well as experience for the assassin who completed the job. However, the best part of the Brotherhood system has to be the ability to call in your group of assassins at any point in the game. Don't want to bloody your sword against that group of guards? Make your assassins do it and they'll swoop in from different angles, assassinating the targets that you assigned to them and then attempting to flee the scene. The only downside of calling in your minions is that the assassins are just as susceptible to damage as any other character. Put them into a fight they're not equipped for and you'll see them being cut down in seconds. Once they're dead, they're gone forever.
Multiplayer
Now, Brotherhood would be a great game if all it had to go for it was its single-player element, but it's the multiplayer element that really sets Brotherhood apart from its predecessors. The players choose from a number of different characters at the start of the match and are then thrust into a small game area about the size of AC II's Monteriggioni which is populated by close to 100 NPCs that all look like one of the player's characters. The aim of the game is to assassinate the other players, but this is made difficult by the fact that your only indication of where your target is is a vague compass at the bottom of the screen.
The idea is to blend into the crowds of NPCs and wait for the opportune moment to strike. The gameplay provides an extremely tense experience rarely seen in other multiplayer games where anyone could be a potential threat and your only hope to survive to act natural. Granted, you'll get the occasional prat running around on rooftops, firing off guns willy nilly, but discretion is the name of the game here. As with most modern multiplayer games AC:B has taken a leaf out of Call of Duty's big book of multiplayer mechanics and added the ability to customise each of the characters in multiplayer with different gear and colour schemes as well as choosing a customisable range of perks and abilities to give you the edge. These range from smoke bombs and firecrackers to hidden pistols and disguises that all help to add just that little bit more to the multiplayer experience.
Italian Stallion
While you won't necessarily by swayed to becoming a fan of the series through Brotherhood if you didn't enjoy the previous games, Brotherhood is still a solid game which improves on practically every aspect of the AC franchise as well as providing a truckload of content for players to run around, climb over and dig their assassin blades into. Ubisoft have truly shown that it is possible to turn a franchise around in one fell swoop. Brotherhood is AC's saving grace and not only does it live up to the hype but it also proves to be one of the best games out this year.
9.5
fun score
Pros
Vastly improved gameplay, side-missions, AI and combat mechanics.
Cons
Main story provides more unanswered questions than an episode of Lost.
