Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood goes the way of Bioshock 2

Did you like Assassin's Creed ? Did you love Assassin's Creed 2 ? Well then, you are going regress back to like for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood !

This is a series that is near and dear to my heart. I lived and breathed AC2, logging in something close to 100 hours of game play. You can finish it in 10 to 15 hours, but I couldn't escape it's glory and stretched it well past its breaking point. I completed every side mission, found every feather, and opened every single treasure chest in the whole game. That last one isn't even an achievement or a mission, I just did it. I had lost my mind.

But Brotherhood made the classic mistake of taking something that was amazing, changing hardly anything, and shuffling the exact same product out the door with a new name. With the exception of multiplayer, Brotherhood has almost nothing new to offer. It plays like an extension of AC2. There was no noticeable changes in the fluidity of the gameplay. The graphics certainly weren't any better. There were areas of the map that clearly didn't receive any touch ups with missing textures and awkward pixels.

A few new additions were welcome. I was happy to see that I could easily go back and replay memories and DNA sequences. I was also happy with the variety of missions. Not everything was "find and kill" and "follow and eavesdrop". But it was sort of too little too late.

There was the huge addition of the multiplayer portion of the game. But it seemed like a lame attempt to tap into the online market. It takes a long time for games to start and there doesn't seem to be too many people playing it regularly. The game types are interesting in concept, but overall, the games are boring and at times unbalanced with the random addition of guns. Yes, a very stealthy 14th century gun. I have found it to be completely passable with the exception that I have to play in order to get some of the achievements.

All in all, this game had almost the exact same end-result as Bioshock 2. The online feature is sloppy and boring. The game mechanics show little to no improvement. And the story isn't vital to the mythology. This game seems to be almost exclusively for the financial reaping of its developers and publishers. All in can do for now is wait and pray for Assassin's Creed 3.