If that's a sincere request I can do that.

Yeah, time just blazes past once you get into that relaxing AC groove.

It took me a long while to really warm to Brotherhood, I must admit, and I chalked that up to Rome being a much less inviting and passionate city than Florence and especially Venice in AC2. In Venice in 2, I would just cruise for feathers and chests, soaking in the atmosphere and endlessly experimenting with the free running (I love the B button/free grasping SO MUCH) for hours on end.

The beginning of Brotherhood is a harsher one than AC2, with none of the initial warmth of establishing Ezio and his brother's relationship and the ease with which they lead their lives. The intro to 2, and when they stop on the roof and the title card comes up? Probably one of my favourite starts to a game, bar none. Beyond Good & Evil springs to mind as a candidate.

So with Brotherhood, KABOOM, horrible war-ness and harshness, and the music that lingers for the initial hours of that game is ominous and foreboding. I felt some kind of constant unease and unwantedness in its world. I dunno if it's related to the liberation of Rome, but now that I've progressed some, you sometimes do get those wonderful pieces of music that evoke the Venice/AC2 moments, and it can catch you running across rooftops at night, with the warm glow of lanterns and the murmurs of people on the streets below. While not as intense as the inherently sensual Venice still, I fall a little bit in love with parts of Rome aswell.

And it gets me into that groove again, and I feel like I just wanna be in this world indefinitely, tackling these tasks as I come across them. The basic movement remains one of the most impressive things of the generation to me, and the free grasping on the B button lets you challenge the safe confines of the free running system in an ever-satisfying way, as you just barely make a chance-like leap work at the last second.

And as I got into it again, almost as a present for doing so, I get my first Christina flashback to that young Ezio whose coming life of adversity and death and grand importance was still far ahead and out of sight. With that, AC again gives me that tangible sense of history - of past present and future - that disappearingly few games can muster.

I am totally engrossed again.

The arena is SO FUCKING FUN. I mean I experimented the hell out of the combat in 2 (soooo much to it!) but here you actually gotta use all of that to beat these guys. :D

Such a great mission right now, too. I'm on my way to saving Catherine Sforza, and on the way there you have to scale this HUGE castle, taking out guards undetected for 100% sync. The climbs are really nerve wracking too, some pretty nail biting jumps and manual grabs worked into it.

Experimenting with the fighting is awesome. Try this:

When you fight somebody, switch to bare hands and counter his blow. You'll disarm him and he staggers back. If you hold on to his weapon he won't be able to go for it again, but will instead try to punch you. Press down on the d-pad JUST when that happens and counter him bare handed. The fists vs fists counters are soooo satisfying.

Another tip is to try all the context moves with different weapons. Sneaking up behind someone, you can take them out in one go even with bare hands, and the animation is awesome.

In Brotherhood that's even further developed, and the kind of quick hit multi-direction combat that's in Batman is adapted into the mix, making for a really dynamic and sweet all round combat system. :)

Aaaand finally got back into this a couple of days ago and have pretty much been glued to it since, until I finished it like.. twenty minutes ago. I just really couldn't find the peace of mind to get into the groove of it back when it came out, but now I totally did.

Ultimately doesn't quite measure up to AC2 in my eyes as a thing. There is again loads of meaningful gameplay additions making it a no-brainer to play, don't get me the slightest bit wrong about that, but AC2 was such a tremendous step up from 1 and it had such beautiful locations and such an epic life story, essentially, of this Ezio Auditore of Florence. ACB is more of a grand epilogue to it with less heart and more aggression, set in what to the end remains a much less charming and inviting place; the huge city of Rome. Both from a layout perspective to run around in (and on top of) and in terms of sheer atmosphere, Rome is just way less interesting. You spend ALL your time in one (albeit huge) area, so there isn't the same sweeping sense of progress in it, and since the timeline is narrower (where AC2 spanned Ezio's life from early days as an innocent 17 year old up until his 40s as a fierce, determined assassin) there's significantly less scope to it on a whole, too.

But even then, Brotherhood still sports more genuine heart and gravity than games generally do. The flashback "memories" of Christina transport you back to Florence, and they breathe of history. Speaking of which, the game also plays beautifully on things established in 2 to great effect, which cements them as actual events with an actual place not only in history, but in Ezio's life. Already at the beginning, the game casually uses *a thing* you're used to in AC2 in a new context that really sorta bent my mind a bit.

The overarching sci fi story roars ahead full steam. I pity the fool that a) doesn't think Brotherhood is critical to understanding the lore, and b) jumps straight into this game. It's just relentless. I wouldn't say it's quuuiiiite as trippy as 2, and not quite in as fun ways either (bleeding effect in 2 was *ace*), but there's *really* meaty story stuff here. And the ending; holy crap. Let's just say starting with whatever comes after THIS first will be an even larger slice of WTF cake.

Mostly just story and "feel" impressions here, I realise. I'm gonna collect my thoughts and get into the grit of it proper with a write-up on M7 later this week. Gonna poke some more at the side stuff I didn't finish first. Oh! Sequence 8 sorta fast tracks you through the last two sequences by the way, so if you wanna get your peripheral stuff sorted before the ending, pre-sequence 8 is the time to do it. They let you roam freely after the credits too, but chances are at that point you're rushing to a hospital to have your jaw bolted back onto your face.

But yeah! Write-up forthcoming. I hope we get juicy bits of news-juice on the next one at E3. :O

Hmm. Assassin's Creed could be the only current franchise where I genuinely care about what's going on.