AC DC...Wait, AC Brotherhood

Many of my usual readers won't be reading todays entry because they've wept themselves into a coma due to my late posting.

I'd apologise, but I don't feel like I should and as you all know by now, I'm the Viking and it's more than likely you are a peasant who I'd gladly axe in half to in order to read your entrails and get a reading on the future.

AC Brotherhood was under some speculation before it's release. Was it a whole new game or was it just AC 2.5? Rest assured after playing it for ten hours (the reason I was late posting) I can definitely say that AC Brotherhood is the .5.

That's not to say it's bad, to the contrary, it's particularly fucking awesome, but most of my time playing is mainly based on fucking around with mini games and trying to achieve 100% synchronisation. I'd explain what that means, but that would imply that my audience hasn't played or seen or had a concept of AC, and that would make them the equivalent of a ice-cave hermit that doesn't believe in 'dat 'ole interwebs and whatnot'

To give a very brief background on the game so you don't embarrass me further, you play as Desmond who then plays as one of his Assassin ancestors through a machine which allows him to relive memories. To make sure these memories 'synch' you must play certain parts exactly as the ancestor did to achieve 100%.

It sounds easy, and sometimes it is, and here is where the review starts:

AC Brotherhood has the exact same gameplay as our last AC, albeit countering attacks is now for people that have the same reflexes as a dead seal and the AI of the enemies hasn't improved to deal with Ezio (the current ancestor we play as) as a man who can kill any enemy with the single push of a button.

While this does reflect Ezio is an awesome killing machine, it does make the game incredibly easy to a point of boring. Yes, trying out all the new weapons you can have now is fun, but you'll inevitably wind up using the normal sword for two reasons:

1. It's the most balanced and easy to use, as well as having the added benefit of enabling you to counter any attack even when the hilt of your sword should well and truly be stuck in an enemies skull (would have shown you the video if Microsofts latest update didn't KILL MY FUCKING VIDEO CARD)

2. The heavy weapons are so slow that I managed to braid and unbraid my beard in between killing strikes.

The other added combat feature makes the fighting sequences both painfully easy and ridiculously hard.

When you kill an enemy, you can tap the attack button again as you target another enemy and you will insta-kill him. It doesn't matter who he is, what armour he's wearing, if he's a kilometer away, if he's reading the newspaper or if he's currently engaged in swinging a man sized axe into your face. Dead. Seal for my supper dead.

The ridiculous difficulty comes in with my earlier reference to 100% synch. It turns out that you will have to kill streak about 13 of these useless Italian soldiers occassionally, as well as kill 15 or so wolf-pelt wearing cult fanatics without taking damage.

This is where two things got frustrating at once.

The start of the 'memory' (memories are like levels but not called levels because that would just be too complicated) involves the wolf-men attacking you as you try to draw your sword. You will fail to do so in time, many, many, MANY, times. Because you may want 100% synch, you'll probably restart the memory. When you do, you have to wait till it reloads the memory, then you can either sit through the cut-scene again or skip the cut-scene, which the game then has to load and takes JUST AS FUCKING LONG AS THE CUT-SCENE. In between getting frustrated at the nigh impossibility of this task and completing it, I went to Italy and punched one of their buildings so hard it's leaning on it's side. Tower of pizza my hairy Viking arse.

Ezio now has the ability to recruit Assassins as well. These guys will level up as you use them and can be sent on missions to level up more effectively and bring in the money. They can also be called to assassinate targets (which looks cool but eventually takes the fun out of wiping them out yourself) and can also be called into combat (which just makes the time spent in combat much easier, as if it already wasn't a stroll on the faces of small children to begin with). Have enough assassins and you can perform a shower of arrows, which kills lots of guards in an instant.

Once you have your assassins at a high enough level, there's not much else to do besides get the best armour set, and that's not difficult. Considering how much I've played the game, it seems like most of it has been me signalling for AI to do my bidding. I'm a Viking. Ezio is pretty much a Viking as he only rarely actually does any real assassinating, it's more jump in, demolish all enemies, walk casually away.

Having said this, the real highlight of the game are the quests from Leonardo. Each one involves a warmachine, like a very early machine gun on the back of a wagon in which you shoot cavalry that's racing after you, Ezio miraculously hitting every enemy soldier off their horse even if you were being a particularly vindictive Viking and aiming for those smug bastard horses.

Another mission involves you using a fire spurting cannon thing to bring down ships, which for some inexplicable reason blow up when their masts have burnt down. Realism in this game is like a twenty meter high wave. At first you're admiring the sand and shells and then you look up and see the wave, and all you can think is 'seriously, what the fuck?'

The games plot is boring as hell, so boring that I haven't bothered keeping up with it Me. The Viking who is constantly referring to story being the most important part of a game. ME. The reason I was initially drawn into AC was the story and the conspiracy theory, my love of which is explained by the fact that I live in a barren snow land where a conspiracy theory involving the death of millions of people would be a welcoming idea to me and my neighbour who lives on the neighbouring iceberg a good 600km away.

All I understand is people are pissed Ezio didn't kill the bad guy from the first one, some other family is being a prick to the people of Rome, they have to die. I couldn't care less.

I would have reviewed the multiplayer but as it took me over an hour to find one game and then get beaten at it because I couldn't figure out what the fuck to do, I haven't bothered wasting any more of my time devoted to watching the game say 7/8 players... until it slowly drops back down to one, the one being yours sincerely, Mr IjustwastedmyfuckinglifeVikinggamer.

All in all it's a good extension, not good enough to be called a game in its own right, having only taken the most time consuming parts of its former and then reshaped them into its own $100 disc.


I'm giving it 4/5 of your entrails, which are telling me that NNIB.com.au will be up on New Years.

This will also be the time to tell you the Viking Gamer will no longer be doing weekly reviews and articles, as now you will have lesser mortals entertaining you with their thoughts and ideas in the meantime. However, this also means I will have more time to play games and get a better handle on them so you, the small and feeble public, will know what games to buy and which ones to throw at me in terror as I kick down your front door.

Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.