I don't play games quickly anymore. I get an hour a night, on average, MAYBE if I'm lucky. So consequently, I don't get to review games in their entirety in a timely manner. I think, though that a lot of people have this kind of time crunch in their personal lives. The average age of gamers has increased to 32. Our readers are, on average, not the kind of person who can play a video game for 48 hours straight. Therefore, I think my first impression reviews are pretty useful. Once I've sunk 9-10 hours into the game, that's a week or more of "game time." Assassin's Creed 2, up to the end of the opening chapter, is a decent improvement on Assassin's Creed 1, but they make it difficult to get into.

The game starts off mere seconds after the end of the first game, and immediately thrusts you into the middle of the meta-plot of the first game. Remember, the Assassin's Creed games are all meta-games, you actually play Desmond, a man in the near future, who then gets into a machine so HE can control Ezio, his ancestor.

The meta-story was confusing enough in Asscreed1, but when you're thrust into the middle of it, you get very confused. You're rapidly transported to a similar lab run by "the rebels," giving the meta-story a very archetypal feel. It takes you nearly 20 minutes before you can actually play "the game," which seems par for the course for a lot of games these days.

Anyway, once you're actually controlling the "real" character, things begin to move more slowly. You are NOT given the same kind of assassin training you were given in the first game, this is most definitely a continuation of the first game. If you didn't play it, you'll have to limp along for a while.

Some of the good things about Asseed2 are the fact that the beggar women, fisticuff-loving lepers, and roving bands of monks have been removed. There are no longer random citizens who will impede your progress more than walking in your way. Also, in order to "blend" with the crowd to avoid detection, now all you have to do is...walk in the crowd. It's brilliant.

The game also introduces an economic system. You get money from the bodies of dead guards, from completing missions, and from finding treasure. However, finding treasure gives you as much or more as completing a mission, so you can either spend 10 minutes in a mission to get $100, or spend 10 minutes with a treasure map to get $3,000. The monetary system was a good idea, but lacking in execution. It feels like every Zelda game ever in that I'm never out of money. maybe in the future I'll be scrimping and saving for the very bestest armor, but I doubt it.

Now for the bad: They didn't improve the free-run engine. Your character still face-plants into walls that he should have climbed, he still randomly leaps in the wrong direction, and he still has a very hard time finding handholds that are right in front of his stupid face. Running around and climbing things is the only reason to buy this game, and running around and climbing things is still broken.

Also, you are given a sword shortly before the contrived "motivation" for your character is revealed. Shortly thereafter, the sword simply DISAPPEARS. You have a sword, you use it to kill guards, you watch a cutscene, and your sword is gone. There's no indication on the HUD what button chooses "sword," so I thought I was pressing the wrong button. I frantically pressed all the buttons on the controller, which caused my character to use up all his health potions before dying. That's handy.

I still like the game thus far, so I'll try to end on a high note. There are "glyphs" scattered all over the city that are encrypted clues to "the real truth." A previous experimental subject left them inside the code to the machine that shows you the ancient cities, and each time you locate one you find a segment of a video that will show you the real truth. Each little segment requires you to solve a logic puzzle too! It's a very cool addition to a game based entirely around stories-within-stories, and I like it.