The original Assassin's Creed was a game that suffered from "Ubisoft syndrome." What's that? You don't know what US is and how it affects your everyday video gaming life? Well let me explain. Ubisoft is a development house that is filled with insanely creative people. They have so much creativity in fact that it literally oozes from their various headquarters. However, sometimes too much of a good thing is....well, you know the saying. And I seem to find Ubisoft titles falling into this same trap over and over again. They incorporate all these great ideas into their titles but never really crack the surface on each of them. Therefore, games look incredible from a satellite view, but put a magnifying glass over them and the cracks begin to show, and they are usually quite large. It happened with the first Assassin's Creed, then with Far Cry 2, so you'll understand my trepidation when approaching Assassin's Creed II.

The first thing you realize within the opening 20 minutes of playing Assassin's Creed II is that this sequel takes the first game out back and bends it over in terms of story-telling ability. As soon as you meet Ezio, Assassin's Creed II's lead protagonist and assassin ancestor to Desmond Miles, you'll see that he has more character development, more personality, and a better narrative arc than anything you saw with Altair in the first Assassin's Creed. And to put it bluntly, Ezio actually has an accent and speaks Italian, unlike Altair who spoke monotone English back during the Third Crusade.

In fact, Ezio's narrative arc - growing from womanizing, street scrapping man-child to full blown adult assassin - was so engrossing that I actually got pissed whenever the game flashed back (or is it forward?) to the present day happenings of Desmond Miles and his rag tag team of assassin tech support. Because, unfortunately, the present day storyline barely presses forward in this sequel. Desmond and Kristen Bell (can't remember her character name) break out of the constraints of Abstergo at the beginning of the game and that's pretty much it, leaving an ample yarn of sequel bait in their wake. 

Another reason the moments set in Italy are so much more entertaining than those set in present day is because Ubisoft Montreal nailed the look and feel of Renaissance Italy. Everything from the historic locales, to the garb worn on the backs of civilians looks authentic. So if you've always wanted to travel to Italy but haven't had the time or money, no joke, Assassin's Creed II is the next best thing. To paint it another way, it's practically like Doc Brown just screeched up to you in his Delorean and told you to get in for a journey through time and space. What could be better? Answer: nothing.