I recently purchased a PS3 and one of the games I purchased with it was the much-hyped Assasin’s Creed II. I’ve never played the original but I heard great things about the sequel and the video of the game play looked amazing. After playing it for a couple of weeks off and on I beat it. For most gamers, that is not a big deal, but I’m not most gamers. In fact, I wouldn’t even call myself a gamer. I have a Nintendo Wii and I love it because it makes gaming casual. I wanted the PS3 because of a handfull of games that are coming out and for the BluRay player for when I purchase an HD TV. Anyway, beating this game was a big deal for me because games rarely hold my attention long enough for me to actually beat them. The only other game I have ever beat on any system in my life was Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64.

ACII was a great game because the story kept you interested. Normally I can only play games for 15 minutes before I get bored with them and want to turn them off. ACII wasn’t like that, but even if I did want to quit after a short amount of time there were plenty of checkpoints to make sure I didn’t lose my progress. The scenery was amazing and the game play was smooth. The building looked almost real and the scenes where the city would erect before you were awesome. I can only imagine how great it looks on an HD TV. The cut scenes that helped move the story along were great, if not long at points. The only time in the game where I questioned the makers’ choice was when I was forced to go all around Italy to gather Codex pages in order to progress the story. It was almost as if the developers said, “We need to make this game longer, how do we do it? Let’s send the player on a long scavenger hunt.” Besides that point in the story, everything else was great.  There were missions that you had to do and several others that you could skip.  And it doesn’t matter if you skip them because once you beat the game you still have free reign to go about the other missions, which I’m currently doing now. The final level snuck up on me fast and I was surprised at how easy it was to beat the final level, but I wasn’t disappointed. I’d have to say this should probably be up there as one of the top games of the year, but since I don’t game that much I can’t really make that call. All I can do is tell you that the game was fun and beautiful with a great story and great graphics. If you have a PS3 (or XBOX 360) you should buy this game.