Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood review (Boston Herald, 11/22/2010)

“Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood” arrives quickly after last year’s “Assassin’s Creed II”. Short development times often result in half-baked cash-ins, but don’t worry. Thanks to a fine solo campaign and an excellent new multiplayer mode, this is the best “Assassin’s Creed” yet.

Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the Italian playboy from “Assassin’s Creed II”, returns in the single-player story. At the end of “Creed II” Ezio spares the life of Rodrigo Borgia, aka Pope Alexander VI. Rome suffers thanks to this mercy, and “Brotherhood” follows Ezio and his team of assassins as they free the city from the corrupt rule of the Borgias and their fellow Templars.

“Brotherhood” plays much like its predecessor, with Ezio scampering through realistically recreated Renaissance Italian environments. Instead of the multiple cities of previous “Creed” games, “Brotherhood” sticks almost entirely to Rome. It’s a massive city, bigger than any of the series’ previous locales, with more iconic and impressive buildings to monkey around on.

Ezio can climb up almost any building in Rome, and combat still depends on well-timed dodges and counters. Various side-missions vary up the action. There are new Borgia towers that need to be stormed and burned down, and disgruntled citizens can be recruited and trained to be assassins. You can call on those recruits for help when attacking towers, and they become more effective as they gain experience and level up. It’s a minor change to the “Creed” playbook, but the back-up helps with some of the more difficult challenges.

But forget all that. The multiplayer is why you should play “Brotherhood”. It’s the best online multiplayer I’ve played this year.

This isn’t a reflex-based FPS kill-a-thon. You and up to seven other players pick from a handful of character skins and then try to assassinate each other on a variety of maps adapted from “Brotherhood” and “Assassin’s Creed II”. You’re given a specific target to assassinate, and your points for each kill depends on how secretively or acrobatically you carry out the contract. The map is littered with random non-playable characters that share the same character skins, distracting you from your target. The trick is picking out your prey among the crowd and killing them without being noticed. It’s a slow-paced, pressure-packed game of observation that’ll make you paranoid. And with solo, two-player, and four-player team modes, there’s all sorts of ways to assassinate your friends.

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