Mothers of the world, there are two names beginning with "D" you should never name your son. One is Dennis, because there are a lot of assholes named Dennis (Dennis Miller, Dennis Prager, Dennis Perrin, Dennis Reynolds, Dennis T. Menace). The second is Desmond. As this season of Lost and the Assassin's Creed franchise has shown, naming your kid Desmond will land him in the middle of a struggle between ancient good and evil, order and chaos, cursed inevitably to be the guy destined to tip the balance. Even if he's an ordinary schmoe. Especially if he's an ordinary schmoe. Who doesn't shave.

Assassin's Creed was one of those games that I wondered about when I made the leap to the next gen, but couldn't quite get around to playing. Mainly because it seemed to fall into that classic open world/sandbox malaise of a beautiful world, but nothing much to do in it except missions and collect a thons. So I stayed clear, but there was no way I could ignore the acclaim and good notices Assassin's Creed IIhas gotten. And in fact, it's a good game,  not one I totally fell in love with, though.

As Nolan North's breathless opening monologue as Desmond fills you in- yes, Nolan North is once again playing an dark haired protagonist who hates shaving- he is the descendent of Altair, an Assassin. The Assassins have waged a centuries long war with the Templars over ancient secrets, and a power that can possibly control the world. Essentially, the Templars want to keep all the world's secrets for themselves, and the Assassins want to stop them. The Templars have been looking for an item that the Assassins hid long ago, and in the previous game they kidnapped Desmond to read his "genetic memories"- specifically, the memories of his ancestor, the assassin Altair, to find clues to this mysterious item, labeled "Eden". Desmond is sent into a virtual world to experience the adventures of Altair as an Assassin. Locked inside the Abstergo corporation, Desmond is eventually freed by an Abstergo employee named Lucy (Kristen Bell) allied with the Assassins, or what's left of them. At the game's outset Desmond and Lucy escape Abstergo and proceed to a hideout. There, aided by fellow Assassin allied activists, Desmond hooks into the genetic memories of another ancestor, Ezio Auditore Di Firenze. Ezio was an assissin in 15th century Italy. It's through Ezio's memories that Desmond will learn the abilities of the Assassins (as he learned them through his experiences as Altair) to help combat the nefarious influence of the Templars. Everybody got that?

A word for a moment about the virutal world of Desmond's "genetic memories". I see this rarely discussed when I read about the Assassin's Creed games, but the world of the Animus, the device used to make Desmond relive the memories, is one of the few times I've seen game desginers try to quantify and make "realistic" the rules of video games. In the Animus, the goal is to relive Ezio's memories exactly as they happened, to "Synchronize" the memories. Areas don't open because Ezio, in the timeline, hasn't visited them yet. If Desmond-as-Ezio dies, kills innocent people, or wanders you "desynch" and go back to a checkpoint. The pixelated transitions between screens seem distracting at first glance, but actually help with the immersion into the game's larger story. I guess someone at Ubisoft Montreal wanted, for once, to come up with the most realistic justification for video game logic he or she could. In any case, it's rather interesting.

Ezio is far from the hardened assassin Altair was at the game's outset. In the opening chapters, he's the carefree middle child of a successful banker. Ezio, voiced by Roger Craig Smith, is a smarmy teen lothario interested more in getting chicks than anything else. And why should he be? His family's doing exceptionally well and are on track to becoming one of the most prestigous names in Florence. Then Ezio's father- well, actually, I'll let you discover that for yourself, because it's quite a jolt- that's given away in too many reviews and trailers. Suffice it to say, Ezio is forced to flee with his sister and mother into the care of his Uncle Mario (Fred Tatasciore, whose first scene features an incredibly funny in-joke), a local leader of a gang of mercenaries. Ezio learns the truth about his father- that he was an Assassin in his younger years, and now he must take up the mantle in the name of justice, and to push back against the nefarious goals of the Templars, before they take over not only Italy, but the Catholic Church itself. The story of Assassin's Creed II can drag in places but overall it's one of the more decent narratives I've seen in games this past year. Ezio is a fine protagonist, and his adventures help inform the overall story of what Desmond and the Assassins are doing in the future, but I'll get to that later.

 Wow, that's a lot of backstory to get to the actual gameplay, isn't it?

Assassin's Creed II features several vast, meticulously, insanely detailed open world Italian cities for the Assassin Ezio to get into trouble in. In addition to the main narrative and the expected assassination contract side missions, Ezio can deliver messages, run rooftop races, and most amusingly, beat down missions. Beat down missions are Ezio meeting up with the angry spouse of a philanderer, and then you get to go and beat the holy hell out of him, so he'll promise to be a good boy. There's nothing particularly unique about these missions gameplay wise, but they're pretty funny to behold.

As for how Ezio gets around Italy, the game takes its cues from the Prince of Persia franchise (and the first game, of course) in that Ezio can free run throughout the rooftops and climb over any area to his heart's content. If you're used to the recent Prince of Persia, (ANOTHER game with Nolan North in it!) however, as I was, you may be spoiled by Elika saving the Prince's ass- I often accidentally misjudged a jump or wound up climbing or reaching for the incorrect ledge and fell to my death- I mean, my desynching. This can actually be really frustrating at first- while The Saboteur's free climbing isn't nearly as smooth as Assassin's Creed II, they did have one advantage over it in that whatever ledge Sean could actually grab onto next was highlighted, so you knew where to flick the stick. Sometimes the running and climbing in AC2 is a little TOO smooth- you may be so into it you'll find yourself grabbing onto the wrong thing or going in the wrong directiong because you've moved the stick slightly the wrong way. More often than not, though, you hit the sweet spot and it's all good.

The game offers many techniques for assassination. The classic move is, of course, just walking up to the guy and stabbing him in the back with the cool automatic knife. In addition to that, the game offers you the opportunity to poison someone with the knife (though there's no real reason to). Significantly cooler is targeting an enemy from the rooftops and leaping down to shank their ass. or when you get the second sleeve knife, walking up to two dudes and stabbing them in the face simultaneously.

Of course, that won't always work, and you'll find yourself locked in combat, with a bunch of soldiers. Here's where the game really falls down, though, on the combat. It's not that the combat doesn't give you lots of opportunities. Go to the training circle in Ezio's family villa, and you'll learn all sorts of blocks, counters, and weapon techniques. There's even a badass disarm move. Get in an actual fight, however, and you'll discover the enemy AI is so limited that combat mainly gets down to mindlessly pounding the X button and hoping you've countered correctly enough to stab the other guy. There are different types of enemies, but they all seem to fight the same one on one. Often times I wound up killing the other guy seemingly at random when I broke his block. The combat's not difficult, in fact it's quite easy, but it is tiresome. Oftentimes you'll feel tempted to just run from a fight.

And there's plenty of options for running! The game has stealth elements, of course- you can hide in a bale of hay, hide in a crowd, hide on a bench pay courtesans, thieves, mercenaries to distract guards and give yourself cover. There's a lot fo fun to be had with this, but again, unless you need it for a specific story mission, it's simple to get around a side mission or escape guards without assistance. The Circle of Shame in this open world game is very easy to outrun. There is a system where if you are too notorious it's hard to get around without constantly being attacked. There's  two ways of getting around this, paying off town criers and tearing up wanted posters. But the more I did this, the more I wondered: why doesn't Ezio do the obvious thing, which is take off the bright white hood and armor that no one else in Venice is wearing when he wants to get around undetected? It's pretty amusing late in the game when Ezio has to go to a public function... and he's still wearing that getup. He discovers he needs to wear a disguise to progress to parts of the city... and this disguise consists of a mask. Over that outfit. Wha? It's one of the few things in the game that really just kicks me out of my suspension of disbelief.

Do you like collecting? Do you REALLY like collecting? Because Assassin's Creed II has a lot of it. The game will have you collect feathers, viewpoints (unlocking areas on the map), statues,  keys to unlock pieces of armor, treasure chests, and most importantly, codex pages and glyphs. The codex pages are story specific so I can't say too much about them, but they form a puzzle that's crucial to the Assassin's mission. The glyphs are also story specific but not crucial to completing the main story. The glyphs are a series of 20 puzzles hidden throughout the cities on historical landmarks. Ezio touches one, and you hear a recording by the late "Subject 16" (Cam Clarke, chewin' the pixels), another victim of Abstergo, who died in the Animus prior to Desmond's kidnapping. Subject 16 claimsto have discovered the deep dark secret of  the Assassin/Templar war, and what "Eden" might actually be. There's then a series of puzzles that get increasingly challenging. The payoff is a series of video images called "the Truth". Chances are more than likely you'll figure out what's actually being depicted in "The Truth" long before you complete it, but it's still pretty awesome to behold once it's done. The thing about all this collecting is, though, that one doesn't feel particularly compelled to go after them except for money and Achievements, and there there's plenty of ways to do that besides collecting.

For one thing, you can make tons of money by renovating the Auditore family villa in Monteriggoni. This town serves as your home base after the first few hours. You pay to renovate areas of the city, making it more prosperous, and filling your coffers. This is a lot of fun at first, but it serves to make the game a little unbalanced, since even halfway by renovating the town you can make more than enough money to sustain you throughout the game., Plus, the most expsnsive items are armors, but you get the most powerful armor in the game for free, and fairly early, if you're crafty enough.

Even if you don't do that, though, you still get plenty of money to keep yourself going from the main missions themselves. Here's where I can't really criticize Ubisoft Montreal too much. The developers have indicated in interviews that they really didn't want to distract the player wth the side stuff too much, they wanted to make sure they didn't have to do those things if they didn't want to. In short, there's a lot to do on the side, but no pressing need to do them. As Yahtzee said, this game is just too easy, but unlike Yahtzee, I can understand why the developers made the choices they made. Sandbox/open world is one of my favorite genres, but it's also a genre I've struggled with since its inception, since there's always the eternal balance of having stuff for the gamer to do along with the main story. More often than not, there's not a lot to do. But then again, some gamers just want to experience the story, and not bother with all the side stuff. So the developers split the difference, and it wound up hurting the game somewhat. But again, I'm not sure I should really hold it against them. They're in a catch 22 situation.

That said, it's the world of Assassin's Creed II that really makes the meal of the game. Ubisoft Montreal went whole hog with this thing: every inch of renaissance Florence and Venice has been duplicated. The game is exhaustively researched- each landmark Ezio discovers comes with a nice little paragraph explaining everything about it. The game even intersects Ezio's journey with the real life Pazzi Conspiracy, which succeeds in deepening the narrative. And like seemingly every game set in this era, Leonardo Da Vinci plays an important role. This is one of the few games which I can say gave me a real education.The story does make a few missteps- the game's main villain is disappointing compared to the Medicis Ezio eventually faces off against.

The graphics are terrific, especially the expressive character models, with the exception of Lucy, who looks like someone thought Bell had granted them use of her likeness but found out at the last minute they couldn't so they... well, you really have to see it. The music is minimal but atmospheric. The voice acting all around is good, but Smith deserves special mention for making Ezio's journey from smarmy rich boy to hardened assassin plausible and compelling. 

But the most compelling thing about this game? The payoff. Now, I'm not going to call this one of the best video game endings ever, because Assassin's Creed II actually ends with several questions unanswered. Once you battle the final boss, though, the full story of what the Templars and Assassins have been fighting over is revealed (or is it?). And it's so jaw-droppingly, unbelieveably insane I began to wonder what the hell writers Corey May and Jeffrey Yohalem were smoking. Because I want some of it. My initial reaction was, "What the fuck? This doesn't make any sense for a game I was playing about an assassin!" Then I began to realize that slowly but surely the writers had been dropping hints at this the entire time, and it made total sense The reveal isn't the most original thing in the world, but the absurdly ambitious scope of what's been really going on, and how it relates to Desmond and Lucy's quest for answers in the present, makes me want to play Assassin's Creed III like, RIGHT NOW, to see what happens next. May and Yohalem manage to pull off something that is, for video game stories, a pretty amazing narrative shift. In fact, I have to give the game a higher score than I had originally planned because of it. After all, with all the complaining I've made about the gameplay, there's got to be a reason it gets an 8, right? What I really enjoyed about the ending of the game, though, was that May and Yohalem really seem to respect the audience's intelligence and have a desire to tell the kind of big story that only video games can really get away with. I dunno if they can pull it off, but I'm rooting for them.

Assassin's Creed II isn't quite game of the year material; it can be pretty flawed, and the gameplay can grate on the nerves, with the low difficulty curve. But the game casts a spell on you- the tremendous effort Ubisoft Montreal expounded in depicting Ezio's world sticks with the gamer long afterwards.