Just yesterday I got the opportunity to try out Assassin's Creed II alongside one of the developers from Ubisoft Montreal.

For the few of you who caught my previously deleted entry, I actually thought I was going to visit Ubisoft's new Toronto studio but it turns out some wires were crossed in the translation so it turned out that I actually ended up going to a pretty trendy lounge/bar that just happened to have a ton of HD televisions and developers within along with an open bar – an environment I can definitely get used to.

("stop talking!", but really he was a cool guy lol)

I wanted to have more play time but the funny thing is that I made the mistake of starting my interview with the question "could you start off by telling us what's new with Assassin's Creed II?" So he basically went over everything while I pretended like I didn't want to just grab the controller from his hands and start playing, this lasted a good 15 minutes...ugh, I definitely have to work on my interview skills.

Well let me start off by saying that one of the striking things about this game comes from how brutal it is, despite all the ways you were able to take out foes in the first, this edition just seems to take it to another level. Placing the game in debug mode, the developer showed me several ways to take out opponents. Taking a guy's own sword and sticking it through his chest, using dual wrist blades and sticking it in the temples of two guards who just happen to be standing side by side, using opponents as shields and then killing them afterwards, I mean the list goes on. I'm convinced at this point that they must have a team dedicated solely to figuring out just how to kill people in the most badass ways possible

Visually the game looks amazing as you can tell by the vids and screenshots, not a huge step above but when you consider how great Assassin's Creed looked in the first, I was left satisfied. It also seems like they did away with most of the repetitive missions and made them somewhat optional based on what I was told. You're able to hire people this time around to handle certain tasks for you, along with creating distractions which seems like a great addition.

One of the possible flaws however is the notoriety aspect. It works much like the first game where for a certain point in time you had the attention of guards everywhere, but this time around they make it a chore to get rid of it. You're tasked with removing wanted posters, bribing etc, I can see it becoming repetitive after a while especially for a gamer who isn't keen on stealth. So far I'm really looking forward to it, especially since our main character has an actual personality this time around where you actually know what he's fighting for, makes all the killings seem slightly more justified. Felt good, looked good, played good, I'll just have to see what the finally product brings.

On an unrelated note, I finally got Batman Dark Aslyum and picked up GTA: Episodes from liberty city. Combined with Forza 3 and that Left 4 Dead 2 demo..

...I'm in gaming heaven right now.