My Thoughts on Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

So I just finished Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, the 3rd entry in the series of Assassin's Creed games. I thought that the combat was vastly improved from the previous games, instead of having to wait for an enemy to strike, then counter-kill them, then waiting, then another counter-kill, Brotherhood lets you kill an enemy, and then with the right timing, immediately one-hit kill a nearby enemy or enemies. This lets you feel much more like an Assassin, being able to reduce a group of 5-6 soldiers into corpses in a matter of seconds.

The story also gets a bit more flushed out while at the same time keeping players very in the dark about what is actually going on, which I very much enjoy. I like good sci-fi mystery stories that reveal the plot little by little, teasing you with small pieces of the story and then finally revealing it (or most of it) at the end. So I'm hoping that they offer a bit more explanation in the next game, as the ending of Brotherhood gives me a lot more questions.

Now for what I didn't like, which is the same thing I didn't like in any of the previous Assassin's Creed games, the movement and platforming controls. Assassin's Creed puts you in the role of a powerful high ranking assassin, in this case his name is Ezio Auditore da Firenze, and you are able to climb buildings, leap rooftops, scale walls, dive off of high perches, all with ease and grace.

At least you are supposed to.

I want to start off by saying that I consider myself a good gamer. I have many years of experience with platformers especially, and I have also played and beaten the two previous Assassin's Creed games, so I am well versed in the control scheme of the game. That being said, either I am not as good of a gamer as I thought I was, the developers need to put a bit more work into their controls, or Ezio might be getting some brain damage from all the times I've gotten him to fall off of buildings.

It ranged from something as simple as walking through a crowd of people, to jumping across rooftops. Both of those and everything in between, for me, featured Ezio falling over, or jumping the entirely wrong direction, or simply not moving for more than half the times I tried to accomplish something.

Here's some examples:
(Now with hastily drawn illustrations!)

First up is what would happen least often. I would go to the edge of a building and press forward to jump to the next one, and Ezio would just kind of stare down, for a good while, not responding at all. A few moments later he might turn around, only to repeat the same process again.

Next we see a common occurrence. Here I am running along a rooftop with enemies chasing me, while other enemies on the ground wait to see if I fall, and throw rocks at me for encouragement. I see there's a hay bale I can jump to from this roof with a jumping board aiming right at it. It's obvious, I'll jump off the board straight ahead and hit the hay bale avoiding the enemies.

What actually winds up happening is me hitting the jumping platform running straight ahead, the hay bale down and in front me of, and Ezio decides his life isn't quite dangerous enough as it is and instead takes a leap off camera and onto the sword tips of the enemies who continue to throw rocks at him as he falls. Slightly frustrating considering I can usually just fight off the enemies, but it gets worse as it happens repeatedly.

Finally we come to the most frequent source of my rage entirely blamed at this game. Here is supposed to represent Ezio needing to jump from a platform from another by grabbing onto the side and then climbing up. Super simple right?

I point him at the platform and he launches into the air towards the wall notched especially for climbing, because the developers designed them to be climbed on of course.

Well they could have fooled me. Considering MOST OF THE TIME I would send Ezio towards whatever it was he had to jump to, and he would slam his face into the thing, and then fall to the ground where he would stand there with a dumb look on his face. This was especially frequent during portions of the game with extensive platforming, and if you fell, it could mean another few minutes of retracing the route you just took, only to fall again.
There were seriously times during this game when I could see where I wanted to get to a few feet in front of me, and Ezio simply wouldn't make it. I tried jumping off of nearby rooftops, parachuting off of other rooftops, but nothing worked. Only until I tried the first way again, that made me Ezio smash his face every single time, only about half a foot to the left, did he finally realize what I was trying to get him to do.

In conclusion, I still like the Assassin's Creed games, primary for their story at this point. I will more likely than not buy the next game as well, just so I can find out what happens next. This game has also caused me to throw my controller across the room and literally yell with frustration more times than any other game I have played, except for maybe Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. However on the next game I really, sincerely, truly hope that the developers spend a little extra time on the platforming mechanics. It feels like they have barely been tweaked since the first game came out years ago, and they could do with a little tune up.