Addicted to the cowl...

I will openly admit that I have an addictive personality and that when I get hooked on a game I pretty much don't do anything else... But I think I only get maybe two or three games a year that I love that much. If that. And some games you play through only because you've started them... A game unfinished is a half eaten cake, it seems a shame to waste it. Although there have been a few I've turned my back on with a smile hoping they wither in misery unopened for months on end, knowing they are unwanted... You know your names...

The first Assassins Creed was a little like that. I started it, enjoying the design, landscapes, plot and game play but found the controls increasingly irritating, until in the end I gave up and cursed it to gather dust behind the pile of favoured titles.

My brother bought us the second game for Christmas '09 and I was unsure until I played it. Everything that I loved about the first game is there, the beauty in the animation, the amazing location designs, crisp rendering and morally ambiguous behaviour – but the controls are a dream. No more creeping up behind someone to slip a knife between their ribs and suddenly pulling a sword – ninja stealth fail. There is just a grace of movement and the perfect balance of flesh and metal – assassination as ballet, with a rogue-ish smile.

I won't deny that there have been times when I've launched myself off of a building to crumple a good six storeys below, due to poor aiming and that there have been moments of pure Tomb Raider vertigo, sweating palms as I try not to look down... (I know it's only a game! But heights totally freak me out!). But I consider those to be faults in the player rather than in the game. No one's perfect, right? But this game comes close – even to the extent that there's some Assassin Tomb raiding that would put Lara to shame.

I think the thing that makes me love the game the most are those moments when it pauses to revel in its own beauty, usually at the top of a synchronisation point. There is a haunting beauty about seeing your character perched on the top of a lighthouse at night, sparks from the fire below floating up past him towards the star filled heavens – followed by the dive down that you feel certain is going to break him in half. (Most of them a four-scream-Lara fall...).

Then he jumps out of the straw and struts away, letting hay fall from his clothes with a swaggering nonchalance...

Now where did I put the controller?

* * * * *

I wrote the above love letter to Assassins Creed II a fair few weeks ago, shortly before finishing the game. Between then and now...well, I got the craving to climb high places, dive into straw, slip that sharp silver between deserving ribs...

I bought Assassins Creed again and gave it another try and going back to it I have no idea why I had problems with it in the first place; the game is exquisite. Yes, there are improvements that they made in the second game that I miss in the first; the day to night game transitions are glorious and really add a dimension to the sneaking and posing at the top of towers; the ability to swim and dive from high points into water; and the story line is a leaner stealthier beast. But... Damn it, I'm as addicted to the first game as I was to the second and that says something.

It just goes to show that first impressions can be wrong; sometimes when you don't get on with a game, it's not the games fault - you just haven't developed enough as a monk impersonating, knife wielding dealer of death to appreciate it.

The problem I now have is that I and the hubby are competing to use the Xbox - he wants to shoot slack jawed yokels in cowboy hats and put women on train tracks, and that's when he's not wandering around in the dark, snivelling into his torch and wondering where all his flares went. Me, I just want to collect flags, kill the oppressors and climb real high. If this keeps up we may have to buy a second Xbox.

Now there's an idea...