Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood

I know I’ve spoken sort-of-ill about Brotherhood in recent weeks. Y’know, like making the suggestion that maybe – just maybe – they released Brotherhood a little too soon after Assassin’s Creed II.

And I hold that opinion. Brotherhood did come too soon. (That’s what she said.) Assassin’s Creed II was a legitimately excellent and memorable game that brought the franchise unto its own, and call me an oddball, but an accomplishment like that should be let alone for more than twelve months. Y’know? And now they’ve confirmed another big Assassin’s Creed release for 2011, market saturation, editorial waiting to happen, blabla.

Anyway. That’s all rather irrelevant to the point of this article. It also makes it sound like I don’t want to play Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. Which isn’t true at all; I do want to play it. I want to see the story of Desmond and Ezio continue, because frankly, aside from the epic space opera of Mass Effect, it’s the most intriguing continuing story of this generation. In many ways, I view Assassin’s Creed as the spiritual successor to last generation’s Prince of Persia titles. And yes, I’m well aware of the existence of both current-generation PoP games, but frankly, those games only confirm my opinion.

I love Assassin’s Creed. I’m sure I’ll love Brotherhood when I get to it. I just hope that Ubisoft maintains some goddamn respect for their own franchise, and lets the series breathe. If your game’s good enough, you don’t need to pump out a sequel every year to maintain the public’s interest in it. If that was the case, true classics would never be born.

Runner Up: Epic Mickey

Well, this one I don’t regret quite so much since Ethos’ lukewarm editorials on the game, but it’s the best I could come up with for a runner-up. For a time, I was really looking forward to Epic Mickey, and while I’m disappointed to hear that the game fell on its face in a few ways, I’m still determined to experience it for myself at some point. Cue announcement of PS3 port?