E310 Preview: Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

Both Assassin’s Creed and its sequel have been two of my favorite games in the past few years, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the third installment, Brotherhood, was on the top of my list of games to see at E310.

At the Ubisoft booth on the E310 show floor, we were shown a demo for the single-player campaign portion of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. The story of Ezio continues in Brotherhood, but this time around he’s no alone. Ezio has risen to become the leader of a guild of assassins in Rome.

Sure, you can still go free-running, rooftop leaping, and assassinate all you want, but you’ll also have to spend time recruiting other assassins to your guild, training them and sending them out on missions. Once successful, you can give out experience to your assassins to get them upgrades and bonuses.

The demo was really cool with great action scenes of Ezio, even one with him riding his horse inside of Rome (in the previous games the horse waited at the cities entrance) and a badass turret scene in which he was blasting foes with canon balls.

The single-player was dope and I’m really excited for it, however, the best part of the Brotherhood showing had to be the multiplayer, which is new to the series. I didn’t get a chance to play the single-player mode, but you’re damn right I got my hands on the mulitplayer.

The only multiplayer mode available to play was Wanted. Everyone who’s playing picks their character and their perk loadouts. Some examples of perks are using a disguise, having throwing knives, smoke bombs, a hidden gun and sprint boosting, just to name a few. Once the everyone is ready and the game starts, everyone is each assigned a target to assassinate. This means as a player, you are both the hunter and the hunted as an unknown player is out there after you as well.

This is basically the new Assassin’s Creed multiplayer, at least the one mode that was shown, but there will be more game types in the final game. The city is still full of people while you are playing and you’re given an image of your target and a meter/radar that gives you a sense of which direction your target is and how close you are. Points are awarded for killing your victim, and evading or killing the assassin hunting you. As your online rank advances, your assassin can gain new abilities, like disguise, to become either more deadly, or more elusive, depending on your play style.

This is basically the new Assassin’s Creed multiplayer, at least the one mode that was shown, but there will be more game types in the final game. The city is still full of people while you are playing and you’re given an image of your target and a meter/radar that gives you a sense of which direction your target is and how close you are. Points are awarded for killing your victim, and evading or killing the assassin hunting you. As your online rank advances, your assassin can gain new abilities depending on your playing style.

I can’t wait for Brotherhood! The multiplayer is going to be hella’ dope and some serious fun. I’m curious as to see what other online modes there will be. Lookout for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood when it launches November 16 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.