Assassins Creed Brotherhood Review

Assassins Creed: Brotherhood

Assassins Creed Brotherhood sees you taking control of Ezio right after the events of Assassin's Creed II. He's spared the life of Rodrigo Borgia, which turns out to be a bad move when the Pope's murderous son Cesare turns up unannounced in Monteriggioni and nabs the Apple of Eden back. Realising he was wrong to show the Borgia any kind of mercy, Ezio heads to Rome to gut the family of corrupt nobles. This time round  the story is much smaller in its dramatic scale than the previous game.

Assassins Creed Brotherhood is a lot shorter but is structured differently to Assassins Creed II.
This time it is set in a single city but there are an abundance of side missions that make up for the shorter story length.

AC Brotherhood

After two other games you still never seem to get tired of the joy of sprinting up the side of a building, grabbing a ledge and scrabbling up until you're hopping across rooftops. Even more so when there's a guard ready to be toppled off a building.

Away from missions, there's a greater emphasis on collectibles and upgrades. Rather than building up Monteriggioni, you're cleaning up the various districts of Rome and buying up stores and landmarks.

Brotherhood lets you recruit Assassins. It's an enjoyable distraction as you manage their missions and skills, watching them grow to efficient weapons of death. Using them will also help you go undetected.

There is a multiplayer mode which adds serious value to the package. Brotherhood's multiplayer is built by the same guys who conceived Spies vs. Mercs for Splinter Cell. This is more about stalking than rewarding split-second reactions.

While Assassins Creed Brotherhood is not as spectacular as Assasins Creed II and the plot is not as sprawling, there is as much to do as the previous games and has some of the best missions in the series and has a great multiplayer.

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Review

Hot Pursuit

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit is really great fun to play.
Hot Pursuit has a frightening sensation of speed and there are massive accidents, hundreds of miles of sweeping roads and breath taking beautiful visuals. There's also an accessible but rewarding handling model which allows easy drifting but requires constant adjustment of  the cars.

Hot Pursuit does have the feel of a Burnout game and has a career mode which is intelligently paced. Offering a choice of events from both sides of the cop/racer divide but drip feeding new gear in the context of an escalating arms race between the police and the criminals. 

Multiplayer offers both a fair fight and some of the best fun you'll have in online racing. Four racers against four cops makes for a thrilling vehicle dogfight. The Autolog system keeps you updated of any changes in your friend leaderboard in every single-player event. 

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit

Hot Pursuit is not perfect with the free roam wasted, but it pays respect to the classic Need For Speed games, borrows the best bits from Burnout and is technically excellent. It has lightning fast cars, gorgeous graphics and classic car chases.