5 Examples of Fake Longevity in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Ubisoft Entertainment

Please read my Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood review before checking out why I secretly hate this game so much.

Ha, I'm kidding I don't secretly hate this game, but oh boy did I come close to hating it.
If you just clicked this page without having read my review of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, then I highly recommend that you do so. If you clicked here from the review then read on, I say!

1. Borgia Towers
Remember how in the first game there were about 9000 towers in each city that you had to scale in order to access all of the viewpoints? Well in Brotherhood, there are Borgia towers that are like mini-missions where you must defeat a wave of enemies in order to access the particular area's blacksmith, doctor, tailor, and other shops. In the beginning, analyzing a new way to take down a Borgia Tower is fun.
However, by the fourth Borgia Tower, this shit gets old.

2. Viewpoints
Speaking of viewpoints, in Brotherhood, nearly every viewpoint is set on top of a tower that you must climb upward in an awkward  motion to reach it's top. This was present in the second Assassin's Creed title, but at least the unlockable faster climbing feature perfectly remedied this. Guess what? In this game, the edges on these very annoying towers are even out of the reach of that faster climbing feature so that you're forced to go the long way on every copy pasted, goddamned viewpoint tower.

Click Image to Enlarge

3. Full Memory (Mission) Completion
Memory completions have a bothersome completion score. In previous titles where you were able to complete a memory by virtually any means necessary, this game brings out chains and ball gag and forces you to do exactly as it instructs you to. "Don't get detected in this part!" The game commands as it yanks on the chain biting into your jugular. "Oops you got detected, looks like you're starting over!"

Sometimes the game won't make you start over for disobeying it's commands, and instead it will show you a scary, red 50% SYNCH message like in the picture above at the end of the mission to tell you that you are not skilled enough to do exactly what Brotherhood tells you to do. Not only is the irony from this so irony that it would yield at least five iron pickaxes in Minecraft, it's the perhaps the most infuriating thing about this game.   In ACII I was able to murder how ever the hell I wanted, and all of a sudden, Brotherhood wants to tell me how to assassinate? It's annoying as hell.

4. Renovations
You must renovate all of Rome in order to make money. In the previous title, you were tasked with upgrading your home base town of Monteriggioni to bring in cash to buy fancy weapons, and that was okay because there were wasn't much to renovate. But in this game, you must renovate all of Rome, and Rome is a very large city. The tedium here is written in blood, and if you want to buy smoke bombs or the amazing crossbow, you know weapons that virtually required for certain missions, you have to renovate shops. At times I found myself renovating just so that I had enough money to renovate more. I've spent hours in this game simply trying to make money in order to play the actual damned game.

Click Image to Enlarge (Owen Bush)

5. Acquiring Two Handed Weapons
Picking up two handed weapons is a pain in the ass. Let's say that you kill a Papal Guard in order to take his two handed, bearded axe. Well you better resist enacting that badass throwing animation because chances are that you will be unable to pick it up again. When you do try to retrieve the weapon, though, and you will try because it's a fucking bearded axe, you will instead pick up a random sword dropped by another guard by accident. Okay, no problem there just drop it and... Oh wait, that common sword has automatically become your default main weapon and you are not able to drop it.

In order to get that two handed, badass bearded axe back you have to locate your nearest blacksmith to re-equip it. But surprise! You haven't renovated that blacksmith shop yet, so you better do that. But wait there's a Borgia Tower nearby so you better go take care of that. Ah, great now you can renovate the shop to use it! What, you have insufficient funds? Oh that's right, you spent that money on other renovations. Too bad. Well now you must wait for twenty minutes in order to accrue money from your renovated shops. Yay, fun! When you finally do have the money to buy that axe, it turns out if you will still lose it whenever you throw it and kill an enemy that has dropped a hard to see common sword nearby.

This list doesn't mean that Brotherhood is a bad game, it's far from it. Each item listed is relatively small compared to the overall videogame itself and are the main factors aided in my eventual, chore-like boredom of Brotherhood. What is fake longevity for me may be rewarding, worthwhile, challenging fun for you. Keep that in mind before you rush to the comments section to call me a whiny bitch whore please (Don't call me that, though, that would be rude).

However the case, here's a link back to the Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Review.