The new Assassin’s Creed installment is out, Brotherhood. I’m not going to say it’s the best game I have ever played but if you are a fan of the Assassin’s Creed franchise then this game will do you no wrong.

The game is 99% set in Rome (with a short beginning in Monteriggioni). As always this game is fairly accurate historically which is one of the most enthralling aspects. You can scale your way up the Coliseum, various Duomos and landmarks in Rome, just as they were in the late 1400′s and early 1500′s. The creators of these games have done their homework, and although the overall plotline is completely fictional, it is based on real history, real people and real events. For example at the very start of the game, Ezio’s hometown of Monteriggioni is attacked by Cesare Borgia’s army which actually happened in real life in 1499. Throughout the game you are engaged in a struggle with the Borgia army and the Pope,  being closely allied with Niccolo Machiavelli. All real people and based on real events.

Personally this is my favorite part of the game. In Assassin’s Creed 2 you could freely run around Florence. Having been to Florence it was pretty cool to see things I recognized, but how they would have been in the late 1400′s.  The overall layout of the city was dead on. The game is almost educational in a sense. At each landmark you can press a button and see a quick history lesson on the landmark, who it was built by, etc.

The game itself gets a little repetitive and is not challenging at all. I passed the game fairly quickly and may have died once or twice by accidentally falling off a building. There are a lot of extras in the game that you can try to complete, or you can also ignore them with no consequence. I’m not a gamer who has to pass the game 100%. As long as I get to the end I’m good. This made the game pretty short.

The sword fighting is pretty wicked, but becomes repetitive and ridiculously easy once you get the hang of it. Assassin’s Creed 2 definitely did a better job of adding various combination moves and skills as you get further through the game. Since AC Brotherhood is just a continuation of AC2, you start out with most of those skills and there is very little improvement from there. There is a new execution feature where you can get on a pretty good roll executing guy after guy, but even that gets old pretty quickly. After a while you are just going through the motions and holding one button and mashing the other.

The addition of banks, owning shops, renovating landmarks and riding horses within the city are all good enhancements to the game but they need to make some improvements to the real meat and potatoes of the game, which in my opinion is the fighting and the stealth aspects.

If you haven’t spent your money on an Assassin’s Creed game yet but are thinking you want to give it a try, get AC2. You won’t miss anything major from AC1 and you will enjoy yourself more than you would with Brotherhood.