by Tiberius Jonez
I was very excited to receive Assassin's Creed 2 last night. Unfortunately, after 5 minutes or so of playing, my excitement quickly turned to irritation and finally, complete disappointment. From the first cut-scene on, I experienced audio issues ranging from skipping dialogue to overlapping dialogue to a complete freeze of the game at one point. No, my disc is not scratched and my Xbox 360 Jasper Elite is working perfectly, thank you very much!
I really wanted to enjoy the game, but after an hour or so, the problem was so bad that it was impossible to follow the plot due to all the lost dialogue. The game is simply broken.
I researched around the net today, and sure enough people are complaining about similar issues with both console versions of the game. On Ubisoft's own forums, people are complaining and apparently Ubisoft's response is simply silence. There is no mention of a fix or upcoming patch to fix the problem. You can complete a work ticket on Ubisoft's forums, but no one has reported any progress or even an acknowledgment of the problem from Ubisoft.
The fact that Ubisoft, one of the most respected game developers in the industry, would release a game as big as AC2 with this kind of severe problem is fuel on the fire of gamer's reticence regarding the industry's move toward more PC-centric game development. Five years into this console generation and we still have game companies releasing games that require patches to correct problems that should have been addressed prior to release.
While I'm sure Ubisoft's board of director's will be happy with their stock prices next quarter, they may be whistling a different tune if the next Assassin's Creed is released to disappointing sales due to their complete disregard for their benefactors - namely us, the gamers.
If you've experienced audio issues with AC2, let us know by commenting.
