Face-Off: Assassin's Creed II
November 19th, 2009

This is the game I've been waiting for. While the original Assassin's Creed may have been short on variety, there's no denying the quality of the visuals and the immense possibilities of the openworld sandbox it presented to us. On Xbox 360, at least, it was a technological marvel that laid the foundations for a sequel that takes all the coding genius of the original and combines it with a gameplay package that exceeds expectations. While Modern Warfare 2 ranks as the multiplayer game of choice for console owners, it's Assassin's Creed II that offers the most complete package for those more enamoured with traditional single-player experience. Ubisoft Montreal has done good.

Assassin's Creed is a game that comes with a bit of history. Way back in Face-Off Round 6, the PS3 version was savaged for its hugely disappointing performance, general blurriness and the feeling that its development was treated almost like an afterthought compared to the more technically solid Xbox 360 game. Times have changed. The quality of Ubisoft's PS3 work has come on leaps and bounds (its penchant for mammoth mandatory installs aside) and the fact the quality level has been sustained across the entire company with its many and varied studios is all the more impressive.

With regards to Assassin's Creed II, the comparison video augers well, suggesting that slight blur aside, the graphical assets are indeed identical cross-platform. You can get a more in-depth view with the jam-packed 720p comparison gallery.



Let's deal with the basic rendering spec. Similar to the first Assassin's Creed, ACII runs at native 720p resolution, with 2x multi-sampling anti-aliasing on Xbox 360 and quincunx edge-smoothing on PS3. The net result is that the PS3 has fewer "jaggies" at the expense of every texture in the game getting an unwelcome blur.

There have been some reports circulating that PS3 gets some special 1080p treatment in the form of a 960x1080 res - which would be a 12.5 per cent resolution boost, albeit with some oddly shaped pixels. The reality is somewhat different. If our pixel measurements are right, the PS3's 1080p mode - only active if 720p is disabled - seems to indicate the resolution has been reduced to 960x720. Combined with the quincunx, it's a blur-fest, as you can see in the upscaled 1080p comparison gallery. In short, it's a 720p game and really should be run as such.

In a year that has seen the HD consoles (and most especially PS3) pushed to new limits in performance, just how much of a leap have we seen with Assassin's Creed II? After all, the original game was one of the most advanced console titles ever seen back in its heyday in 2007 and, to this day, it's still an incredibly impressive title, with only a variable frame-rate and dollops of screen-tear blotting the copy book.

There are enhancements to the core tech, but it's fair to say that the overall impact during gameplay is limited. Perhaps the most impactful change is Ubisoft Montreal's inclusion of a full day/night cycle, dictating overall lighting throughout the game. A full 24-hour cycle is around 60 minutes of game, and it is interesting to note that starting a new mission resets the clock to a Doctor Who-style fixed point in time. Presumably Desmond's memories are being put back into sync with Ezio's, which is a nice touch. There's also a very nice Animus effect that sees the environments being reconstructed from their component vertexes as you enter the cityscape.

All of this is brand new, but make no mistake, the core tech itself is much the same as the game we played two years ago and initial impressions are that the original's cities had more character and detail than those we see in the sequel. There's even a very strong argument that the environments outside of the cities have been significantly pared down in terms of detail level and content compared to the first game. All I can say about this is that the further you get into the game, the more impressive it becomes, with the arrival in Venice signifying a new high point in technical excellence.

So what about the performance level? First off, it's probably best to remind ourselves of the huge gulf in quality between the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the first game. While the Face-Off coverage of the time was very controversial, the bottom line is that with the analysis tools we have available now, we can see just how much of a raw deal the Sony platform got technologically speaking.



Many view the original Assassin's Creed as something of a huge, expansive tech demo roughly manhandled into a somewhat limited game, and while both games were prone to losing frames and tearing, PS3 performance was a bit of a joke: frame-rate reaches a nadir of 17FPS at its lowest point, with 37 per cent of the 60Hz output of the console consisting of torn frames. That's compared with a mere six per cent on 360 and a 24FPS minimum. So for PS3 owners, a tech demo that underperforms technically. Not good.

The Assassin's Creed Forge technology has since been used for other games from Ubisoft. I ran a rough performance measure back in July on each of them, and the conclusion was obvious: the Assassin's Creed engine can deliver the goods. In terms of the almost mythic cross-platform parity, Prince of Persia was one of the best-realised PS3/360 titles of last year.

The good news is that the gap between PS3 and Xbox 360 has been reduced, but on the flip side there is still a tangible performance difference. The first of our two FPS videos based on ACII features synchronised video: mostly set-piece elements and cut-scenes, with the odd dash of gameplay, but all powered with the same engine.



First impressions are that Ubisoft has done good work on the PS3 build. In cut-scenes and viewpoint set-pieces, we see that the new game clearly outperforms the old one, which dropped and tore frames on an almost continuous basis. Also curious is that the uncapped frame-rate from AC1 (only seen on PS3) has been disposed of in favour of a 30FPS limit, bringing it into line with the 360 version. It may sound crazy to limit your frame-rate but it actually makes good sense in this case as it standardises controller feedback and helps to eliminate judder, something that AC1 on PS3 had in spades. Raw stats see tearing down to 9.4 per cent, but only 1.7 per cent on 360 with minimum frame-rates of 21FPS (PS3) and 24FPS (360).

However, it's interesting to note that the few pure gameplay clips seen in that selection do tear pretty badly. It's occasionally seen in cut-scenes too, specifically when the game is rendering a large number of NPCs. So, let's go for a second test using non-synchronous video taken from the same areas of the game running on each platform, with a stronger emphasis on actual gameplay.



For 360 owners, here's where we see what you might call classic Assassin's Creed performance: 5.2 per cent torn frames (just like the first game) with a 24FPS minimum (ditto). It bears out a gameplay experience which suggests that playing ACII feels very similar to playing the original: off-putting screen-tear when it does manifest and a sense that the game isn't really as solid as you would hope it would be two years after its predecessor came out.

PS3 gets a 24FPS minimum, with 22.6 per cent screen-tear. Yes, the sequel is clearly a big improvement over the first game in terms of raw performance, especially in terms of a smoother frame-rate, but the tearing is clearly a very big issue, and it's most especially evident in crowded scenes. The very nature of Assassin's Creed II means there are a lot of crowded scenes.

So what about the 1080p mode then? Assuming the DF measurements are right and it is indeed rendering 25 per cent fewer pixels than pure 720p, can you effectively decide to go for smoother gameplay over some detail loss and some extra blur? Apparently not: in our tests the game acted in exactly the same way as the native 720p mode does, and the loss of image quality was a bitter pill to swallow.

So, overall the performance gap has dropped, but if you've got the choice, the Xbox 360 offers a sharper picture, smoother performance, lower levels of screen-tear and faster loading, and it doesn't require PS3's 1.5GB mandatory install either. This is not to say that the 360 version doesn't have its faults, and the fact that the technical issues of its two-year-old predecessor haven't been addressed is probably my biggest disappointment with the game: quite apart from the tearing, the pop-in is sometimes atrocious, even when running from hard disk. It's worth pointing out that in this respect, the PS3 version performs in much the same way.

Performance issues aside, the games are basically like-for-like. There's proper anisotropic filtering on both versions that looks identical and serves its purpose admirably. Some reports peg the 360 game as possessing superior texture filtering, but it's actually the same cross-platform, with just variations in implementation between the NVIDIA and ATI GPUs causing slight differences. The PS3 developers do appear to have had a bit more fun with their light-sources in night-time scenes, however. Viewpoint set-pieces at night clearly show the PS3 code to have more lights in effect. It's more of a curiosity than a technical issue, though, and has no real bearing on the make-up of the game itself.

Where PS3 does have an interesting addition not found on 360 is in its link-up support with Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines on the PSP. There's a curious "sync" system in place, whereby the weapon of every boss Altair defeats in the PSP game is unlocked for use by Ezio hundreds of years later in the PS3 game - the notion being that his ancestor tucked them away as a legacy for his assassin descendants to make use of. Templar coins you amass from the handheld game are also translated into AC2 Florins - a useful addition at the beginning of the new epic when funds are relatively scarce. Similarly the Codex pages in the PS3 game that bestow extra life and blade upgrades, once unlocked on PS3, become available to Altair in the past too. Hardly earth-shattering stuff, but pretty neat nonetheless.

In the final analysis, it's fair to say that while Assassin's Creed II has a number of important advantages on Xbox 360, the crucial thing is that the improvements to the PS3 engine are such that the performance deficit isn't going to get in the way of having a great time. It's an essential game on both platforms, but if you've got both consoles, the 360 version is clearly the more solid performer.

The World of Assassin's Creed II
November 21st, 2009

Ubisoft's terrific Assassin's Creed II launched just yesterday and it really is something extraordinary - a game so impressive it's more than worthy of some special treatment at the hands of Digital Foundry. As discussed in this week's Face-Off, one of the key improvements made to the original Assassin's Creed engine was the addition of a full day/night cycle, and we were eager to test that implementation.

There's no better way to do this than by undertaking one of our painstaking, time-consuming, but really very cool time-lapse videos. Just a few special ingredients are required to put one of these together: the ability to go anywhere within the virtual world, a first-person view with no intrusive HUD, and finally, phenomenal amounts of patience. In truth, the biggest challenge with this one was keeping Ezio as still as possible (you might notice the odd bit of "wobble" on close objects where this wasn't possible).

What we have is a collection of 31 time-lapse locations, covering 10 days of in-game time across four cities, from the rustic charms of Florence through to the sheer beauty of Renaissance Venice. It's Assassin's Creed II as you've never seen it before and certainly won't see it elsewhere. In addition to the streaming options, there's a download version on the EGTV clickthrough, along with this mega-bandwidth version designed for playback on Xbox 360 and PS3.



It's intriguing to compare the virtual world Ubisoft Montreal has created with Rockstar North's incredible Liberty City, as seen in GTAIV. Both do a superb job in providing a fully immersive gameplay environment, but the two approaches - time-of-day lighting and shadowing aside - are very, very different. Rockstar has attempted a fully featured approximation of city life: a bewilderingly vast array of different AI behaviours for the characters, a full weather system, and of course implementation not just of NPCs, but also a complete range of vehicles too.

Assassin's Creed II seems to follow a different philosophy - the creation of environments that look incredible "in the moment", but don't really aspire to any lofty pretensions of creating a full-on simulation of life in 15th century Italy. Aside from their penchant to occasionally delve into your money pouch or engage you in rooftop chases, AI behaviour of the citizenry is unremarkably routine (those poor courtesans don't seem to get much "traffic"). Horses and vehicles aren't allowed within city limits. This "almost but not quite" approach also applies to the renderer too. The time-of-day lighting is quite superb, but the sky itself looks to be a simple 2D bitmap wrapped dome-like around the environment with a layer of atmospherics overlaid on top. It's an example of how compromise only really manifests when the engine is put through extraordinary scrutiny (as time-lapse video is wont to do). In-game it just works and looks great.

The core tech within Assassin's Creed II is very similar to that seen in the first game, which at the same time proves just how far ahead of the curve Ubisoft Montreal was in 2007, but makes the slightly dodgy performance stand out somewhat in the present day.

However, aside from the implementation of the day/night cycle, there have been other improvements too. The developers have rarely discussed the new "Scimitar" engine for ACII with the press, but mooted additions have included improved lighting and reflections (essential for the spectacular Venice cityscape, obviously), while the vegetation generation system pioneered in Far Cry 2 also gets ported over for inclusion within the revised tech. Ubisoft Montreal has also made headway in improving the level of detail (LOD) levels with new streaming tech that resolves higher-quality art further away in the distance.

However, the limitations of the original AC1 tech do manifest, most notably in the cascading shadowmaps within the game. Detail level of shadowing changes dramatically at set points ahead of Ezio, most noticeable in the video at around the 00:57 mark, where shadowing on the central tree is divided half and half between higher and lower resolution renderings. Noticeable geometry popping (scenery appearing from nowhere) is also another issue that is reminiscent of performance in the first Assassin's Creed and still manifests even after hard-drive installation.

Ubisoft's technical achievement here is still sizeable, but if you're thinking that the scale and diversity of this open world causes issues in terms of storage space available on Xbox 360, think again. Assassin's Creed does indeed effectively max out the available DVD space, but whereas some publishers release different game variations with support for individual languages, ACII features full audio support for English, French, German and Italian on the same disc. Each of those sound packs takes up around 200MB of space on the DVD, and over and above that, there's also another 100MB spent on a trailer for the forthcoming Ubi/James Cameron Avatar game. It's also interesting to note that the PS3 version of the game occupies pretty much the same area too.

In one sense it highlights the excellent levels of compression that Ubisoft Montreal achieved in ACII, but on the other, it does rankle slightly that one of the annoyances of the original game - repetitious dialogue from the citizenry - once again rears its ugly head in the sequel. It's an element that we would really like to see improved in the sequel.

Ubisoft is on the record as saying that Assassin's Creed will be a trilogy of games, so it will be interesting to see where the developer is heading for the next title, and whether the existing engine will stand the test of time for a third outing - presumably in 2011, when the current HD consoles will be well into their twilight years. The sheer volume of content in ACII, and the fact that the game itself is simply so utterly cool more than mitigates any of the technical shortcomings in the here-and-now. But come AC3, we can't help but wish for the complete package.

A PERMANENT HIGH SPEED INTERNET CONNECTION AND CREATION OF A UBISOFT ACCOUNT ARE REQUIRED TO PLAY THIS VIDEO GAME AT ALL TIMES AND TO UNLOCK EXCLUSIVE CONTENT. SUCH CONTENT MAY ONLY BE UNLOCKED ONE SINGLE TIME WITH A UNIQUE KEY. YOU MUST BE AT LEAST 13 TO CREATE A UBISOFT ACCOUNT WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT.UBISOFT MAY CANCEL ACCESS TO ONLINE FEATURES UPON A 30-DAY PRIOR NOTICE PUBLISHED AT http://assassinscreed.com

We barely need to say anything here (but we will), as where we’re going we don’t need words. We only need righteous fury. PC Gamer have experienced the controversial new Ubisoft DRM first-hand, in the PC build of Assassin’s Creed 2. We already thought the paranoid new copy protection was pretty bad, requiring as it did an online check everytime you played and giving you a hard time if you tried to launch it offline.

What we didn’t think – what we didn’t believe they’d be mad enough to do – was that it’d kick you out of the game if your net connection dropped for any reason.

Or, as PCG’s Tom Francis rightly observes, even if Ubi’s servers happen to have a funny turn. (A troubling precedent for which has already been set by EA – Alec experienced something similar yesterday, when Bioware/EA’s servers suffering extended maintenance meant all his Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 DLC was deemed unauthorised, which in turn prevented him from loading savegames. The point being: don’t punish your customers because you’ve screwed up).

Incredibly, the worst is true in Assassin’s Creed 2 – and, it appears, will be for Settlers 7 too. No matter what you’re doing, no matter what the reason, the game will refuse to let you continue playing if it decides you’re not online. You’re dumped right back to a menu, losing any progress made since the last checkpoint. If you don’t have a constant, uninterrupted internet connection, you can’t play. Let’s list some of the reasons you might drop your net connection, shall we? Router crash, ISP problems, cat playing with the cable, microwave muddling your wi-fi connection, train going into a tunnel when you’re on 3G, Windows having a networking befuddlement, someone else in the house torrenting the bandwidth dry…

Incredible. In-cred-i-ble. It’s like someone taking away your food mid-meal because your napkin’s fallen on the floor. It makes us want to pull an expression we’re not physically capable of, like this.

While we’ve not always gone full-pelt protest against excessive DRM, this is open contempt for paying customers, and, quite frankly, it’s the most valid reason yet for PC gamers to call a massed boycott. We’ll certainly be ignoring it with all the passion we can muster.