mgeorge on 12/6/2011 at 17:57
Debating with myself which game to get. Will I understand the story in AC2 if I haven't played AC1? Also which game has better stealth and story?
Thanks.
CCCToad on 12/6/2011 at 18:00
AC2 is legible if you haven't beaten the first game. Either that, or read the story of the first game on Wikipedia and then watch the finale on Youtube.
Sulphur on 12/6/2011 at 18:41
Apples and orangutans, really.
AC2 is quite understandable without having played AC1, and it's a heck of a lot longer than Metro. Stealth is... enh, debatable at best. You can 'blend' in with crowds and sneak up on people and take them out with your hidden blade, but it's not like hiding in the shadows and prowling or anything. Most things happen in broad daylight, and there aren't many repercussions for blowing your cover apart from facing off a horde of angered guards and countering until the cows come home, or running away. It's repetitive as most open-world games are, but the story's decent enough to at least follow through.
Metro -- hrm. You can definitely stealth through certain sections of it, take out lamps and light bulbs and create pools of darkness to skulk through and all that's pretty fun. As a shooter, the weapons lack real feedback in sound and impact, but it plays well enough. The mechanics are interesting even if they don't quite work: f'r instance, military-grade ammo is money! Use 'em to make encounters easier, or save 'em? Doesn't matter, because on a normal runthrough you'll find more bullets than you know what to do with.
Still, it's got some neat design, interesting set pieces, and fantastic detail to the graphics if you've got the system to power it. The story is... well, up to you, really. I found it mildly intriguing but not much more in terms of where it took the premise. Atmospheric, but not quite Stalker. Good but missed being great by just a little bit.
henke on 12/6/2011 at 19:06
What Sulph said, mostly.
I just started playing AC 2 again after a year of inactivity. Gonna try to finish it, even though I could not care less about the story or any of the characters.
Between the two I liked Metro better, even though that one's no masterpiece either.
Mr.Duck on 12/6/2011 at 19:12
AC 2 for the sheer amount of fun* game content and replayability. Due respects to Metro 2033, loved the game, but the vanilla game doesn't give that much of an incentive to replay it (I will, eventually, but not today, not today...).
Though Metro 2033's much more atmospheric....way, way more....
*Your mileage may vary depending how snobbish you are with games.
mgeorge on 12/6/2011 at 19:14
Well I did a bit of research on both games and figured Metro was more up my alley. Am downloading now. The only thing that concerns me is my GPU which is a crappy 9400GT. But I was able to play the demo on med. settings so figure I'll be OK.
The length of a game doesn't really bother me if the story is fairly strong, and I heard some bad things about the DRM in AC2 which was one of the main reasons I decided to go with Metro.
Thanks.
Tomi on 12/6/2011 at 22:57
Quote Posted by MrDuck
AC 2 for the sheer amount of fun* game content and replayability.
I agree with your choice, but I'm not so sure about the replayability thing. I finished AC 2 just before Christmas and I haven't felt like playing the game again yet. I will get back to it one day though...
But yeah, it's a pretty fun game indeed, a massive improvement from AC 1, even if the games are quite similar. My gaming sessions weren't very long as the action tends to get a bit repetitive, but I was still quite hooked to it and played it every day until I finished the game. I found the story quite interesting too. My only real complaint is the difficulty level of the game... You spend
a lot of time fighting the enemies, but I don't think I died even once in a sword fight during the whole game! And I'm hardly some expert gamer, far from it. I didn't have to use any medicine either, so with a full supply of medicine you're practically invulnerable, unless you fall off a 100m tall building or something. I know it's kinda cool that you're an expert swordsman who can single-handedly beat a little army of guards, but when you can do that all the time with your left hand only and your eyes closed, it's just not as fun anymore as it
could be.
