Assassin's Creed II - White Collector's Edition

This game requires a 24/7 Internet connection. This game requires constant connection to Ubisoft. If their servers go down, if your internet goes down, it becomes a brick.

Want to play this game while you're travelling? Stuck with crappy flaky NZ broadband or dialup ? This SINGLE PLAYER GAME game WILL NOT LET YOU PLAY whenever it cannot connect to their servers.

Vote with your feet. Do not purchase this game.

I'm highly dissappointed in Ubisoft. I was looking forward to getting this game but I refuse to pay for something that's punishing me as the paying customer.

The copy protection in this game requires a constant connection to the internet. If your connection is interrupted, you are booted to the main menu, without saving. You'll lose ALL progress since your last save.

I don't know about anyone else but I'm not going to put up with this considering how unstable a certain ISP (which won't be named) can be.

Get PS3 or XBOX360 version. PC version of the game will require constant internet connectivity to run. If the internet is disconnected in anyway or Ubisoft's authentication server goes down, you will be put back to last checkpoint.

Ubisoft also did not make a firm commitment to continued the authentication service of DRM nor make commitment to make a patch to disable the DRM if the authentication service is discountinued. Thus rendering the PC version of this game unplayable.

PS3 and Xbox360 version does not have this limitation.

Just heard that AC2 for the PC will use DRM . This means you will have to be connected to the internet to play the game! In the event of your internet cutting out, you will be dropped back to the last checkpoint upon re-connecting.

"As long as you do not quit the game, the game will continue to try to reconnect for an unlimited time, once the game is able to reconnect, you will immediately be returned to your game, AC2 reconnects you at the last checkpoint. There are many checkpoints so you're back to the point where you got disconnected in no time."

Assassin's Creed 2 is a much better game than its predecessor. For one thing, it's actually a complete game, possessing a beginning, a middle, and an end, where the original Creed had a very interesting beginning and a satisfying end connected by 20 hours of interminable grey tedium. And while this sequel may not feel quite as fresh as the first game's handful of exceptional moments did, it serves up a more consistently enjoyable experience from start to finish.

AC2 isn't without its flaws, but it benefits from a completely reworked structure that keeps the pace snappy and makes those minor issues fairly painless. Without a doubt, the most important improvement here is the way Ubisoft Montreal revamped the core mission design. The first Creed offered a sharply limited palette of objectives: Scout the area, undertake a set of investigative assignments, kill a guy, repeat. ACII offers more varied primary tasks, largely relegating the previous game's toilsome errands to the sidelines. You may have a friendly chat with Leonardo da Vinci one minute and kill a politician at a gala event the next, while events like races and extracurricular assassinations are almost entirely left to the player's discretion. One could conceivably play the game strictly for the story missions, which would result in a lean, cinematic, eight-hour adventure.

Click the image above to check out all Assassin's Creed 2 screens.

The great thing about AC2 is that you don't have to play it that way. You don't have to play it any particular way, in fact. At any moment, the game is bursting with available objectives, both mandatory and optional, spread across half a dozen beautifully rendered city-states of Renaissance Italy. These range from the obvious (advancing the story) to the obligatory (hunting for cash and collectibles) to the exceptional (exploring a number of self-contained tombs crammed with Prince of Persia-style platforming challenges). Completing any of these tasks results in a real sense of accomplishment with tangible rewards, giving AC2 an addicting, just-one-more-mission appeal.
ac2 is truly a fantastic game.