"The first Assassin's Creed received plenty of praise, but it also spawned a very vocal fan base who let the world know what they felt was missing from the game. Well we have some good news for people who like to complain on the internet: the developers listen. Assassin's Creed II adds a lot of features to the formula, and we've distilled the best of them. And for even more info on Assassin's Creed II check out our latest video feature by clicking below." - Chieze Okoye from Bookmarklet

Sweet. - Itachi

The improvements all sound awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed the first one, so I'm really looking forward to playing this on my PS3. - Chieze Okoye

Doesn't sound like they got rid of the stupid achievements or the "kill 10 people in this town, find 10 flags in this town, yadda yadda until you get to a new town...kill 10 people in this town...rinse lather repeat" ridiculousness. Keep it fun yo and don't make me feel like I'm grinding for carrots. - Alex Scoble

That's true, but they added 1) More ways to kill people. 2) More weapons. 3) More tasks that you can do (including the lowering of your notoreity mini-tasks) All of these sandbox games suffer from the same sense of "do these mundane tasks over and over." It's just a question of how bad it gets and how the devs overcome it (ie, how much task variety can they create). For instance, I haven't played a GTA game since stopping Vice City halfway through, mainly because that game bored me senseless. - Chieze Okoye

Also, the Leap of Faith alone overcame that sense for me in AC1. I don't know, I'm easily amused when it comes to assassins, I guess. - Chieze Okoye

Saints Row 2 did not seem to suffer from that problem for me...then again it's so much fun in that game to cause mayhem - Alex Scoble

+1 Alex, the game wasn't lacking "features", it was lacking gameplay - Louis Simoneau

Alex, I can see what you're saying now. Yeah, there wasn't that much random fun stuff you could do in AC1. Except assassinate random people in the street, which did wear thin, I admit. Maybe the flight and other stuff will do it in this game? I mean, the for-XP tasks in inFAMOUS were fairly repetitive, too, but that game more than made up for it with stuff like the rail slide, power drop, (actually the abundance of powers to use), the power combo achievements, and blowing up gas stations, cars, etc. - Chieze Okoye

But then it goes back to what I'm saying above (at least for me), the more actions they give you to do (and more they allow you to interact with the environment), the more fun a sandbox-style game like this will be. And it seems to me that they did that based on the points in this article. - Chieze Okoye

Louis, I would actually argue that for me, the core gameplay of AC1 was really well executed. Assassinating people, running along rooftops, climbing buildings, faith leaping, fighting multiple opponents, etc, all the core elements were really well done and felt amazing. It's just there wasn't enough variety and breadth to the number of these types of things you could do. - Chieze Okoye

The achievements were mostly very annoying and that completely ruined the game for me... - Alex Scoble

which game, Alex? Edit: Oh, I assume AC1. - Chieze Okoye

Agree with Chieze, the fundamental mechanics of AC1 are great. The first eight or nine times. By the eighty-fifth time, they were getting a little old. And that fact that each mission was "steal a clue from this guy, eavesdrop on that guy, find out where the target is, get there, take him out, escape" EVERY TIME. It just got old. And no replay value whatsoever. I tried seeking out a bunch of the flags and stuff, but Alex is right, that got old too. Didn't ruin it because I just took it back to the rental place, but I did get pretty frustrated when I was missing only ONE of the Templars, and I couldn't find him, even though I was using a walkthrough/cheat map. - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

I think that the achievements/trophies should move more to the inFAMOUS style "use your powers in this way or do this combo" because it forces you to practice the things you learn and you feel like a bad ass when you pull them off (the same theory as a bunch of the Arkham Asylum achievements/trophies). The "find all these guys" "collect all these flags" ones are ok in moderation, but definitely less exciting. - Chieze Okoye