Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Gameplay #2)
1Although this particular clip was recorded quite early on, at this point I've spent some 10 more hours with AC:B and finally got introduced to most of the fundamental gameplay mechanics (I'm taking sort of a completionist approach, though, so I'm unlocking content and game elements at a slower pace than strictly necessary).
As for the major changes compared with AC2 I guess three things in particular stand out; the addition of Borgia towers (see latter part of this video), the optional "synchronization" objectives during story missions and, above all, the Assassin's Guild strategy/RPG system which adds a whole new and pretty addictive dimension to the gameplay. Recruiting assassins to fight by your side, upgrading them by sending them on missions of their own, distributing skill points and generally guiding them from being simple thieves to becoming badass, instant-kill mercenaries of total annihilation (or whatever) is a satisfying pastime indeed, and one that has substantial gameplay-related consequences.
Sadly, the clumsy controls are still an issue. It's often needlessly difficult to align a jump properly (especially when time is of the essence), the "pathfinding" while climbing buildings can be finicky and inconsistent and the almost inevitable frame rate issues are difficult to reconcile with precision-based navigation. Also, as much as I enjoy the unusual and refreshing difficulty increase introduced by the optional objectives during story missions, I can't believe that Ubisoft didn't design these challenges so that they took advantage of the built-in autosave functionality. As it is, you have to restart a mission from the beginning if you make on tiny mistake, which can be absolutely infuriating (luckily, though, most missions are short).
To sum things up, despite its problems AC:B seems like a nice step forward for the series and a title which hopefully won't overstay its welcome as the ultimately pretty disappointing AC2 did. That game tried to solve the numerous problems of the original Assassin's Creed but didn't go far enough, and most of the systems it introduced were either too incidental to the action or so easily taken care of that they didn't bring enough new content to the table. With the wealth of stuff to do in AC:B's singeplayer alone, I feel like this time Ubisoft has produced a very generous package which shows clear signs of improvement and learning from past mistakes.