Assassin's Creed II

Assassin's Creed II tells the story of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a young Venetian nobleman who, after the murder of his father and brothers, transforms into a master assassin pursuing a Templar conspiracy across Renaissance Italy. Compared to the first game, it significantly expanded movement, combat, and city economies, and offered dozens of side quests, hidden tombs with acrobatic puzzles, and codex pages scattered across the map to collect, making it one of the most significant titles of its generation and definitively setting the direction the series would take in later entries.

The computer version didn't arrive until March 2010, roughly four months after the console releases, and content-wise it was actually more complete - it included both missions that console players had to purchase separately or wait for as DLC, namely Battle of Forlì and Bonfire of the Vanities, built directly into the main campaign at no extra charge. The graphics ran at higher resolution with sharper textures, longer draw distance, and smoother frame rates on powerful hardware, and controls worked with keyboard and mouse as well as a gamepad, according to player preference.

The release was accompanied, however, by strong controversy over Ubisoft's DRM protection, which required a permanent internet connection for the entire duration of play - if the connection dropped, the game would interrupt itself and the player would lose unsaved progress, which sparked a wave of criticism from players and journalists alike and became one of the most frequently cited examples of problematic DRM in PC gaming history. Ubisoft later eased the system due to repeated server outages. The campaign content and story themselves remained the same as on consoles, just with the DLC content included from the start and with technically more polished graphics suited to more powerful rigs. PC players could also choose their own keyboard shortcuts for parkour, combat, and the hidden blade, which for an action-adventure with a heavy emphasis on smoothly chaining movements through Renaissance city environments offered a different, more precise alternative to the analog gamepad control the game was originally designed around.

Why play it: Due to the DRM requiring a permanent connection, where an internet outage wiped unsaved progress, the PC version is still cited today as an example of problematic protection - otherwise it offers the same campaign as the consoles, plus DLC from the start.