Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - Multiplayer Preview

If Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's single-player game is a juicy prospect (which it is, judging by our first look), then the multiplayer is a ravishing one. It's hard to think of any stealth game that's smoothly translated its gameplay into an adversarial multiplayer experience. Some have done a fairly good job with co-op, but few have even attempted deathmatch-style multiplayer and those that have (e.g. Metal Gear Online) have rarely managed to deliver on their initial promise. Judging by our recent hands on with the multiplayer component of AC: Brotherhood though, that could all be set to change when the game releases this November.

Most importantly, Brotherhood grabs hold of what has set the Assassin's Creed series apart as a single-player game and makes sure that it's all present and correct in the multiplayer. The tight nooks and crannies of city streets, acrobatic skills of your playable character, and dense populations of NPCs all make the cut into Brotherhood's multiplayer maps and yet, with all of this, the game still miraculously manages to remain balanced. Crowded city streets don't annoy you when you're trying to evade enemies (on the contrary, they can actually help, but more on that later), and the acrobatic freedom of your character doesn't make every duel feel like a tedious Benny Hill sketch either.

Credit should be given to Ubisoft for avoiding this because, if left in its natural state, this is exactly how Brotherhood's multiplayer would end up. Instead, the game's developers are using their ingenuity to add gameplay features that make the experience watertight. As with any solid multiplayer experience, there's essentially a downside to counter every upside of strategy that gamers may look to employ. Unlike most other multiplayer experiences in its genre though, Assassin's Creed doesn't resort to the constant use of ranged weapons to buoy its combat. Instead, combat is anchored by a more subtle and suspense-filled process of cat and mouse-style pursuit.

As an assassin in this multiplayer world, you will always have one target character that you've got to assassinate. The character is shown in the top-right hand corner of the HUD, and takes the form of numerous other NPCs populating the map. Your task, using a radar on the HUD (a disc that points in the direction of your target and fills up a meter as you get closer) is to track down the displayed target character until you can see them on-screen, before ascertaining that they are the target and not simply an NPC that happens to have the same appearance. This is often more difficult than it sounds.

For one, not only will the game discourage you from running when you're in visual range of the target (by causing interference in the Animus), but the target will quickly cotton onto you if they see someone running at them in a crowd of otherwise slow moving NPCs. Once this happens, the target can easily lose you by darting behind a timed gate (that shuts immediately behind you to block off pursuers), or just by using some of the more standard Assassin's Creed methods of evasion (e.g. rooftops or carts full of hay). The balancing of the game makes sure that any high-speed pursuit will favour the mouse over the cat - if you do get your target, it's usually because they were unaware of your presence.

Of course, whenever you are being the cat, you'll often be someone else's mouse simultaneously. Red icons in the top-left of the HUD denote how many other players have you as their target at any one time (we managed two at once) so, while the main task of the game is to track down your target, avoiding being tracked down by other players is often just as important. You'll often know very little about it once they've tracked you down as well, other than a swift melee kill so discreet that any bystanders would think you'd merely collapsed of heat exhaustion. To pull off the kill though, you've got to be close enough to the target that you can practically smell them (let's assume that this isn't the Renaissance, and they do have deodorant). Only then will a prompt appear above the target's head for that critical melee kill.

Brotherhood also comes with a perks system, which can make detecting your target even more difficult. A couple of the perks that we sampled allowed our character to transform its appearance (thereby throwing pursuers off the scent), while another could morph a surrounding group of NPCs into the same appearance as our character (so that enemies didn't know which one we were). Both perks worked on RPG-style recharge timers, so that we were best off using them when an enemy was practically breathing down your neck. The perks weren't limited to this though, and also included a couple of ranged weapons (throwing knives and a single-shot pistol) that, although limited in their application, could be deadly in the right situation and in well trained hands.

With the exception of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory's 'Mercs vs. Spies' mode, few stealth games have ever managed to deliver adversarial multiplayer gameplay that's both tightly balanced and keeps true to the game's original single-player vision (even 'Mercs vs. Spies' dabbled in action). The funny thing about AC: Brotherhood's multiplayer is that it's almost a more engaging experience, in terms of pure stealth, than we've so far encountered in the single-player componenets of the first two Assassin's Creed games. Truly, Brotherhood is one very exciting prospect.