After a rocky start, the Assassin's Creed series finally found a foothold with its second installment. Brotherhood aimed to follow that momentum and continue the story of Ezio Auditoré, the Italian assassin who'd become the face of the franchise. In many ways, it did exactly that, but to its own peril, it did so in the manner to which Ubisoft is accustomedby grabbing the ending to a complete work and stretching it over another one.Largely thanks to its well-directed trailer, Brotherhood had a veil of regality and sublimity about it. The titular brotherhood was to be a band of assassins so skilled that only the boldest and most powerful of factions would dare oppose them. That conflict, that clash of titans, was what players were after. But that's not what they got. That veil came down upon release and Brotherhood proved to be the umpteenth tally on gaming's "more of the same" record. It's good stuff, to be sure, but not different enough to justify its place as a sequel, and certainly not all it could have been.