Assassin's Creed 2 Quietly Returns 16 Years On, Rejoice

Assassin’s Creed II makes a quiet return in a surprise way just in time for its 16th anniversary.

It’s perhaps not the easiest task picking out just a single favourite game from the popular Ubisoft series, Assassin’s Creed. While the series may not have hit the heights recently that earlier games achieved, the Animus time-travelling shenanigans will never get tiresome, for me at least.

That being said, I think most might agree that when the series was at its absolute peak, it was during the seventh console generation that included PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

During that console generation alone, starting from 2007, we had the likes of Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s Creed II, and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, to name a few. Those three games gave us some of the best protagonists of the series, Altaïr Ibn-LaʼAhad, Ezio Auditore da Firenze and Edward James Kenway.

Assassin’s Creed II was released 16 years ago

As conveniently mentioned above, Assassin’s Creed II was our introduction to the charismatic Italian, Ezio, with the title released for the first time 16 years ago in November 2009 on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

This week, Ubisoft released the new free expansion to Assassin’s Creed Mirage, ‘Valley of Memory’.

This expansion, which arrives via a free update available now, adds a new area, taking us to Saudi Arabia, new missions, gear and much more.

The free update also comes with some bonus features.

That includes improved parkour and combat skills for the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Basim ibn Ishaq, as well as new difficulty settings, controller presets and more.

As showcased by the Twitter user, Zephryss, one other bonus feature is some snazzy new screen filters inspired by not only Assassin’s Creed II, but also Assassin’s Creed Unity, Assassin’s Creed Origins and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, adding to the already existing filter inspired by the 2007 original.

All the filters look cool, but I’m very much a stuck-in-my-ways kinda person, and I tend to stick with how a game was originally intended to look and play.

That being said, if I were to use one of these new filters, it would have to be the one inspired by Assassin’s Creed Origins, as I believe it helps to make the sunny, sandy vistas of Assassin’s Creed Mirage shine even more.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is out now on PC, PlayStation and Xbox.

It is free ‘Valley of Memory’ expansion is available to all those who own the game.