When we first learned that "Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood" would have multiplayer, there was some concern that the mode would be tacked on to justify another $60 purchase. Having played a handful of adversarial matches, however, it's obvious that the mode fits in with the rest of the franchise extremely well.
There's a whole complex backstory behind the multiplayer of "Brotherhood." Technically you're playing Templars, disguised as assassins, being uploaded into the memories of those assassins. As I said, it's complex. For clarity's sake, we'll just say you're playing as an assassin and save yourself the headache.
The mode I checked out was an 8-player free-for-all match set in Florence. Players pick from a handful of character models and hop into the game. Each player is then assigned one of the other players to kill. Kill the wrong player or kill one of the hundreds of hapless AI citizens wandering around and you'll lose points. Unfortunately for you, the AI citizens are the same models used by some of the players, so you have to use your Sonar-style tracker to confirm that you are, indeed, next to the correct target.
The trick to the game is to think like a member of the AI citizenry. Sprinting at full speed or climbing on buildings is only going to give you away as a player, so you're better off walking slowly through crowds until you get close enough to make your move on your target.
Unfortunately once you get close enough, your target will be alerted to your presence and will probably sprint away for survival. Just like killing your mark, escaping your assassin will give you points, so you could theoretically win the match just by dodging your would-be killers. Falling gates and hay stacks offer nice hiding places, but you've also got smoke bombs and other abilities to help out.
Now this makes for an interesting cat-and-mouse game, but you have to remember that it's not just two of you out there. There's eight. And someone else is trying to kill you while you're trying to kill your target while they're trying to kill someone else. This is where the chaos comes in, and the game could probably use some tweaking. In our few matches, every time I managed to get close and kill my target, my assassin was right behind me to kill the second I pulled the knife out. It makes for a ridiculous line of people waiting for other people to make a kill, which is a little less elegant than it should be in "Assassin's Creed."
Of course, this is only one mode, and despite the chaos, I did have a lot of fun with it. Hoping to spend time with the single-player campaign this week during E3, so stay tuned for more on "Brotherhood" soon.