Composer Jesper Kyd has outdone himself with his soundtrack for Assassin's Creed II. The man behind the music of video games including Unreal Tournament III, multiple iterations of the Hitman series and of course, the award winning original Assassin's Creed, has crafted an exquisite score for the highly rated sequel. Fortunately for gamers and game music aficionados especially, Ubisoft has been kind enough to release a 35 song soundtrack album for Assassin's Creed II.

Jesper Kyd's music for ACII ranges from atmospheric to action-oriented themes. Jesper does phenomenally in his blending of old-world music themes with 21st compositional styles, creating pieces where orchestral music meets choir voices from antiquity with just the right application of an electric guitar line to keep it grounded in a modern mode. Check out the full-length sample of "Ezio's Family" we have for you here (courtesy of Ubisoft and Top Dollar PR) and hear for yourself why this is among the top downloaded individual songs from the album on iTunes.

Another testament to the quality of the compositions is selections from the Assassin's Creed II soundtrack debuted last week in Paris, as part of the Video Games Live concert tour. Here is hoping Tommy Tallarico keeps these in the set list when the tour comes back here.

So, who is this album for? Overall, the Assassin's Creed II soundtrack is a solid listen from start to finish, and fans of the game series that haven't already downloaded it from iTunes or Amazon need to set down their controller and go do so now. If, like me, you haven't logged any playtime with ACII yet (yes, I know, but cut a gamer some slack, there's a metric-ton of great games out right now!) you will still enjoy this for the sheer listening pleasure of it. From some of the talk I've seen on Twitter, there are plenty of you saying how vital Jesper's music is to the game play. Frankly, hearing gamers talk like this and listening to the music away from the game has only made me want to play it more.