Strange Behaviour in Venizia

After a brief flirtation with FIFA 10 last weekend, I returned to Assassin's Creed II  today (I had the day off work). I'm currently plying my murderous trade in Venice, probably the largest of the cities in the game. Venice is a fair way through the adventure and I'm beginning to wonder if the playtesting was frontloaded into the opening areas. I was wandering around Venice this afternoon, between assassinations and I came across a small group of Venitians all standing at a 45 degree angle from the floor. They were staring intently at a small patch of wall, murmuring to themselves (and I thought it was the assassin sect that were so named for their consumption of hashish). I stood Ezio in front of them (obscuring at least one) and took the picture below.

Earlier on (no photo this time), I had been swimming in the lagoon (a death sport, if ever there was one, be it in the Renaisance or now) and a gondola rammed me. The gondolier fell into the water but the gondola itself passed through Ezio, leaving him (me/Desmond) lodged inside the body of the boat. All that  could be seen above water was the top of Ezio's hoodie. After much flailing around, attempted dives, high/low profile switches, I had to give up and quit the game.

Fortunately, the game had saved a couple of minutes before, so I didn't lose much progress but I hate any bug that forces me to quit a game (talk about breaking the illusion).

I didn't have any similar problems in the first 24 hours or so that I'd been playing the game. I do wonder if developers think that, as only maybe half of gamers get to the latter stages of a game, they can cut corners on bugfixing in that area, particularly if they are struggling to meet deadlines ahead of release.

This shouldn't put anyone off though - even with little niggles like this, ACII was one of the best games released last year.