Assassin's Creed 2 may get the surface details of Renaissance Italy down - the architecture, the costumes, and the technology - but I can't tell you how life in Florence differed from life in Venice, aside from the fact that they seemed to both have a lot of stabbing and people yelling 'thief!' I've traveled the globe in Call of Duty shooting men in army fatigues and blowing up tanks, but based on that I wouldn't be able to say how modern day Russia differs from Afghanistan, besides one being a bit snowy while the other's a bit sandy. Historically games haven't done a very good job at recreating what it's like to inhabit a specific time and place.
