Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Review from Sarge - Saturday, 03 December 2011 @ 2:21pm

Just like Brotherhood before it, Revelations picks up right where the last game left the storyline, so before really starting this review, it's worth giving you this piece of advice: you need to go back and play the other Assassin's Creed games ... even the first one. The game isn't unplayable, and they do have a brief "previously on Assassin's Creed" style catch-up but so much happens through the course of the storyline that the video on it's own merit doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, so it's hard to appreciate what you're seeing unless you've played the previous titles.

The storyline itself, without giving too much away, deals with Desmond, who's now in a comatose state, who is still hooked up to the Animus while the rest of the 'scooby gang' work out what the bloody hell they're going to do. While under, Desmond meets up with Subject 16, who makes your intentions for the rest of the game pretty obvious: Desmond's brain is still 'fractured' due his weird Inception-y experiments within the Animus and the only way out is to complete the storylines of Altair and Ezio in order to regain control of his own body and awake from this coma.

"I BELIEVE I CAN FLYYYY..."
I feel the need to put a bit of a caveat onto my review here: I'm a massive fan of the Assassin's Creed franchise and I was super excited to play this - I even will publicly admit that I even enjoyed the first game, despite it's repetition. I mean, I even publicly admit that I even enjoyed the first game, despite it's repetition. For those that have played the previous Assassin's Creed games, there's not a lot here that will be that unfamiliar. Remember when everyone complained that Brotherhood felt like a giant expansion pack for Assassin's Creed II? Revelations will give you the same feel. Brotherhood did bring quite a lot of new stuff to the series, yet in a lot of ways, it almost feels like Revelations really hasn't given the franchise the next step up that it truly deserves. Sure there's a lot of here to like, but throughout playing through the campaign, the same things that I loved and hated about Brotherhood are the same things that I love and hate about Revelations, so whether I was enjoying myself of not, I couldn't help but shrug the feeling that "I've played this before". And for a lot of the time, it's hard to tell at first glance whether you perhaps happened to have accidentally left the Brotherhood disc in by mistake.

There's a lot trimmed back here compared to previous games - 99% of the game will find you exploring just one city, Constantinopli. Desmond himself plays a very, very minor role, so there's no interaction with the outside world. There are no horses that you can ride around the city, there's no one single 'base' for you to go back to do your management of the city, and there are less collectables to, uhh, collect. While these may sound like it's going in a bad direction, it actually makes for a better game, and makes the whole experience a lot smoother, and allows the game to concentrate on it's strength - the story.

In Revelations, we find Ezio is now a much older man who's sporting a sweet grey beard. He has followed his quest to bring down the Templars to Constantinople, and with a new city, comes a few new tricks and a new set of friends to meet along the way - and yes, a new love interest in the beautiful and busty Sofia. Rather than the usual hidden blade from the previous games, Ezio has a hidden hook blade, which you can use to climb higher and faster, as well as use it to evade the bad guys. You're also taught the art of bomb-making. Even though the game puts a huge emphasis on bomb-making, I personally only found it handy in a small number of situations, so the way that the game jams the whole bomb-making thing down your throat, can be little annoying at times. *loots dead body* OH YAY, MORE FUCKING LAMBS BLOOD. The bombs are handy, I won't deny, but they were only ever an after-thought, and I never felt powerless without them to help me out of a bind.

Spoiler Alert: That dude with the sword is about to get JACKED.

Ezio himself, along with actually looking older, has the wisdom and personality of a much older person (despite the fact that he seems just as nimble now as he did when he was younger). When we first met him, he was a smart-mouth youngster who wasn't as interested as putting his hidden blade into his enemies as he was with putting his hidden flesh-blade into-- yeah, you see where I'm going with this. However, with the new love interest, he takes a much more mature and sensible approach to it. Having followed all the games in the franchise, it's quite nice to watch Ezio grow and develop ... or maybe I'm just becoming a big softy in my old age?

The other thing that annoyed me greatly was defending Templar captured areas. As you capture certain areas of the maps, or "Dens", the Templars can steal it back, so in order to defend it, you play through a Tower Defense-style mini-game. The style of the game is so vastly different to the other styles of gameplay that it just feels so awkward and out of place. Most of the time it was just easier to just deliberately fail, then go through the process of capturing it back again - which is essentially done by hacking up about a dozen Templar soldiers, a WAY more fun and satisfying method.

The other weird little addition are a series of first-person side-quests you can do on "Animus Island" playing as Desmond, which explores his back-story of growing up as an Assassin. These levels have an odd Mirror's Edge feel to them in their presentation, but they're just so odd and seemingly pointless, that it's not really something worth spending any decent amount of time on.

Speaking of things not worth concentrating on, Revelations has brought back Multiplayer mode. While there's been a fair few different game modes that have been added, it's ultimately still the same unsatisfying multiplayer. Admittedly I only played a couple of games, but it's still the same outcome - the general public are idiots because most people have zero interest in stealth. But then again, if you're a fan of the series, you're honestly not here for the multiplayer.

Pros

• Beautiful storytelling
• Streamlined some of the needless 'bulk' from Brotherhood
• Gorgeous setting with some breathtaking graphics
• Great characters and voice-acting

Cons

• Overly simplified combat
• Pretty short campaign compared to Brotherhood