Assassin’s Creed: Revelations - Review
The Game
After discovering the location of the Apple Of Eden in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Desmond was forced to stab his would-be-girlfriend Lucy and then suffered a mental breakdown and slipped into a coma. To save his mind, his Assassin pals put him into a special area of the Animus called the Black Room, or Animus Island. Desmond wakes up on this island and Subject 16 tells him to save himself he must separate himself from his ancestors, Ezio Auditore and Altair Ibn-La'Ahad. To do this, he must work his way through their memories until they have nothing left to show him. Well that’s convenient because this game happens to end Ezio’s story! So, in 1459, Ezio Auditore is on the trail of Assassin history. He’s left Italy in search of secrets about the Assassins Templars. He ends up in Altair’s old neck of the woods and starts tacking down the Masyaf Keys to Altair’s library which is said to contain something very old and very powerful.
The Campaign
Myself and the Creed haven’t always seen eye to eye. When I first saw gameplay of the original Assassin’s Creed I was so excited, it looked incredible. An open world where you could run across rooftops like a free-runner and take down targets with blades that came out of your wrists? Sold! But although the premise was great, I felt that the controls were sloppy and the missions were repetitive. Altair was a dick and on top of that there were crappy cutscenes in which you could weirdly change the camera angle and the fact that if you tried going faster than 3mph on a horse you got attacked by nearby soldiers. Because if you look like you’re in a hurry you must be a criminal and deserve to be stabbed. All of that was enough to make me put down the game controller. Which for me is saying something. I mean, I managed to finish Prototype.
But after many recommendations I decided to give the second game a go. And it was breathtaking. An incredible game from start to finish. Then Brotherhood came along and I liked that even more. And now Ezio Auditore’s story comes to a close in Revelations... Will Ubisoft manage to entice me a third time despite our rocky start?
Well... mostly. Assassin’s Creed Revelations is a very good game, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not a great game by any means. It feels like a very long piece of DLC. After an action packed opening you arrive in Constantinople, a city which has fallen under Templar control. Experienced Creed players will know that the game is built around DNA sequences. Several sequences make up a game and many missions make up a sequence. The first sequence usually acts as an intro, letting you get to grips with the control and features. You’d think with this being the fourth Creed game that the tutorials would be be pretty short and the game would get going quickly. You’d be wrong. You reach sequence three and you’re still playing missions that involve some kind of training. In fact, the game doesn’t ever stop treating you like a complete novice. Everytime you need to locate a target it reminds you how to use Eagle Vision. Everytime you need to do a long jump, it tells you how to do it just in case you’ve forgotten how. It’s so patronizing and worse, it’s distracting. You’re meant to be an Assassin Master who rebuilt Rome in a few days! It’s ridiculous!
What makes this even more insulting is that the gameplay has barely changed at all. There are two significant differences. The Hookblade and Bombs. The hookblade allows you to climb faster, travel across ziplines, pull down scaffolding and er... trip up people. Which is cool but hardly revolutionary. Bombs come in three different types. Lethal bombs, diversions bombs and tactical bombs. Each type can be modified with different cases and ingredients and all have different effects. Once mastered they become a welcome addition to your inventory. They really help out on missions during which stealth is essential. However, everything else is more or less business as usual with a Turkish twist. The Borgia towers from Brotherhood are back but are called Templar Dens which you have to retake. Which, by the way, makes no sense. You kill the Den Captain and then you climb the tower and ignite it. Apparently, this lets the Templars know to flee. Why? Why would they flee just because funny coloured smoke is coming from the tower? Surely that would be a sign for ‘We’re under attack. Grab your sword and get stabbing.’ But nope. They flee and that Den is yours. But maybe not forever. If go round causing a lot of ruckus your notoriety will go up and then the Templars will attempt to retake Dens. You then have to go back to the Den and play a game of Den Defense. Den Defense is a real time strategy mini-game. You control various units of attack and defense and try to fight off attacking Templars and reclaim the Den as your own. To begin with, its incredibly frustrating as it isn’t explained very well and you’re thrown into it without any real warning. But the more of these that you play, the more fun it gets.
Once you’ve taken over a Den you can rebuild that area of the city by purchasing various shops and buildings. Just like in Brotherhood. In Brotherhood it made sense, Rome was a mess and you needed to fix it. But in Revelations it’s just a repeated idea to make up for lack of an actual game. Mercenaries and Thieves are back but the Courtesans have been replaced with the Romani. Which are exactly the same. And these three factions add no value to the story or the game in anyway. During one mission, Ezio makes an effort to get to know the Romani to get them on the side of the Assassins. Nice one Ezio. Except for the fact they barely feature after that.
Tombs return again. We had the Assassin Tombs in Creed 2, the Lairs of the Romulus in Brotherhood and this time we just have Hidden Tombs which contain the Mysaf keys. However, the tombs are built into the game this time round rather than being a side mission which is more evidence to the fact that there is nothing going on in main game. The first couple of these tombs are pretty dull but the last two get quite exciting and offer a nice change of pace. Elsewhere, there’s plenty to do. If you like doing the same thing as we’ve done before that is!
You can recruit and train Assassins and then send them round Europe completing missions. That sounds familiar. You can spend money in shops and collect items like books. Which you can do NOTHING with. You can collect Animus Data Fragments (which replace the flags and feathers we’ve seen previously.) However, this time around collecting these fragments does something a bit different. They unlock extra missions on Animus island that explore Desmond’s history. These missions are Portal style puzzles. You have to reach a point and you use blocks to get there while Desmond recites his life story. It’s interesting but repetitive and sometimes very frustrating and since there is only four of them it’s over pretty quickly.
I think the real problem with the story mode is that there isn’t really a story. Ezio is just keeping busy collecting the equivalent of Assassin Pokemon cards. Saying that, I love the fact that that Ezio is almost doing what Desmond is doing. Exploring his heritage and trying to discover the purpose of his actions through Altair’s memories. The Altair missions are great but they are far too short and infrequent, especially since him coming back was a major selling point of the game. To be honest, I was surprised they brought back Altair. I assumed that since they moved onto a new character in the second game that they’re couldn’t be much more to do with him. But what made me actually laugh out loud with self-righteous glee was Altair’s bio in game. “Thanks to the memories stored in Altair’s five Masyaf Keys, we can now get a good glimpse of the man himself, instead of settling for vague glimpses through the Templars’ (frankly quite primitive) Animus 1.28 avatar projection system.” They’re basically admitting that they did a poor job with the storytelling in the first game and wasted Altair’s character. I love being right.
What Ezio lacks in this game is a real enemy. The Borgias and Cesere in Brotherhood were brilliant. You hated them and wanted to stop them. In this game you’re just fighting some soldiers that you’re told are Templars. I bet even the soldiers don’t know that they’re Templars. Eventually, you get a real enemy with a name and face but why does he end up being your enemy? Because he threatens Ezio’s girlfriend. Wow. That’s some clever writing. The game plods along at such a slow and dull pace and suddenly picks up speed at the end. The last few missions are brilliant and exciting and really show off what a Creed game is all about. But then it’s over and you feel like it only just began.
This game set out with two main purposes. To end Ezio’s story and provide many Revelations about the Creed universe. Ezio’s story does end but he basically just retires. The trailers for the game made it look like Ezio was making a final stand, that he was all in and might end up sacrificing himself for the Creed. But all that was in the first five minutes of the game. That should have been at the end surely? A build up to an inevitable but noble end for Ezio? But no.
As for the revelations in Revelations, well, maybe I wasn’t following it too well but it made no sense to me. I’ve always maintained that although books and comics about a game’s universe are great, a person should only need play the games to understand and follow the story. I had no clue what was meant to be going on in the fancy cut-scene at the end of Revelations. The world used to look different and then imploded? Something to do with aliens? Where do wrist-blades fit into all of this? It’s all a bit of a mess really. And speaking of Revelations, what the hell happened with Lucy? We hear from the disembodied voices of Danny Wallace and Whatshername that Lucy died after Desmond stabbed her and that she was buried outside of Rome. Do they know Desmond wasn't in control of his actions? Is Desmond in trouble? Why did the aliens want to kill Lucy? What was the point of even killing her off? IT MEANT NOTHING FOR THE PLOT! It’ll probably get wrapped up in Creed 3 but I don’t care. This isn’t Lost. I don’t want little hints of plot that span across games. Things need to have purpose and be clear from at least game to game or it makes it all pointless.
On top of all that, the game engine is looking very dated. The cinematic animation is almost embarrassing. There is one particular scene where Ezio is in a graveyard with his Assassins and he’s trying to inspire them with a final battle speech. But it was like a badly dubbed advert. His lip movements didn’t match up to what he was supposed to be saying and it looked more like how a Muppet talks than anything else. I know graphics aren’t everything but when we’ve got games like Gears Of War 3 and L.A Norie, developers should really be aiming higher.
The Multiplayer
The Multiplayer portion of Creed makes a welcome return. There’s nothing like this anywhere else. It’s the best game of hide and seek ever. It rewards patience and style. Although it’s essentially the same concept there are some new game modes and a few twists. You now earn credits over time than can be spent on new abilities. You could spend these credits on customising characters but this is a complete waste of money because you the changes are so subtle and each character is pretty dull.
My main gripe with the multiplayer is the menus. They are incomprehensible and throw information at you that means nothing. I’ve been playing since the game came out and I still have no idea what Friend Points are.
The only real complaint I have about the multiplayer is that it can be quite hard to pick up and even harder to become a pro at which can mean that new players don’t stick around for long. This means that the game becomes rather exclusive which is a bit self-destructive.
The Achievements
One thing that I can really praise here is the achievements. There’s an excellent blend of mission specific ones, weapon based ones, side mission ones and more. Most can be earned randomly just by playing the game and some need to be worked on but ALL of them are achievable. Highlights include ‘Most Pit’ which involves you having to have 10 Guards poisoned all at the same time. Low points include ‘Tax Evasion’ where you have to get your money from back from a Tax Collector. The reason this achievement is terrible is because it’s completely random. A Tax Collector will randomly appear on the map and you have to chase and trip him to get your taxes back. I’d completed the campaign, most of the side missions and was mopping up some odd achievements when I saw first the Tax Collector. That’s after hours and hours of gameplay. What if he had never appeared? There’s nothing you can do to trigger his appearance so it doesn’t seem fair. He should be at least be more common if nothing else.
Finally, Ubisoft have got the multiplayer achievements right. I personally don’t think there should ever be mulit-player achievements in any game. You can’t guarantee that people will continue to play a game online so achievements shouldn’t be tied into that portion of the game. But in this case, the achievements are all fairly simple so you can get them quite quickly. The only real tough one is unlocked by reaching level 20 but you rank up so fast anyway so it doesn’t really cause an issue.
The Verdict
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is a pack of crisps. You know tea is coming but you just can’t wait, so you have a packet of crisps to hold you over. This game is just the filler while we wait for Assassin’s Creed 3. It gave Ubisoft the chance to tie up some loose ends, Ezio was a great character but I’m glad his part in the saga is now over. This series needs a real shake up. It needs to be redesigned almost completely. Because at the moment, everything feels a bit stale. It’s still miles ahead of a lot of other games but it makes me think that while time is being invested into Assassin’s Creed 3, money is being made by these cheaply produced, in-between game sequels and I feel a bit cheated for it. Entertaining but lacking in diversity and excitement.
7/10
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