Review: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
By Catriona MacDonald | November 20, 2011 | Reviews | No comments | Share
Ah, Ezio Auditore: once a young scoundrel who climbed, less than innocently, up walls into girls bedrooms, now sports a greying beard and bears the burden of life as an Assassin. Yes, it may look as though Assassin’s Creed: Revelations should logically be less energetic and fast-paced than its predecessors with such an aged main character (if we exclude Desmond for a moment); but it seems that as the games progress, the speed of travelling around large cities progresses also (in tandem with the main story of the series).
The game is aptly named as it carries this ‘memory within a memory’ theme (which then occurred to me to be a memory within a memory within a game within my life, and I felt very dizzy all of a sudden) to try and discover once and for all how each of the playable characters over the series are linked exactly; the game focuses not only on the personal aspects of Ezio’s life (since his has been the life which players have experienced from his youth onwards) but also Desmond’s and Altair’s.
Story
Assassin’s Creed wouldn’t really be Assassin’s Creed without a game-long search for a mysterious artifact which nobody is very sure of, so Revelations, naturally, follows this core formula. This time Ezio is searching for the Masyaf keys which will open Altair’s secret (or not-so-secret any more since both Ezio and the Templars want access) library in Masyaf at the old Assassin HQ. To do this Ezio must travel to Constantinople (Istanbul) in Turkey, where the keys were hidden by another Assassin, Niccolo Polo. As well as collecting books (and getting an Italian beauty by the name of Sofia, who owns a book shop, to decipher them for him) to help find the keys, Ezio can also partake of the same sorts of secondary activities as in Brotherhood.
As well as playing as Ezio, players also get the opportunity to play as the Assassin from the original Assassin’s Creed: Altair Ibn-La’Ahad. This is possible upon the acquisition of each of the Masyaf keys; and provides an insight into what life was really like for Altair, which we did not see during the first game. It also pieces together why Ezio and Altair and Desmond are particularly important to each other.
I am not going to give away much about Desmond’s story, as not much is given away in the game itself; all I will say is that there are opportunities to learn more about Desmond’s personal life as well as a small portion of what is going on in the real world.
Gameplay
Templar Dens can be attacked and ignited to swap ownership over to Assassins (essentially through the same process as Borgia towers); however, this time the Templars might actually try and take them back. This opens up the new, strategic option which Revelations has introduced. Assassin’s Creed has always been strategic to a degree, but this portion of gameplay is purely there to prove Ezio’s (and therefore your own) strategic prowess. There is a non-optional tutorial for this Den Defence segment of the game, teaching players how to arrange bowmen and riflemen, as well as place barricades and other things to stop oncoming waves of Templars from breaching your stronghold. I did enjoy this, despite losing my den several times because I was too proud to use the most powerful weapon at my disposal: the cannon.
Renovating shops, buying landmarks and recruiting Assassins are all carried over from Brotherhood, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, as the completionist in me discovered. As you can recruit Assassins, you can also use them in tricky situations in the streets (coolly signalling for an arrow storm on some nearby enemies, for example) to help both Ezio and their own progress in levelling up, but you can send them to foreign countries (as in Brotherhood) but not only to complete missions and gain experience; it is also possible to take over the area from Templars. If this is achieved, and an area is under Assassin control, then bomb components are also automatically ’sent’ over to you.
Building bombs, I think, was supposed to make up for the absence of Leonardo and his useful inventions, but also to give players a good proportion of control over their games; for example, if you are in a situation in which you would rather not have to engage in combat you can use a decoy bomb to divert attention away from Ezio and continue on your way; or if you are in a situation of combat you can use a bomb which explodes in a cloud of shrapnel, injuring anyone in its radius (these can also be modified to go off instantly, or have a wait period after throwing). There are many different components to collect, though this is all completely optional.
Even little things such as the hook blade which has been introduced to Ezio in Revelations (making climbing both easier and speedier), and the addition of zip wires to travel down make a big difference in player enjoyment; I, for one, did not enjoy the time and patience it took in the previous games to climb up even a viewpoint.
There are specific portions of the game named “Desmond’s Journey” which have been split into parts, and only accessible when a certain number of Data Fragments (which are scattered around the worlds Desmond explores in the Animus) are found. Though trying to find lots of little Data Fragments, which I can only describe to be similar to the flags and feathers from previous games, is never going to be huge amount of fun; because of the incentive of finding out more about Desmond, it doesn’t seem so bad. The place in which Desmond’s Journeys are set, is ‘trippy’ to say the least, and reminded me a bit of Portal in its strange boxy environment and requirement of, at least, some logic. These side quests were actually pleasant because of their variety from the rest of Assassin’s Creed universe (one example being that they are displayed in the first-person), though generally I would have enjoyed more time as Desmond.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer addition to Brotherhood was great, in my opinion, and Revelations continued with this addition. There are
new modes available to players in Revelations which range from ‘Manhunt’ (my personal favourite from the last game) to ‘Escort’ and ‘Capture the Artifact’, with several more to boot. This addition of new modes keeps the multiplayer fresh. I also enjoyed the host of new multiplayer characters available (though it did take me a little while to go get my head around what they all looked like in-game). If you enjoyed multiplayer in Brotherhood then you will almost certainly enjoy it in Revelations if, however, you did get bored after a while during the last game, you will get bored during this one as well. It just might take a bit longer with more modes to choose from.
The multiplayer also makes use of Ubisoft’s Uplay passport, which means that if you buy Assassin’s Creed: Revelations new, then you will be able to enter a code found in your box and immediately be able to start playing online; if you buy it pre-owned then chances are, you’ll have to pay for your own Uplay passport, or not play online at all.
The Bad
As much as I did enjoy playing this game, I couldn’t help but feel that it was possibly just there to generate more money from consumers. The first and second instalments in the series were great games and definitely still went along the lines of the main story, I thought that perhaps Brotherhood was released only for the purposes of spending more time playing as Ezio, since he might not feature in future games. Despite thinking this, I also thought that the story in Brotherhood was satisfactory (if not terribly confusing towards the end); I did not have the same satisfaction with Revelations’ story, however. I feel that Revelations was far less interesting than previous stories, and for someone who is easily confused (there would be a lot of evidence to suggest so with myself) then eventually the story turns into a bit of a headache. I can’t help thinking that the story has strayed so far into the ambiguous and supernatural that I have no idea what is going on anymore. I was confused at the end of Brotherhood and I, sadly, became even more confused upon the ending of Revelations. I know how whiney I am going to sound when I say this, but: I am sick of being left on cliff-hangers in games, and Assassin’s Creed seems to be the king of the cliff-hanger for me at the moment. There can be some, small, joy in being left with suspense; but knowing that you are going to be left there for a year, at least, is not what I enjoy at the end of a game, especially when it keeps happening, and eventually raises more questions that it answers.
I also missed having my own horse, though I understand that the terrain in Constantinople would not be suitable enough for her.
Summary
Don’t get me wrong, I had fun being Ezio (one last time, I hope, since I think to be him again would be crossing into ‘boring’) and even more fun being Altair again, and discovering the intricate connections between these three men (including Desmond, that is) was satisfying, and made the experience seem a lot more worthwhile. I particularly enjoyed the variance of main quests: the one in which Ezio dresses up as one of the annoying Italian minstrels (by knocking several of them out, no less) from the previous games and must play the lute to distract crowds of people, was my favourite by all means. I also really enjoyed learning more about Altair and Desmond, who have been somewhat neglected on a personal level throughout the series. However, the story has become very complex, and while I am curious to find out what happens next, I am not sure that this was the way it was supposed to be at the start, and this has become my main gripe with Assassin’s Creed in general. Bashing out a new game each year, in Call of Duty-esque vigour will do the franchise no good, as far as I can see, because sometimes there is no shame is ending something spectacularly in only several games (my head screams Gears of War).
Looking at the game as a singular, it would be hailed as excellent; but because it is part of an ever-growing series, it is going to suffer despite the way the series has continued to mature and become potentially better and better in terms of variety of gameplay and extras.
