Game title: Assassin's Creed: Revelations
Consoles: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Developer: Ubisoft
Release Date: November 15, 2011
Pregame:
Assassin's Creed: Revelations is the much-anticipated sequel to Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and it picks up right where Brotherhood left off. When we last left Desmond, one of his friends was dead and he was dying, so he was strapped into the Animus machine again in order to hold his mind together. For that to actually work, Desmond must (apparently) continue re-living the memories of his ancestor Ezio until he reaches some kind of resolution in Ezio's life.
For his part, Ezio has been continuing his lifelong struggle against the Templars. He has aged a fair bit between games, and he's now a grizzled, if spry, mentor in the Assassin order. Events lead him to the Masyaf, the previous home of the Assassins and first Assassin's Creed protagonist, Altair.
This results in some overlap, and players will once again control Altair, for short stints. This game is the final chapter for both Ezio and Altair, and Ubisoft wanted them to go out in style.
Play-by-play:
While the game opens in Masyaf, events there lead Ezio to Constantinople (not Istanbul), which is a bright, vibrant and huge city, full of everything an Assassin needs to feel at home: mainly weapons and Templars to use them on.
Here, Ezio meets up with the local branch of the Assassins and endeavors to cause trouble for the Templars while furthering his own quest to uncover Altair's secrets.
Constantinople is not as big as Brotherhood's Rome, but that is actually convenient, as it does away with the need to travel by horse, which was unwieldy at best. While Revelations brings plenty of new elements to the table, it does hit a few familiar stumbling blocks.
What sticks out among those is the escape system, not be cause it is fun or heart-pounding, but because it is those things but nobody ever uses it. Ideally, you get assigned a target, assassinate said target, then run away and disappear. This never happens unless a mission objective demands it.
Instead, players stand and fight, and they cut down guards until they're all dead or until the remaining ones get scared and run off. There is actually a challenge to escape a pursuit using a hiding spot 10 times. That's how rarely this happens in the natural course of the game.
This same issue plagues the whole series, and Ubisoft is starting to realize it. I know I touched on this in my Brotherhood review, but it bears repeating because the series is actually changing to accommodate it. Compare the trailers for the first Assassin's Creed (back in 2009) and Revelations.
The Revelations trailer shows the protagonist in an open fight against a superior number of enemies, many of which are using hard-to-counter weapons like spears. This is precisely what it takes to keep players from god-mode-ing through crowds of bad guys nonstop.
Ubisoft has built recent games to allow for more fluidity and flexibility for open combat situations in single-player mode, but the inclusion of online multiplayer in Brotherhood and Revelations lets the escape system have its day in the sun too.
Online, you cannot stand and fight. The game mechanics simply do not allow it. You have no specific weapons, no counter-attacks and no Assassin trainees to back you up. You only have the "attack" button when you're hunting someone and the "stun" button when you're being hunted. If the enemy knows you're there and starts gunning for you, you run or you die. It's that simple.
This doesn't mean that multiplayer isn't fun; it's fantastic. It's also a simplified version that approaches the game's formula from a different angle, only giving players a few special abilities at a time. Both are individual experiences that have their own strong points, and both are definitely worth playing.
Revelations keeps combat from being too easy in single player as well. Enemies come in a variety of types, most of which are immune to grapples, some of which are which are also resistant to counters, and one type must be countered multiple times to go down in melee combat. That last type of enemy is a Janissary, an mean-looking mask-wearing thorn in Ezio's side that won't hesitate to bring a pistol to a sword fight.
Don't despair, though, because there are plenty of new toys to help Ezio fight back. The big ones are Ezio's new arsenal of bombs and the hookblade. The bombs come in wide varieties, ranging from tripwire-activated smoke bombs to impact-triggered shrapnel bombs to sticky bombs that explode in a cloud of lamb's blood to make people only think they've been injured.
Ezio can craft bombs to mix and match their effects and triggers, letting players customize their supply to accommodate their individual play style.
The hookblade is small adjustment to one of Ezio's hidden blades that gives you more options both in a fight and when running around the city. The hook allows for travelling by ziplines, pulling enemies up by their boots, improved vertical climbing and just a bit more reach when you jumping to a far-off ledge.
All this excitement is peppered by short sections where, through ancient technology, Eizo relives recorded memories left by Altair. Let's take a second to appreciate that, shall we? Technically, the player of the game is playing as Desmond, who is reliving memories of Ezio, who relieves memories of Altair. Honestly, I don't know how Desmond's mind doesn't tear itself apart trying to deal with it all.
Altair's sections take place after the events of first game in the series, and each section is years apart from the one before it. As they go on, Altair grows to be fairly ancient, living well into his 90s and leaving quite a legacy for both Ezio and Desmond to appreciate.
For Desmond's part, when his mind isn't caving in from all Revelations' perspectives, he can spend a few minutes on the lovely Animus Island, a hub that lets Desmond stretch his legs and that takes the place of the real world in previous games. There he occasionally speaks with Subject 16, who left a series of enigmatic clues for Desmond to find all over Brotherhood.
For all that intrigue and buildup, there's not really anything for 16 to do in Revelations. He's there, he can freely interact with Desmond now, but instead he does almost nothing, and barely even talks. For all the effort that seemed to go into making 16 have loads of attitude, he fall flat as a character. When he does open his trap, he says everything with this trying-to-be-snarky tone of voice that really just makes him annoying.
Desmond has his own optional levels to complete, although they're nothing like the rest of the game. They are first-person platforming adventures inside the heart of the Animus, where things aren't even trying to resemble the real world.
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Here, Desmond recounts his past leading up to the first AC game, and completes symbolic levels that involve him spawning white blocks to reach the end goal. These are odd and a little trippy, but that seems to be their intention, so they work.
Final Call:
Revelations has three main protagonists in three vastly different time periods, a full-fledged online multiplayer mode that distinguishes itself from the story mode via distinct game mechanics, and a slew of new elements to gameplay all over the place.
You'd think that this would make the game confusing or disjointed from the rest of the series, but actually, no. For the most part, it feels just like Brotherhood with a few tweaks, which is by no means a bad thing.
While Ezio and Altair may be finished, Revelations makes it very clear that things are ramping up on Desmond's side, and I personally can't wait to see where that leads.
Consoles: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Developer: Ubisoft
Release Date: November 15, 2011
Pregame:
For his part, Ezio has been continuing his lifelong struggle against the Templars. He has aged a fair bit between games, and he's now a grizzled, if spry, mentor in the Assassin order. Events lead him to the Masyaf, the previous home of the Assassins and first Assassin's Creed protagonist, Altair.
This results in some overlap, and players will once again control Altair, for short stints. This game is the final chapter for both Ezio and Altair, and Ubisoft wanted them to go out in style.
Play-by-play:
While the game opens in Masyaf, events there lead Ezio to Constantinople (not Istanbul), which is a bright, vibrant and huge city, full of everything an Assassin needs to feel at home: mainly weapons and Templars to use them on.
Here, Ezio meets up with the local branch of the Assassins and endeavors to cause trouble for the Templars while furthering his own quest to uncover Altair's secrets.
Constantinople is not as big as Brotherhood's Rome, but that is actually convenient, as it does away with the need to travel by horse, which was unwieldy at best. While Revelations brings plenty of new elements to the table, it does hit a few familiar stumbling blocks.
What sticks out among those is the escape system, not be cause it is fun or heart-pounding, but because it is those things but nobody ever uses it. Ideally, you get assigned a target, assassinate said target, then run away and disappear. This never happens unless a mission objective demands it.
This same issue plagues the whole series, and Ubisoft is starting to realize it. I know I touched on this in my Brotherhood review, but it bears repeating because the series is actually changing to accommodate it. Compare the trailers for the first Assassin's Creed (back in 2009) and Revelations.
In the end, Assassin's Creed pushes blending, which was to be a core mechanic of the series.
The Revelations trailer shows the protagonist in an open fight against a superior number of enemies, many of which are using hard-to-counter weapons like spears. This is precisely what it takes to keep players from god-mode-ing through crowds of bad guys nonstop.
Ubisoft has built recent games to allow for more fluidity and flexibility for open combat situations in single-player mode, but the inclusion of online multiplayer in Brotherhood and Revelations lets the escape system have its day in the sun too.
Online, you cannot stand and fight. The game mechanics simply do not allow it. You have no specific weapons, no counter-attacks and no Assassin trainees to back you up. You only have the "attack" button when you're hunting someone and the "stun" button when you're being hunted. If the enemy knows you're there and starts gunning for you, you run or you die. It's that simple.
This doesn't mean that multiplayer isn't fun; it's fantastic. It's also a simplified version that approaches the game's formula from a different angle, only giving players a few special abilities at a time. Both are individual experiences that have their own strong points, and both are definitely worth playing.
Don't despair, though, because there are plenty of new toys to help Ezio fight back. The big ones are Ezio's new arsenal of bombs and the hookblade. The bombs come in wide varieties, ranging from tripwire-activated smoke bombs to impact-triggered shrapnel bombs to sticky bombs that explode in a cloud of lamb's blood to make people only think they've been injured.
Ezio can craft bombs to mix and match their effects and triggers, letting players customize their supply to accommodate their individual play style.
The hookblade is small adjustment to one of Ezio's hidden blades that gives you more options both in a fight and when running around the city. The hook allows for travelling by ziplines, pulling enemies up by their boots, improved vertical climbing and just a bit more reach when you jumping to a far-off ledge.
Altair's sections take place after the events of first game in the series, and each section is years apart from the one before it. As they go on, Altair grows to be fairly ancient, living well into his 90s and leaving quite a legacy for both Ezio and Desmond to appreciate.
For Desmond's part, when his mind isn't caving in from all Revelations' perspectives, he can spend a few minutes on the lovely Animus Island, a hub that lets Desmond stretch his legs and that takes the place of the real world in previous games. There he occasionally speaks with Subject 16, who left a series of enigmatic clues for Desmond to find all over Brotherhood.
For all that intrigue and buildup, there's not really anything for 16 to do in Revelations. He's there, he can freely interact with Desmond now, but instead he does almost nothing, and barely even talks. For all the effort that seemed to go into making 16 have loads of attitude, he fall flat as a character. When he does open his trap, he says everything with this trying-to-be-snarky tone of voice that really just makes him annoying.
Desmond has his own optional levels to complete, although they're nothing like the rest of the game. They are first-person platforming adventures inside the heart of the Animus, where things aren't even trying to resemble the real world.
.jpg)
Here, Desmond recounts his past leading up to the first AC game, and completes symbolic levels that involve him spawning white blocks to reach the end goal. These are odd and a little trippy, but that seems to be their intention, so they work.
Final Call:
Revelations has three main protagonists in three vastly different time periods, a full-fledged online multiplayer mode that distinguishes itself from the story mode via distinct game mechanics, and a slew of new elements to gameplay all over the place.
You'd think that this would make the game confusing or disjointed from the rest of the series, but actually, no. For the most part, it feels just like Brotherhood with a few tweaks, which is by no means a bad thing.
While Ezio and Altair may be finished, Revelations makes it very clear that things are ramping up on Desmond's side, and I personally can't wait to see where that leads.
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