Assassin’s Creed Revelations – Review

Title: Assassin’s Creed Revelations
Developed By: Ubisoft Montreal et al.
Published By: Ubisoft
Based on: The long running Assassin’s Creed line of games.
Console: Playstation 3 / XBox360 / PC
Release Date: 15th November 2011
Genre: Third Person Action, Adventure, Sandbox
Audio: English
Subtitles: English
Region: This review was conducted on the Playstation 3 version of the title. This was based on the Australian version of the game however no difference should be present between regions.
Special Thanks: Ubisoft Australia, for providing me with a review sample.

What is DNA? What is a gene? For most ordinary person they would answer something along the lines of them being responsible for making us who we are, if we have blonde hair or brown hair, blue of brown eyes and so forth. Ask a person at Abstergo or a member of the Assassin’s and provided they don’t murder you to keep you quiet, they would describe it as a means of extracting information about ones past ancestors and the secrets they hid away. Desmond knows full well of how they extract this information… through a piece of technology known as the Animus, Abstergo (The antagonists) and later the Assassins (The protagonists) have had him going through the life of two of his ancestors, Altair (AC) and Ezio Auditore da Firenze (ACII-). Having enjoyed playing as Ezio for potentially the last time, what did I think about the game? Does the game live up to the hype? Find out in my review of Assassin’s Creed Revelations for the PS3, XBox360 and PC!

Taking you back into the previous game, in the real world Desmond Miles and the team of Assassin’s manage to track down the location of the much sought after Apple of Eden at the Colosseo in Rome. After recovering it, Desmond lost all control of his body and was forced to kill one of their own. From this, he falls into a coma and placed into the Animus once again, only this time his body becomes fully trapped in the “Black Room”, a safe area which consists only of basic programs – but allows him to access the later memories of his ancestor Ezio and his own, but more on that later. His objective is to uncover the last secrets of Ezio and Altair to regain his consciousness.

As with Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, the game does not take place over several regions but instead one. After recovering a journal which hints there being five keys hidden by Altair to his secret library around Constantinople, he travels the region to find another group of Assassin’s ready to assist him and of course, another Templar conspiracy which threatens to eliminate the Assassin’s and take full control of the area in their own quest for the five keys. To actually describe the storyline in detail would require say…. an entire novel but for those who have played any game in the series prior, it is more of the same stuff – climbing through towers and dungeons to unlock the hidden keys, missions that may or may not have relevance to the overarching storyline, inflitrate an enemy castle or base and what would the game be without a bit of assassination and killer lines such as “Requiescat in pace… bastardo”. For the first part, the storyline is relatively slow and I found myself straying from path of the storyline to do other things however fortunately it did pick up in the end, and without spoiling anything I felt it was an appropriate conclusion to the storyline of Ezio, who if we travelled any further in his history would be fighting with a walking cane.

The game does sort of attempt to bring Altair into the game through short playable “challenges” after collecting every key that lets you take control and using only the abilities present in Assassins Creed, attempt to do something such as preventing someone who double crossed the Assassin’s from taking control of the town and killing villagers or what happens when, after the death of Al Mualim – someone gets their hands on a Piece of Eden. These are small plotlines, but after not getting decent control of him since the original game it is nice to have some plot considering he has still had a major role in every game since. The storyline is complex, I will give them that and I hardly felt that the small few minute blurb at the game was able to properly reacquaint me with the three games prior which were complex to say the least, however for this game it also tried to distract you from it by instead of having the search for keys as a storyline element, the story will occasionally freeze and not progress until you had found a key – which had me rushing around looking for an unmarked bazaar at one point instead of searching for the key. In the end as I mentioned above, it is a complex storyline that requires more than one playthrough to properly appreciate it – as it has been in every game, but they needed to continue on from the rather epic beginning than start epic, continue with a slowly paced storyline then progress into something more along the lines of the beginning.

Looking back into current-day Desmond, as I have mentioned before he is now trapped in the Dark Room of the Animus with only Subject-16 to keep him company. Desmond has never really had much of a revealed storyline to begin with, with only the occasional little tidbit provided in the <5% of the game you actually play with him and his ever increasing assassin skills. Fortunately, during the course of the game you will be able to collect Animus Fragments, in which every five collected will allow you to enter one of the pillars in the Dark Room, giving you the option of exploring his past from childhood to later years. These stages are played through first-person view spatial puzzles while occasionally the very Matrix-like environments shift to resemble parts of his life while Desmond gives voice-overs. Personally it was annoying about how he focused on the negatives and loved complaining about them, however being isolated from the world at a young age fearing the Templars is sure to be a rather drab childhood. You may find it difficult to pay attention to the voice overs as the puzzles, while seemingly simplistic at first glance actually end up very complex.

As something a little bit different as well, and may justify you getting back into the multiplayer mode, they have included a storyline which gives you a bit of a view at the Templars and another hurrah for Warren Vidic (Antagonist from the first and second games) as you level up your very own Templar. As the online mode was only available today I have not been able to delve too deeply into the mode however from the looks of things it should promise to be something interesting.

Overall however, the storyline has much to offer from many perspectives. You will spend most of the game as Ezio, and while his plot takes a while to get into gear and become enjoyable, the other gameplay elements should hopefully keep you occupied until then. On the other hand, it was good they finally gave Desmond a bit of plot as he was more of a “Blank Slate Protagonist” than most I have played as in the past.

Ever since the release of Assassin’s Creed II, the design of the games has greatly impressed me and after the storyline, is most probably the one reason why I continue to come back to the game. The design concepts haven’t really changed all that much since the first game and Constantinople is perhaps not my favourite city from the series, but they do not spare any expense in making sure you get the vibe that this is indeed a 15-16th century city filled with the densely packed buildings, busy streets and many old-style landmarks that make you stare in awe. Every game they find little bits and pieces to improve, and this is likely the most visually impressive game in the series. As Ezio is perhaps one of the few if not the only recurring character in this game besides Altair and Desmond, he has also had a bit of a character design makeover which makes him look less like an ordinary assassin and more like an elder assassin who has transcended the ranks. You are of course able to chance colour schemas at a tailor which give you the opportunity for a bit more individuality. Overall, they have managed to almost perfect an open-world concept that is unique and immersive at every corner you turn…. or in my case dash through (So I like to attack every set of guards I meet…)

I am not a big fan of softer music, which for the most part has been prevalent in all Assassin’s Creed instalments to date. The music does good in setting the scenes and tones intended, but it lacks those few soundtracks such as the Escape tracks in Assassins Creed II that really get your blood pumping to either run with your tail between or legs or go on a templar killing spree. Voice acting is of the same quality as previous instalments, with a good mixture of capturing the accents, tones and languages of the times as well as understandability. The background sound effects and voices do a great job at working together with the design to set the mood, and gives the impression of a bustling down while making Ezio sound like he is realistically jumping across rooftops or swinging a sword around.

I trust that I will not have to outline every single gameplay element as I assume you would have all played at least one of the previous games prior to even considering picking up this game… right? However, for the most part the gameplay remains the same, so you still climb buildings, battle enemies with swords or your hidden blade and so forth. One of the nicest new additions, and has made climbing tall buildings easier is the Hookblade. As an enhancement to the hidden blade, it allows you to hook onto your opponent in some acrobatic manoeuvres, grappling on to other buildings and of perhaps most importance, allows you to quickly breeze through tower climbing by covering greater distances.

While Brotherhood brought us many new innovations that revolutionised the way we played the game and disposed of enemies, my favourite being the ability to recruit and train assassins for both profit gain and guard disposal as well as to build up the city – Revelations included these but didn’t reproduce the same gameplay innovations. To its benefit, it did implement a Den Protection mini-game where you could set up Assassin’s and other traps/weaponary to protect your den (An area of the city you control) from the Templars, which expanded in options as the number of times you played it increased. But at the same time, a heavy focus on bomb creation which I think they were slating for as a new innovation wasn’t worth the time and upon completing the tutorial, never became a part of my personal battle strategy.

The thing the other games, especially Assassin’s Creed II had going for it was the complex climbing and jumping puzzles and the number of them, which could take up quite a hefty amount of time to complete unless you were extremely skilled at the game. I felt that while the challenge was still there, I found myself expecting more from them. I mean, the only new challenge really noticable was using the hookshot to jump long distances, while everything else would have been great… if we hadn’t already done it a million times before. As well, they had a recurring “challenge” of using Eagle Vision to identify one of a few walls that were secret doors….. uh yeah…. how about a complex puzzle to find the right door or something?

But I digress on the single-player campaign. I may have been negative about some aspects, but for a game that has always had a strong gameplay element to me, it is still a strong performing game in terms of gameplay but could have just used more innovation so we could fully enjoy Ezio one last time before he gets put back into Desmond’s gene bank for good. There was one element of the gameplay that I had the pleasure of spending a good time today checking out – the multiplayer mode and I would like to give you a brief run-through of it now.

Those who played the Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood multiplayer will immediately recognise the similarities between the two, with even some of the game modes and levels being exactly the same – however almost every element of it seems to have been revamped, with even better levels and modes added to it. Regardless of the mode, you will be placed in a level as one of 8 other Abstergo agents, each with an appearance selectable from about 12, and while the level is highly populated – every NPC will have the appearance of one of the default designs. To score points, you have to eliminate your target in some shape or form through differentiating them from the rest of the NPC’s. I would like to discuss two new modes that will explain some of the reasons how to spot your targets, and just how fun these new modes can be (This is not inclusive of all new modes).

The first mode is Deathmatch, an improvement of the initial “Wanted” mode that removes the compass from the bottom of the screen (That tells you where your target is) and instead only tells you when they are in your 360 degree field of vision, allowing the target a greater chance to hide from their unknown hunter and an increased challenge to the player to identify differences in the characters movements. This was by far the most frequented mode so it is evidently a big hit, to the point where only after round nine did my group try anything else. Another memorable one was Corruption, which is a bit like the childrens game “Zombie Tag” one or a few players are deemed the corrupted, and have to hunt down the other players who must avoid being killed lest they become corrupted. I enjoyed it as unlike the other online modes, it gave you justification to run around the rooftops of the larger maps in order to avoid being caught. With all the other little bits and bobs included, you should easily get several hours of fun out of it at the very least.

So ends our journey with Ezio and Altair. While they have provided us with intriguing storylines over the last four games, it will be a welcome change of pace to see new characters in Assassin’s Creed III. While I would love to finally see Desmond get some more gameplay, perhaps a game dedicated to him climbing over buildings in modern-day cities – after all, they have been teasing that to us since ACII, but regardless of if it is past or present, I do hope they attempt to expand the gameplay a bit more to mix things up and keep it fresh. Ubisoft most certainly have a great game series on their hand, and I hope they can continue to keep it going strong.

Final Score

Storyline/Character Development: A
Design: A
Music/Voice Acting: B
Gameplay: B
Replayability: B
Personal Opinion: A
Overall Score: A-