Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – Single-Player Review (PS3)

A year on from the release of the brilliant Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and it’s time to wrap up the stories of both Ezio and Altair. With two legendary assassins at the helm of Revelations this should be the greatest Assassin’s Creed game of all, right?

The game is dominated by a huge, 14th century version of the city of Constantinople which is teeming with people, assassins, traders and full of historic buildings. It’s a quite wonderful place to explore. At dawn and dusk the landscape becomes shrouded in mist giving the city a quite eerie atmosphere. If you wander through some of the graveyards at night it’s like stumbling into Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video, minus the zombies and Michael unfortunately.

The city is packed with giant, climbable towers. This is Assassin’s Creed after all where the staple diet of an assassin consists of killing people and climbing towers. Every time I was perched on top of one of these buildings minutes would simply ebb away as I gazed out across the city. I’ve always loved the Assassin’s Creed games for moments like this and in Revelations the views were never less than awe-inspiring.

Gameplay remains pretty much unchanged from previous games with a mixture of killing, tracking and beating up people accounting for the bulk of the missions. The rest of the time is spent out and about hunting for lost items, climbing up towers and synchronizing viewpoints to uncover the city in your virtual map. There are also some Altair memories to complete which feature his old stomping ground of Masyaf. I found playing as Altair quite nostalgic, bringing back many happy memories of the first game.

You continue Ezio’s story with the help of his weapons from previous games. Crossbow, pistol, knives, daggers and swords are all expertly hidden about his persona along with a brand new toy – a hookblade. This weapon gives Ezio a much greater reach when grasping for ledges or handholds and makes climbing much quicker (30% quicker according to Ubisoft Montreal). It also allows Ezio to use zip lines to travel quickly around the city. However, Ezio does sound like Captain Hook climbing a building when using the hookblade. Clang, clang, clang!

Thanks to the numerous brand new bomb crafting stations, you can now concoct all manner of dastardly explosive devices from ingredients abandoned in chests throughout the city. Theoretically there are 300 different types of bombs available. In practice I used four of them – splinter, smoke, gas and stun. I did experiment a bit but then settled on my favourite recipes which unsurprisingly featured the most powerful gunpowder available. BOOM! On more than one occasion these bombs saved my life so they are well worth the effort of crafting them.

Your assassin recruits now have a much wider variety of missions to practice their skills. Spread across twelve European cites these new missions will not only give your recruits experience points but allow you to wrestle control of each city from the Templars. You see, cities under assassin control generate income. More income equals more weapons and more killing for Ezio. Once I’d taken over a few cities the cash really started to roll in.

The mechanics of these missions haven’t changed since the last game, with a success percentage being the most important figure on the screen. The age-old tactic of pairing up an experienced assassin with a newbie and a predicted success rate of 100% will quickly train up your assassin army. This whole conquer-Europe mini-game was not challenging in any way, shape or form and was entirely superfluous to the main story. Even so it proved to be an entertaining enough distraction.

There are five missions set within Desmond’s troubled little mind which are exclusive to this game. Taking place within the Animus, they have to be unlocked by collecting data fragments which are hidden throughout the game. Whilst these missions provided a much deeper understanding of Desmond’s backstory these levels were very surreal. Imagine a world formed from the fusion of the Clockwork Orange and Tron: Legacy films. Played via a first-person viewpoint, you have to navigate through a series of rooms using Desmond’s ability to create virtual blocks – a triangle and rectangle – which can be used to build a pathway to the room exits. Overall I found these levels more annoying than entertaining as I would frequently slip off the blocks as I ran across them or watch as they were dissolved by a moving energy grid before falling to my ”virtual” death.

Just being an assassin in Revelations is much tougher than ever before thanks to the heavy, city-wide presence of Templar guards. Climb up a building, bump into a guard on its roof. Fall off a building, land on a group of guards. Assassinate a person, get spotted by a guard. After the glorious kill-fest of Brotherhood, I had to seriously change the way I played Revelations as I was getting an ass-kicking from all the guards. Once I became more considered, stealthier and less of a show-off (i.e. no reckless running around on rooftops) the game became a lot easier and more enjoyable to play.

The Borgia towers from Brotherhood have been rebranded as Templar dens and gained about 50 times more guards. This makes them a real bitch to sneak into and stealthily assassinate the den captain. You’ll find it’s hard enough trying to track down the captain, never mind avoid detection by the guards whilst killing him. These den missions were fun but were frequently annoying as one tiny slip resulted in detection and the den captain legging it to safety.

Whenever you renovate a building or get spotted killing someone you are penalised through your Templar awareness meter filling up. The higher it is, the more hassle you’ll get from the guards around the city. This is clearly Ubisoft’s way of making the game harder and cracking down on reckless assassin behaviour. The only way to dump this awareness was through bribing a herald or killing a Templar Official. I shudder to think how much time I wasted going back and forth to the closest Herald, randomly picked by the Animus, to bribe him. I don’t mind making the game harder as Brotherhood was a little too easy but this method was far too harsh and boring. If I committed some act of villainy with a maxed out awareness meter Templars would attack one of my dens and I’d have to play a game of tower defence to protect it. Yeah, tower defence. What the hell is tower defence doing in Assassins Creed in the first place? It doesn’t fit in at all. So instead I came up with ways of managing my awareness meter to avoid this stupid tower defence game completely.

There are further problems with the game. The chariot racing levels which punctuate the main plot are extremely basic, dull and almost entirely pointless. And, as if ramming the city full of guards wasn’t bad enough you now have to contend with the threat of Templar stalkers. These guys appear out of nowhere to attack you at any point in the game. You have to listen out for a bit of music that signals their arrival and quickly perform a counter kill otherwise you get stabbed and lose a big chunk of health. On several occasions I missed the musical cue, got stabbed, noticed by the guards and attacked. Great.

Finally Ezio’s kick attack is still ridiculously over-powered. The fact that you can kill a heavily armed Templar soldier by repeatedly kneeing him in the nuts is laughable. It is handy though.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations has become a confusing mix of gameplay ideas. Whilst the bombs and hookblade work well the rest are terrible additions to the game. Ubisoft is trying far too hard to find ways to develop the Assassin’s Creed franchise and instead risks alienating its fans through unnecessary and poorly thought out changes and additions. I don’t play Assassin’s Creed for tower defence or to repeatedly bribe Heralds. I play it to be a kick-ass assassin who runs around cities killing anyone he likes. When the game allowed me to do this it was truly spectacular. Indeed, Revelations has many moments of pure magic and ties up some of the plot arcs from the previous games but in the end can’t quite match the brilliance of Brotherhood.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is out now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

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