Reviews - Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Review - Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

Pros: Ties up the stories of Altair and Ezio while adding some much needed depth to Desmond.

Cons: The only real revelation in the game is that Ubisoft just bilked you out of your hard earned cash for a title that could probably have been DLC.



Final Judgement: The game is a must if you’re playing Assassin’s Creed for the story, if you just like the game play or multiplayer, skip this title.






Available for: PS3, Xbox, PC (Steam)
http://assassinscreed.ubi.com/revelations/en-us/home/index.aspx

Instinct is an interesting phenomenon when you really stop and think about it. I mean, really think about it. To know something without any guidance or instruction?  Now that’s cool. Salmon instinctually know where to spawn, birds know to fly south for the winter and I know to change the channel when Sex in the City comes on. Certain reactions are hardwired into us, written into our DNA and the very basic nature of our being.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

A while back I read an interesting article about a theory by David E. Jones.  The theory explored how different cultures around the world all have a universal image of a Dragon, the mythical creature that never really existed. Jones believed that dragons were the sum of the three creatures which menaced hominids in their earliest years: Raptors, (the birds not the dinos) Snakes and large Cats. Jones hypothesized that a fear of these primary predators by early humans is so encoded into our genetics that over the years our unconscious minds muddied them together into a dragon like creature.  The dragon is simply a learned behavior of our ancestors interpreted by our unconscious minds as a peasant squishing, village burninating, flying lizard. I’m sure there are plenty of holes to poke into Jones’ theory but still, interesting stuff! I should probably read his book and, you know, not rely on Wikipedia and my memory to tell you guys shit that leads into my game reviews.

Assassin’s Creed takes this genetic theory a step further and proposes that the very memories of our ancestors stretching all the way back to the beginning of time are written into our DNA like a black box recorder. Every event that created our ancestors and defined who they were is encoded into our genetics. Through the use of the “Animus”, (a machine that allows these genetic memories to be read and experienced in a virtual reality) you can re-live the lives of your ancestors and even lean their skills and abilities. How awesome is that? Well… in reality it would probably suck for 99% of the population. I very much doubt many people would have a lot of awesome, kick ass, adventurous ancestors. Most would probably come out of the Animus with a strong knowledge of how to heard sheep or till fields or knit a mean tunic. C’est la passé vie.

"Whee... fun!"

Why am I telling you all this? Because I think Assassin’s Creed on the whole is an awesome series. I love the idea of two separate stories being told in parallel. The first story of Desmond Miles, learning about his family lineage of bad ass boot stomping assassins that stretches back to the Crusades, while being pursued by modern day Templars.  The second is a story about the adventures of Desmond’s ancestors Ezio and Altir which takes place inside the Animus and is usually a more interesting and intriguing version of actual historical events. Events that Assassin’s Creed usually boils down to the ongoing war between the Assassins who believe humanity should be free to determine its own fate and the Templars that believe humanity must be controlled if it is to survive.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is the fourth installment into the Assassin’s Creed series and I believe is fulfilling the role of tying up the loose ends of Altair and Ezio.  In addition the game is, in a roundabout way, attempting to add some depth Desmond’s character.  On the whole, Revelations isn’t bad but the story felt thin.  When stacked against the other games in the series, Revelations is the lame duck of the family. It didn’t feel like there was anything really at stake. There was nothing pushing me to want to finish the story or learn what was going to happen next. It’s like when you watch one of the plethora of reality T.V. shows out there that feel the need to stretch the show out by another episode by throwing in a “Highlights of the show!” or “Never before seen footage!” episode right before the big finale. Yeah, you’ll still watch it, but at the same time you’re kind of pissed off at the cop out.

Revelations starts off immediately where Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood left off.  Desmond, after suffering a trauma which I won’t spoil, is hooked up to the Animus to essentially keep him alive. He awakens on a desert island where “Subject 16”, the mysterious figure that the Templars had been experimenting on prior to them capturing Desmond  appears. 16 explains that both he and Desmond’s consciousness is trapped inside the Animus and that while it may be too late for 16, he can help Desmond get back to reality. Apparently all Desmond needs to do is defragment his brain and separate from his conscious mind the memories that belong to Altair, Ezio and himself.   Yeah, okay, I don’t really see how that would work either but screw it. After all, I’m playing a game where the main character spends 90% of the game inside another game where he controls his ancestor in a simulation, created from his DNA. If I can swallow all that I suppose I can suspend my disbelief a tad longer.

Don't mind ol' 16, he's just hanging out and getting progressively crazier. 

Before I go any further I should say that the whole idea of Desmond being stuck on a desert island, utterly alone with no escape, is actually very fitting for this game. I felt a bit like that while I was playing it. Revelations just feels unfinished; it didn’t have the same depth of story or breadth of game play from the previous Assassin’s Creed games.  For example, the previous two games had a very compelling sub plot where you could locate hidden codes around the cities Ezio explored; these codes would send you to a mini-game puzzle that was a lot like the Da Vinci Code and would shed light on the worldwide Templar conspiracy. There’s none of that in Revelations, no hidden codes, no collectable armor pieces, you can’t even buy artwork to hang in your hideout and admire like you used to.  What’s more, aside from Ezio’s love interest, Sophia, almost every character in the game is flat and barely developed. They traipse into and out of the story with barely enough gusto for you to even take notice of them in the first place. Even 16, who was mysterious but interesting character in the previous games suddenly disappears without a word after the opening scenes in the game and doesn’t show up again until the climax, it’s almost as if the writers just forgot about him.

In any case, the lion’s share of the game follows Ezio who has traveled east from Rome to learn about the legendary assassin Altair. Ezio has come to Constantinople to try and locate Altair’s five keys which will open his library and reveal some grand truth about the world.  There is also a plot involving the Templars which is never really expanded on in any depth and doesn’t seem to really matter or concern anyone.  

Altair getting older but still laying boot to ass.

The only two parts of the story that I thoroughly  enjoyed were the scenes that you play as Altair which are unlocked as you locate the keys, and the side story between Ezio and Sofia Sartor. The Altair scenes were compelling and dramatic. The Sofia scenes was nice as she quickly becomes Ezio’s love interest and gave are a welcome change of pace as Ezio get his happily ever after opposed to getting screwed over by the Templars once again.

I mean we all knew Ezio was gonna get a lady, how else would Desmond be able to relive all this if Ezio never had kids?

Gameplay wise Revelations isn’t going to show you anything you haven’t seen before in the previous games. Yes Ezio gets a few more weapons, but I never found Ezio really needed more weapons in the first place. On any given day Ezio lugs around a hidden blade, a sword, a dagger, throwing knives, poison darts, a crossbow and a wrist pistol. The man is a walking arsenal; in Revelations they give him a “hook blade” which allows him to grapple onto things at the top of his jump, and the ability to craft bombs. Both these things may sound cool but the hook blade is just a repackaging of the extended jump technique in the previous games, and bomb crafting just gets silly. There are three hundred different bomb combinations that Ezio can create. Three hundered. But you‘ll only ever use three of them so don’t worry too much about getting overwhelmed. You’ll use the grenade for taking out groups, the cherry bomb for distracting guards and the smoke screen for covering your escape, everything else is just window dressing and a bit gimmicky.

The only other new offering to the Assassin’s Creed series that Revelations serves up is a Tower Defence mini game. As you take over districts of Constantinople the Templars will become more aware of your presence, if their awareness gets too high they’ll attack one of your assassin’s dens scattered about the city and you will have to rush to its defence. Once there you play overlord and order your assassins to build barricades, take up sniping positions from roof tops and so on. The defence game is challenging but you only ever have to play it once when it’s first introduced. After that you can completely avoid that entire facet of the game by simply monitoring the amount of heat you’re generating from the Templars and paying off heralds and assassinating city officials to reduce your awareness level as required. It’s slightly confusing, why put even put this game mechanic into the finished product if you’re only ever going to require me to play it a single time in a tutorial setting? Why not just cut it, or make it a more prominent feature of this installment of Assassin’s Creed?

At the end of the day, Revelations leaves me with mixed feeling and a lingering sense of dread. A sense I have had from other Ubisoft titles in the past. Ubisoft seems to be of the mind that it must release the next installment of its big ticket game every Christmas until they fall on their faces and the game gets mediocre reviews. They did it with Splinter Cell and they did it with Prince of Persia. A week prior to Revelations release Yves Guillemot, the CEO of Ubisoft, announced that Assassin’s Creed 5 would be released in time for the Christmas 2012 season and that it would be a fully-fledged title for the Assassin’s Creed series. I can only hope that the reason that Revelations was not up to snuff was because they were working on something big for the next game and not because the development team is exhausted and just trying to limp this series to the barn for the sake of Ubisofts financials.

16 and Adam Sandler, I mean Desmond Miles.

While I would recommend Revelations to fans of the series, I only do so because it covers some fairly important plot points that you’re going to need to stay on top of its complex and progressive story. This is not to say that the game is bad, it is still very much an Assassin’s Creed game and has all of the action and free roaming fun of the previous games. Revelations does however lacks a lot of the depth and polish that took the Assassin’s Creed games from being good and made them great.