Review: The third game in the Assassins Creed series hit all the right notes, but never really strikes a chord.
Does familiarity always breed contempt? Possibly not, but it can definitely be difficult to get overly excited about something that feels too familiar. As the third game of the Assassin’s Creed “Ezio trilogy” Revelations was always going to have to walk a fine line between innovating the gameplay, while keeping the overall feel of the previous two titles.
Revelations technically takes place directly after Brotherhood, with Desmond Miles still comatose and stuck in an increasingly fractured and unreliable Animus. While he’s experiencing Ezio’s life, however, the action has moved forward to the 16th Century, with an older Ezio travelling to Constantinople in search of a way to unlock a secret library of Assassin secrets. In an intriguing and enjoyable gameplay twist Ezio himself experiences sequences where he relives parts of Altair’s life, giving players access to all three of the playable characters from the previous titles. It’s a great bit of story-telling (with one or two ‘revelations’ as promised by the title) and it’s hard not to think of Inception a little when playing – even though it’s nothing like that at all, really.
Age shall not diminish him As we said before, Ezio is looking a little grey and weather-beaten by the time he turns up on a dock in Constantinople. While he’s aged in appearance, Ezio’s verve and agility remains impressive – as does his occasional tendency to leap in utterly random directions while climbing or free running.
Early in the game you gain the hook-blade –a wrist-mounted device apparently common in Turkey but unheard of outside of Constantinople. This opens up some new moves for Ezio – quicker climbing, the use of zip-lines, and some new combat options. However, it really doesn’t add much to the game overall – climbing is a little quicker and some combat animations change, but you’ll feel it most of all when zipping around town like Nathan Drake before performing a few extremely satisfying flying assassinations.
Ezio’s magical Eagle Vision has changed a bit, working a little like Batman’s detective vision in a few cases to help you track guard movements or identify suspects and evidence. Assassin squad management makes a return from the last game, with Ezio once again mentoring a new crop of recruits, this time in a slightly more avuncular fashion thanks to that stellar grey beard action.
With a bang Bombs make an appearance too, with a local assassin rather amusingly exhorting Ezio to ‘get with the 16th century’. Ezio learns to craft a variety of different bombs for distraction, traps or outright damage. It’s almost a mini-game, mixing up explosives on specially design crafting benches, but we didn’t find ourselves really using them very often. It was also a little annoying to start finding bomb components extremely early in the game, without any way of using them.
Finally, the addition of a tower defense style mini-game for defending Assassin Dens against Templar attacks was actually a considerable irritation to this reviewer, who has spent a lot of time not playing tower defense titles for a very good reason. Luckily it wasn’t overly impactful on the game as a whole and it may have more appeal for other players.
It’s worth noting that everything mentioned above is in addition to the town rebuilding elements from Brotherhood. This makes for a game that’s a little jumbled and convoluted at times. Add in the already complex plot, and the strangely Tron-like first person platforming sections exclusive to Desmond, and Revelations comes off a little bloated – it could stand to lose a few elements and get back to its Assassins’ Creed II fighting weight.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012