Review: Assassin’s Creed Revelations

So, another year brings another Assassin’s Creed to our homes. Revelations is the final chapter in the Ezio Auditore trilogy of the series and brings the fiery Italian back to us as an old man. Once you’ve sat through the customary Desmond-related tedious introduction, you’ll realise that Revelations provides much of what you’d expect if you’ve been playing since Assassin’s Creed 2. You would think then that logically, the premise should go like this:

Premise 1: Assassin’s Creed 2 was a good game.

Premise 2: Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was a good game.

Premise 3: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is like the previous two.

Conclusion: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is a good game.

Well, not really. In fact, Revelations suffers badly from two common gaming syndromes caused by its excellent predecessors.

Firstly, ‘sequel syndrome’ is very much in effect here. Reviewers before me have credited Ubisoft for improving the franchise consistently since the original Assassin’s Creed. The series has got better and better but there was always a feeling that the series had reached a peak with Brotherhood and that appears to be the case. Revelations has kept much of what made Brotherhood such a great game, but it all feels a bit dumbed down. The puzzles for example are far less challenging. Platforming puzzles are much more direct then in the previous game and require a great deal less thought about what path you’re taking. Anything else normally boils down to activating your sixth sense ‘Eagle Vision’ and targeting shiny things until one of them turns out to be the right one.

Part of the reason Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood were so interesting was because Ezio was interesting. Altair, though an indisputable badass, was not a particularly compelling character. Desmond, despite having four games worth of character development, still might as well be a tub of paint or better yet, non-existant. Alternate segments about Altair or Desmond too often break up the main story surrounding Ezio. These bits are perfectly entertaining but they’re incongruous and they can drag you away from what you were doing. It’s like being a baby again, and having your mum come over and pick you up out of your sandbox. She puts you on the swings and you’re thinking, ‘don’t get me wrong mum, I like swings. But I was having fun in my sandbox. I’ll come and play on the swings when I’m ready.’ If you felt like I did that Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood provided you with a huge amount of freedom, get ready to feel like that’s been taken away a little bit.

For some reason these days, big releases have to come in threes. I suppose initially it seemed like a good duration to develop a story arc. But I’m sure Ubisoft had no intention of making an Ezio trilogy until Assassin’s Creed 2 was so well received. There would have been nothing wrong with adding another chapter and then continuing with the emotional story of Desmond ‘Vanilla’ Miles but apparently that just wasn’t enough. The result is a game feels like its desperately trying to find something other than Ezio to justify itself. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to syndrome number two – ‘trilogy syndrome’.

Lets take bombs as an example. Bombs are fun – that’s one of the video game Ten Commandments right there. And I’m more than happy for this game to have bombs in it. But when none of the gameplay mechanics have changed, you realise that actually, you don’t need any bombs. If there were no bombs in this game, I would still be running around stabbing people and throwing guards off roofs. I wouldn’t be thinking, ‘this game would be great if it had bombs…’.

The same is true for other additions. Tower defence, slow motion executions… its all fine and at times it adds to the experience. But none of it justifies the making of a third outing for Ezio.

I am not necessarily saying this is a bad game, because it isn’t. It is still as fun as it ever was to cause mayhem and all the visceral qualities of Assassin’s Creed are still present. Once again you can build your very own brotherhood of Assassin’s. Although not as customisable as I was hoping you can train your recruits all the way up to becoming masters of your Assassin Dens and even send them overseas to look after other cities for you. For those RPG fans among you, it provides enough to satisfy your levelling up addiction.

If anything could justify this game, it is the multiplayer. I played A LOT of Brotherhood multiplayer and though it was buggy and infuriating at times, I thought it was a whole load of fun. Revelations’ multiplayer has made huge strides on that in Brotherhood and the whole experience feels cleaner and well thought out. Much like the improvement between Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed 2, Ubisoft have done a great job recognising the problems of the original multiplayer and improving upon them. You now get much better rewards for being sneaky and taking your target by surprise. Old game modes like Wanted and Manhunt are still around, along with a slew of new ones. Quite honestly, if you enjoyed the multiplayer in Brotherhood, you’ll love Revelations.

Believe it or not, I still like this game and I still like Assassin’s Creed. But Ubisoft are in serious danger of flogging a dead horse and one senses that they are close to undoing a lot of the great work they have done since Assassin’s Creed 2. Like Ezio Auditore, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is an old dog without any meaningful new tricks and Ubisoft should plan their next move very carefully if they want to retain the franchise’s immense popularity.