Assassins Creed: Revelations

Released on November 12, Assassins Creed: Revelations, the fourth game in the AC franchise, managed to thrill, excite, and frustrate me once again. The introduction of several new elements like bomb-making, riding a zip line from roof to roof, and using the hook-blade intrigued me throughout the story. The characters remained as human and engaging as ever. However, from what I could tell, the purpose of this game’s rushed release was to provide the player with an explanation for some of the confusing story elements in the story, such as an alien race who can only talk to Ezio through holograms, and a magical apple whose only apparent purpose is to make ghost people come down and kill all of your enemies in sight, and I suppose that the creators think that it did, considering they’ve known Ezio’s destination since the beginning. But even accompanied by irrefutably good graphics and a perfect set up to tie up all of the loose ends created in the previous games, Revelations did not live up to the standard of its three parent games.

Ezio is older in this game (and not nearly as attractive!).  Travelling to Constantinople just after it fell to the Ottoman Empire, Ezio is quickly introduced to the newest and coolest of assassin weaponry: hook-blades, which the Persian assassins have been using for a number of years. As always, through a series of short yet boring tutorials, Ezio picks up a remarkable understanding of each new tool quickly, allowing him to use them in races and battles. Tools such as the hook blade need to be “triggered” using using certain buttons on the controller. Learning the combinations and permutations of button presses can be maddening though, leading, for example, to me inadvertently jumping over enemies’ backs in the middle of battle or accidentally tossing coins on the ground when I’m faced with five Byzantine guards (it’s not as effective a defense as you might think). One of the first missions in which the use of the hook-blade is necessary is involved in climbing a very tall tower, Galata Tower specifically, in under sixty seconds (for 100% sync, and who doesn’t try for 100% sync on every mission?). If Ezio were not forced to stop and nonsensically peer up at the top of the tower after each use of the hook-blade, perhaps the challenge would not have been nearly such a challenge, but the second-long pause after each jump drove me insane.

A different addition to the game in this release was the bomb-making element. At first, bombs seem useless. In fact, until I was forced to kill cowardly Templars (and these guys will flee in terror if they hear absolutely anything that makes any noise), I never actually used the bombs in my very unflattering bomb pouch. Even then, when I was virtually forced to use the bomb, I quickly worked through my pouch of only five bombs that could actually do any destruction. After those, I burned through my “caltrop bombs” which simply caused a very small, minor explosion of spiky little burrs that the soldiers stare at for a while and then ignore,  and my “cherry bombs” which, as the Persian assassin very proudly tells Ezio, do not serve to attack, but instead to distract, which, and I’m sorry to have to say this, does me absolutely no good at all.  So, needless to say, it is my professional opinion that the bomb-making option could use a little “finessing.”

In other game franchises, as in AC, the plot drives the game. But what is, or I should say was, a unique component of the AC missions was their plethora of side attractions, which had always drawn me in just as much as the main storyline. What with the thief and mercenary missions, Borgia flags, pieces of the Apple of Eden, and pigeon holes from which you could send your assassins to all of Europe, all planted around the landscape, one simply could not escape the common and often irresistible urge to continue playing, in a vain attempt to reach the elusive 100% Sync. Unfortunately, the lack of interesting, or any for that matter, side games in this release resulted in a bit of lost interest in playing.

In Revelations, Ezio continues to be absolutely indestructible. His jumping skills remain amazing, as he has an uncanny ability to jump from the tallest tower visible for miles and land in the small haystack he was aiming for, leaving him completely unharmed. He moves very surreptitiously throughout the town, going completely unnoticed simply because he hired some prostitutes to follow him around. And of course, the walls in Constantinople, as in Rome, Florence, and all of the other places Ezio has visited in his travels, are perfectly indented to allow Ezio to just grab on and continue jumping up.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but it is my understanding that any game, especially one entitled Revelations, should actually contain some revelations. The conclusion left me confused and befuddled, with anything but understanding running through my mind. Grasping at straws to not scream at the game, which had led me through countless missions to get to this point, I sat through what should have been a full-length feature film of credits, hoping to find a secret “Easter egg” of information. Don’t get me wrong, as with all AC games, the graphics are amazing, the movements of the characters are smooth and Ezio is still the coolest video game hero out there, who is able to take the moral high ground on all matters while still killing hundreds of more or less innocent guards who just happened to step in his way.

In the end, the rushed release of Revelations contributed to its meh rating, with a lack of side missions to motivate me to continue playing. The truly useless new instruments Ezio gained in Constantinople did not even help me in the majority of the missions, as most of the time I continued my unorganized mix of “square”s and “x”s carried on from previous games while trying to kill my opponents. Even amidst the eye-catching graphics and astounding cinematics, I did not experience a single revelation; a disappointment from a video game franchise that has never before found itself performing anything less than perfectly.