Since 2007 Assassin’s Creed has been Ubisoft’s prized possession. Completely shutting out the success of their earlier work Splinter Cell. With the fourth game in the franchise finally released. We will now uncover the lost memories of Altair Ibn-la-ahad and Ezio Auditore Da Firenze!
With the franchise called “almost perfect.” Why change anything? Not much has changed between the last three games besides a few new moves thrown into the mix. Ezio is now a middle age, 54 year old man, possibly on his last journey as an assassin. With the fall of the roman empire transpiring during this era, Ezio heads east towards Constantinople in hopes of rebuilding his Assassin’s guild. Right away Ezio meets a man named Yusuf. Yusuf is quickly infatuated with Ezio and decides to help him on his seemingly endless mission.
The main story line is probably the only big innovation Ubisoft has made since Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. With Ezio’s new hookblade, you’re able to pull off some stunts thought to be out of an action movie. Instead of Roman controlled Italy, you now are in Byzantine controlled Constantinople. You quickly meet men named Yusuf and Suleymon. Both are key roles in the single player. The games visuals are just as good as Brotherhood, if not better. Ezio’s fresh threads really show the Assassin’s way of life, secrecy.
Gameplay mechanics have not changed much since 2007′s Assassin’s Creed, which can be a good and bad thing. This is good because it brings back the solid gameplay that all the other Assassin’s Creeds brought. The other end of the spectrum is, if you’re looking for something new in the series, you’ve come to the wrong place.
Multiplayer was a very nice touch in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Personally I believe Assassin’s Creed should have had a co-op feature rather than an online multiplayer. The multiplayer in this one is rather good. That old, annoying twenty foot lunge in brotherhood was still in the game as of late. On November 17th, an update fixed the range of the lunge to about arms length away.
With the signature edition of the game, you get exclusive content of course. Nothing too special but a cool looking sword, an exclusive multiplayer character, and some U-play points. U-play was added after the release of Assassin’s Creed II. Only a beta at the time, there was not too many things to do in the U-play menu, accept, obtaining skins for Ezio, and buying some wallpapers for your Xbox360 and PS3.
Altair’s role in Assassin’s Creed Revelations is most likely the greatest in the entire game. In the game you obtain Masyaf keys which when you obtain all five, opens Altair’s secret library, which is supposedly contain the knowledge of the world or The Apple of Eden. The Apple of Eden is one of many mystical artifacts. These Apples corrupt many people such as the assassin’s mentor Al Mualim and then later Abbas Mizraji. Altair on the other hand does not become corrupted and appoints himself its bearer.
Although Altair’s parts of the story are really fun and interesting. They are rather short and easy to complete. I have beaten the game since release twice now to really grasp the story line. Including all of Altair’s sequences from age twenty-four to age ninety-four, there is only about an hour of gameplay with him. The rest is either with Ezio or Desmond.
Despite being a main character, Desmond Miles doesn’t do very much in this game. There are five sequences in the first person. you can go through as Desmond when you receive the total amount of thirty animus fragments in the main story. these sequences pretty much sums up Desmond’s life up until now. After the events of Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Desmond is put into a critical state of mind. Rebecca put’s Miles into the Animus to keep him alive. Desmond enters the animus’s “black room.” which is the animus’s safe mode. There Desmond meets the infamous Subject 16 but, this time he is not just fragments of data, he is a living, breathing, digital copy of his former self. 16 explains why you are in the animus’s limbo and that you must create a “Memory Nexus.” to sync up Altair’s, Ezio’s and Desmond’s own memories so Desmond’s mind doesn’t implode on itself and never wake up.
Where is Assassin’s Creed going to go now? Although I don’t want to spoil anything, I’m not very sure on where Assassin’s Creed will go in the near future. With Ubisoft saying that this is Ezio and Altair’s last stand in the series, one can only assume that Desmond is going to be getting some action in this series. Only time will tell what Ubisoft will do next year.
cant complain for the game being not much of a innovation, especially when they only had a year to work on it!
the hookblade, border protection missions, and bomb crafting was more then what they needed to do.
not to mention the really trippy puzzle missions dedicated to desmond, those are so cool!
i wish someone would do a PSN game based on that idea, i actually had allot of fun playing through it!
allot of the innovations there saving for AC3, which has been in development ever since 2 finished so im expecting as big a leap as we saw going from 1 to 2.
only bad part about the game is the usual stripping of powers.
what is it with almost every sequel this gen and stripping away your powers?
the whole point of sequels is to build on top of the foundations left by the predecessor.
not remove them, then force the player to regain the powers he started off with!
i was so pissed when i lost my 2nd assassin blade, it REALLY comes in handy!
no horses either, i love racing around the city leaping from rooftop to rooftop as much as the next guy.
that said running across the city for half a hour to get to the next mission gets a little old after a while!
ACR really needed horses, especially since Constantinople is a much larger city then Rome.
hopefully will see some gameplay changes in 3, but hopefully nothing too drastic.
id rather have last years game in a new skin, then a wholly totally new game that does not feel like AC!
thats where most sequels fall down this gen, they try to change too much, to be too different.
one day developers will learn we dont want different games, we want the game we fell in love with all those years ago!
if i wanted a different game, then why would i go buy a game in the same series?
That’s a very good review. Seems as if everyone’s hitting Ubisoft for not innovating…. That’s why Assassin’s Creed shouldn’t be a yearly franchise. This is not COD, this is a game based on big history and complication plots. Just figuring that out should take a long time. Ubisoft might need to rethink its strategy. By the way, great review, Matt.
thats what hurt this the most, 1 year just is not enough time to get a game like this up and running.
especially bringing it to a new city, if they reused rome then ok but im really shocked how they got such a fresh big new city like Constantinople done in just a year.
not exactly a small city either, its freaking huge!
though as i said before AC3 has been in development ever since 2 finished so hopefully that will offer the same leap forward 2 did.
AC2 is just about the best game released this gen!
such a big leap forward, from gameplay, to the city, to the characters, to story.
if we get half the leap we got with 2, 3s going to be one hell of a game!
the story is another thing revelations was a bit lacking on.
it was suppose to tie up ezio and altairs story to a close, but it still left quite a few open gaps.
even subject 16, when they first announced the game and said he would play a big part in the story i thought they would go back to the original and explain what happened to him, and all the symbols he wrote on the walls.
did not really mention anything about that, really nothing about subject 16 everything was about desmond.
they needed to tie the story up better, i hate it when games just leave gaping holes open!
The difference between COD and AC being a yearly franchise is that COD may come out each year, but different studios work on the games and have 2 years to make them, while AC is being worked on by the same studio each year. So the COD games are actually in development for 2 years, while AC games are only 1 year. That is what makes the lack of innovation in the COD games so sad. The fact they spend 2 years giving us the same exact game.
no there not, as ive said a million times the team who did AC2 did not do brotherhood and revelations, they went stright from 2 onto 3.