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Assassins Creed Revelations: When it comes to the Assassins Creed, I haven’t played any game in the series since the first one, and that was because I was disillusioned with the fact that it kept jumping back to the present day which drove me up the wall as it was very jarring.
The basic premise was that your ancestor’s memories are transferred into your brain and you act out like they would. However, you didn’t need to pretend we’re playing a game full of AI and computer-generated imagery… because we already are!
A number of aspects here come about rather like the Hitman series, such as with hiding from the enemy. Do it for a little while and they’ll soon forget you’re about.
In Assassins Creed: Revelations, you play Ezio Auditore, an wealthy Italian out for revenge and on a mission that’ll take you to Constantinople, the heart of the Ottoman Empire, where a growing army of Templars threatens to destabilise the region.
I could go into a long and protracted explanation of how the game works, but this is the fourth entry in the series and anyone who’s played them all will just want to know what’s good about this release and what still needs some work, although it’s rumoured that this is the very last in the series.
Good stuff:
There’s a lot of good fun to be had, particularly when a fight scene ends up looking cool as you take on four men at once and the camera angles take over briefly as you finish someone with style, but it does get annoying sometimes when there are lots of little CGI scenes that cut into the action for a prolonged amount of time. To get occasional ones, giving it a cinematic feel, are okay but you don’t want to make it feel like you’ve lost control of the game otherwise there’s no point playing at all.
I love walking past people and nicking some money and then watching them get all indignant as they realise something’s happened but aren’t sure what.
Zipline Assassinations are also great fun, and it’s also a hoot to throw poison darts at the baddies as they start stumbling about and thrashing their sword all over the place, often attracting the attention of others and inadvertently killing them as a result, either by sword or by contracting the poison. Job’s a good-un!
And for those who wish all games came with dialogue that wasn’t just spoken in the original English language, this title has spoken language options in English, French, Spanish, German and Italian.
And some gripes:
It’s annoying that you can’t replay levels as if you’re playing them for the first time. You have to go through a “DNA” system that just lets you play individual parts of the level. It’s annoying because I stuffed up the start of Sequence 03 and wanted to replay it, but I can’t, so in the gaming footage, there’s the intro – where I stuff it up and then kill people, thinking that’ll allow me to go back to the start – but it doesn’t, then I play the DNA part about The Prisoner and then the game continues properly.
There were other little annoyances like not being able to swim when jumping into a small amount of water. I’d heard these problems had been fixed following the original just not letting you even set foot in any water without wanting to bump you off, and in playing ‘Revelations’, I see that – early on, at least – it doesn’t jump back into the lab and so you get to play the game as I always expected it.
Gameplay is an issue, too. You’ll notice from the footage that a lot of the time when I try to jump up and climb a wall, I stupidly end up double-backing and during Sequence 2, The Crossroads of the World, while trying to climb the tower in 60 seconds, I climb up a fair distance into the air and then jump off… to certain death.
You can also make bombs, but to get the parts and craft a bomb seems a bit of an arduous task to get into. I’d prefer just to get my implements ready-made so I can attack with ease.
I’m also not keen on the RPG-style part of the game, “On the Defense” where you have to set your men up on a roof and let them shoot enemy passers-by. I prefer to get stuck into the action myself!
In addition, like the original, there are also some modern day moments, but I tended to skip this story as it comes inbetween sequences and is easily ignored, as I just wanted to get back into the action.
Visit my DVDfeverGames Youtube channel for many more gaming videos. However, does anyone know how to replay past chapters, so I can record footage from a second go at the final mission of a chapter, when I might have a chance to record it cockup-free?
Important info:
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Price: £49.99 (Xbox 360, PS3); £39.99 (PC)
- Players: single player campaign, multiplayer: 2-8
- HDTV options: 720p/1080i/1080p
- Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes
|
GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT |
10 10 7 8 |
| OVERALL | 8 |
Director: Alexandre Amancio
Producer: Martin Schelling
Writers: Alexandre Amancio, Richard Farrese, Nicholas Grimwood, Jean Guesdon, Corey G May and Darby McDevitt
Music: Lorne Balfe and Jesper Kyd
Cast:
Ezio Auditore Da Firenze: Roger Craig Smith
Altaïr ibn La-Ahad: Cas Anvar
Desmond Miles/Adam – The Lost Archive DLC: Nolan North
William Miles: John de Lancie
Shaun Hastings: Danny Wallace
Darim Ibn La-Ahad/Haras/Abbas’ Captain/Masyaf Assassins: Michael Benyaer
Laetitia England: Amy Landecker
Standard Edition:
Limited Edition:
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.