Thursday 18 October 2012

Assassin's Creed: Revelations: A very late review...

For Christmas last year, one of my main presents was Assassin's Creed: Revelations (AC: R). I have always been a massive fan of the series since my obsession with the first Assassin's Creed all those years ago... Anyway, I didn't play it straight away; I had Skyrim to keep me more than occupied despite my tradition of having the first game played on my Xbox 360 after Christmas being an Assassin's Creed game. I eventually got round to playing the game and due to two months or so of playing Skyrim, I just felt underwhelmed by the whole experience... It wasn't as big or as diverse an open world as Skyrim and it felt more like a movie than a game. I played up until Ezio Auditore da Firenze gets to Constantinople for the first time and then gave up to play more Skyrim. So... What brings me back? Assassin's Creed 3. I needed to play all of them to get an idea of what's going on. So, a few days ago I tore myself away from FIFA 13, sat down and played AC: R for the first time in about ten months... What have I been missing?!

Set in Constantinople when Ezio is in his 50/60s, the master assassin's main quest is to find the five Masyaf keys scattered around the city in underground spaces that require an assassin's touch to complete. The challenges over the five keys are varied from 3D platforming puzzles to on-rails chases to just plain-old killing everyone in sight... Which is nice... As usual for an Assassin's Creed game, there's a tonne of stuff to do which will keep you occupied for a few days/weeks/months/years depending on if you get addicted to it, which is likely. There's Sofia quests to do which involves recovering books and you meet the sultans of the Ottoman empire, do their dirty work and get angry at them... Obviously... This is Ezio's last game and it is suitably tear-jerking at his last scene. I won't spoil it for you though; you'll have to play it for yourself :P

The Ezio part of the story takes up about 80-90% of the campaign and for the other parts of the story, you have to complete Ezio's storyline so as to re-live parts of Altair's life and you have to collect Animus data fragments from around Constantinople to play through Desmond's life. This is most likely Altair's last game too and as such, it ties up all the loose ends and answers all the questions that fans such as myself may have had like what happened after Assassin's Creed (1) and did Altair find anymore pieces of Eden. As with the Ezio storyline, the end of this one is equally as gut-wrenching due to the amount of my time played on AC. Desmond's is weird. His story takes place inside the Animus due to a lack of synchronisation from him and his ancestors due to AC: Brotherhood and the end of that story (you really have to play all four to get all the references). It's not as emotional but is equally as interesting as the other two are passionate.

There's also a continuation on from AC: Brotherhood's multiplayer which I've had a few hours on and it is still as fun as Brotherhood's with a larger variety of ways to kill people now but with the same core mechanics that makes the multiplayer as fun and as stressful as last time.

I put off playing this game because of Skyrim. I have had lots of chances in the past to play it again but passed on all of them. I'm glad I finally did play AC: R but I'm also glad that Ezio and Altair's stories have been finished for two reasons; 1. Ezio's had three games and was beginning to get stale. 2. There were so many unanswered questions from Altair's life and 3. AC3 is going to be completely different and I cannot wait to play it. Less than a fortnight left!

Oh, and if you're thinking about buying this game, make sure you buy all of them. It won't cost more than £45 for all 4 and most probably quite a lot less, to be honest. For this post's link under my user name, there's a Let's Play from RoosterTeeth as they play on mulitplayer... It's very funny.

SkyrimAddict

Let's Play Assassin's Creed: Revelations - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-5CmCnmbVg

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