Title: Assassin’s Creed Revelations
Developer/Publisher: Ubisoft
Game Genre: Stealth Action Hybrid
Multi-player: 4-8 Player Competitive (Requires Online Pass)
Age Rating: 15
Length: Medium (Approx 5-10 hours Story)

My Impressions

I was a bit of a late comer to the Assassin’s Creed franchise, as I only started playing the games when I picked up a copy of the first game cheaply around the time Assassins Creed Brotherhood was released. Since then I have enjoyed the games in the franchise and was shocked by the ending of the previous installment AC Brotherhood and was eagerly looking forward to the 4^th game in the series Assassins Creed Revelations to find out the answers.

Sadly the Desmond sections of the game are the worst of the series so far and aside from giving you a bit of background information on his past and waking him up from his coma until the last cutscene of the game do little to progress the story and we are still in the Dark as to why Juno forced Desmond to act as he did at the end of AC Brotherhood. To be honest in terms of the Desmond part of the story you could probably get away with watching the final cutscene on youtube and be up to speed for the next game.

Moving on, as in the previous two games the main protagonist is Ezio Auditore, and AC Revelations when taking together with the short animated film Embers should prove to be the final chapter in his story. Unfortunately I found this instalment to be a little lacklustre due to the story being hampered by the Assassin management part of the game which I will go into shortly. Though there where a few highlights with one of my favourites being Ezio’s song when he is disguised as a lute player.

Another  positive in the story is that you get to play as Altair once again, and get more information on his life after the first game. Sadly though these interludes are too few and too brief and could have done with more development. Overall though the story is probably the weakest of the Assassins Creed franchise so far.

In terms of the gameplay, little has changed since Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood with the main additions to the core assassin gameplay being the introduction of bombs (grenades) and a minor tweak in the introduction of the hookblade which adds a few new moves.

The Assassin Den component has also been tweaked with the Templars now being able to retake Dens if you get too much attention and lose a Tower Defense game. However, if you have sufficient Top Level assassin’s you can “lock” dens and save yourself the hassle.

Sadly the Revenue Generating Mediterranean Defense component does not have this failsafe and requires you to micromanage cities and missions if you wish to keep your captured cities safe. This can become a pain if you are after the all cities achievement and I wish the game had an option to automate the micromanagement and/or to lock cities, even if this led to reduced rewards.

Similarly the multiplayer component has changed little since AC Brotherhood and this seems to be the main weakness of AC Revelation in that it offers little over AC Brotherhood in all respects and the story does little to progress the main arc. While AC Revelations is in no way a bad game it is no way revolutionary and if you enjoyed earlier instalments you will enjoy this one but dont expect too much.

My Recommendation and Rating

CONSIDER

Assassins Creed Revelations is best described as Average, and is probably the worst game so far in the Assassins Creed franchise on the Xbox 360. However, If you enjoyed the earlier games you should still enjoy this one.