Assassin's Creed Revelations Review

Hello Anonymous Reader! Today is the first video game review! Are you just as excited as me? Did you wet your pants in your sleep waiting for this? No? I guess it was just me then. . . ANYWAY, today I’m doing a review on one of my favorite video game series: Assassin’s Creed. To be more specific, I’m reviewing their latest release: Assassin’s Creed Revelations. To give you a little background on how much I love the game I’m going to show you something. . .

Thanks for the picture, Claire!

That is a class photo drawn by a very talented member of said class. Now, with the new information I just gave you. . . .Can you spot me? Having trouble?

                                                        Having trouble now?!

Altair and Ezio would be proud

 Yes, I’m the little assassin girl in the middle…I have a love for the Creed and I’m not afraid to show it. That being said, I bet you're thinking I’m going to continue worshipping the game on my knees and tell you that everything about Revelations is amazing. You thought WRONG, Anonymous Reader. That’s not a review at all! This is…

            When I popped in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations I was giddy in my seat waiting to see how the story continues. While playing, I began to keep a subconscious list of things that had changed and things that had stayed the same in comparison to Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, the game that precedes AC Revelations. Some things I agreed with and some things I didn’t …Le gasp, right? So, to make this easy for everybody, I’m going to basically set up this review in a list format and blah blah blah, let’s do this already…

                

                           Assassin's Creed: Revelations:      

        Ezio is still sexy. As. hell. For someone in his fifties, he’s got game. (I’m sorry that my fan girl got out. Don’t worry. I’m putting her back into her cage and keeping her there.)

          If you played Brotherhood, or any of the Assassin’s Creeds, you know that the graphics are pretty spiffy and the views  are like artwork. While I do miss Italy and think they did a better job portaying it, the scenery of Constantinople is not that bad The textures, colors, and overall landscapes are some of the best I've seen and climbing to an extremely high spot is still worth it for the view. Try not to fall though. . .

               Guess what…you are still responsible for building up a city in the same way you established Rome, etc. You have to buy the different shops and once you do, you get revenue from said shop. You also gain notoriety each time you buy a shop which turns out to be a total pain in the ass but I’m waiting for that one point in the game where I look at my money, see that I have a ridiculous amount, and then notice I have nothing left I can buy. . .It was something that inevitably happened in Brotherhood and is definitely going to happen in Revelations, at a faster pace. And here’s why:

              Remember the group of assassins you get to recruit in Brotherhood? They’re back, but there’s a little twist to them this time. I remember, while playing brotherhood, the only reason I would send my Assassin’s out on missions would be to level them up. After they were maxed out, I’d send them for the money. After I was the richest man in all of Italy…I had no reason to send them out anymore and kept my entourage around for when I felt lazy. In Revelations however, there’s a better reason to constantly dish out your army to help foreign cities. Each city has a percent by their name that indicates the Templars (they’re back too!) control. All of these start out at 100, but with each mission you do for a city, the percent goes down until you see the wording change to something like “assassin’s presence”. When this happens, you not only get revenue from said city, but also supplies for your bomb creations. Now you can see the influence you have on these cities compared to just praying that a list of missions will eventually disappear.

      This time around your Assassin’s still have levels, but each level is given a nifty name (like warrior) until they reach the level where they can deem themselves Assassin’s. After that, they can still be leveled up to reach the goal of Master Assassin. If they’re all your apprentices though…what does that make you? Supreme Overlord of Assassin Kick Assery? Anyways, when your assassin is ready, you can actually go on missions with that Assassin personally! Your assassin crew is no longer just random faces you see, but people you actually interact with! Once the mission is complete, you do have the option of making that assassin a master of a den to help protect it. What’s a den you ask, anonymous reader? I was getting to that.

                 In AC Brotherhood you are given the task of taking down the Borgia towers so that the Templars are not in control of a region. You have to take down the leader and blow up the tower. Now, take that and turn tower into den. You’ve got a Templar den. It’s the same basic principal as the Borgia towers, but for some odd reason the dens seem easier to take down then the towers. There is a twist to this too though: the Templars (my computer is automatically making Templars capital….They’re watching me!)  can take the dens back and you’re going to learn to either love or immensely hate this. When a den is being attacked by the Templars you have to go back to said den, fight all the Templars there, then, walk into the den and trigger the new den protecting game. I like to think of this as Plants vs. Zombies, but with hidden blades and white coats. The game is basically setting up different assassins and barricades to keep the Templars from reaching the den. Easy enough, right? WRONG. You have what they call “Morale points” and each type of assassin and barricade costs a certain amount of these “Morale points” but the only way to get “Morale points” is to kill off the Templars. It’s something that takes getting used to since the camera and controls are a little akward to use. Now, what happens if you lose the mini game and the Templars win? They gain control over the den once more and all you have to do is do what you initially did to get it back: kill leader, light the beacon, done! I’m beginning to question if playing the mini is even worth doing. While it’s fun, it’s seriously a lot easier to just let them take it and then hand them a slice of karma.

                 Now I know you’re itching to hear about the new bomb crafting stations or the hook blade, but before I get to those I want to go over some smaller stuff. Something new that’s been added to the game is hired Templar assassins that go after YOU. They pop up randomly from behind and you’re given about five seconds to stop them before they take half of your life. Now, you think they would tell you what button to press to do so, but I’m either blind or ridic stupid because I saw it nowhere and was stabbed every time until I finally hit the “B” button (I play an xbox360, woot woot!) and killed him. Thanks Ubisoft for making this a learning experience. When you do kill him, here’s a piece of advice: rob his ass. They usually have more money on them than the average pedestrian since they were HIRED (also, rob any den leaders or anyone that looks important too, this really helps in the beginning of the game when you’ve yet to establish the city). It’s also like a “fuck you” to the Templars. You steal the money they used to kill you. Fun stuff, right?

       One thing we all know and love about the Assassin’s Creed series is that there are feathers to find. Throughout the game you know you have to keep a look out for these and they’ve become a part of the assassin way. Revelations does not have feathers *EPIC SAD FACE*. If you didn’t like looking for feathers, don’t get too happy. Instead of feathers and flags they have books, animus pieces, and diary pages that you must find. Either way, you’re looking for shit so hah! Personally I think the feathers should have stayed as a constant throughout the games. They could change the entire gameplay, but at least we knew we would have our feathers. Why Ubisoft! Why?!

     If you liked riding your horse in the past Creed games, prepare to cry. There are no horses to call at whim to save you form a hoard of Templars. NONE. Not even the Templars have horses that you can steal. This means that your only way of long distance travel is by foot or by tunnel (yes, they still have tunnels, thank goodness). With the new addition of the hook blade though, you can now zip line like Batman, but…there aren’t as many zip lines as I hoped for.

                 Bomb crafting is one new aspect that I don't seem to find a problem with. You have bombs with different purposes, like causing distractions, and within that you have different combinations of ingredients to get the right type of bomb for you. I personally like to carry bombs that break on contact (since you can actually aim and hit guards with them) and my favorite is the distraction bomb filled with Lamb’s blood . . . muhahaha. Stations to build bombs are located throughout the city next to the pigeon coops, where you send your assassins out on missions, or in the dens. Here’s a word of advice when it comes to obtaining ingredients. DON’T BUY ANY. Usually you ‘ll find a lot of ingredients in chests that you open, but you can also loot the Templars you kill and they always have some kind of bomb ingredient on them. If you buy anything to build a bomb, the only justified items would be the sticky shell or the tripwire shell since those are a lot harder to come by. Also, like I mentioned before, you do get bomb ingredients regularly from the cities you have helped with your assassins. While some say this aspect didn't need to be in the game at all, I like that we have a couple of options on how to approach a mission and I've been taking full advantage of my bombs just to say how they roll in the situation.

             One of the biggest hypes about Revelations is the addition of the “hook blade”. Yes, you can still do double kills, etc., but now you can zip-line, throw guards on the ground, scale buildings that seem to have impossibly high ledges, and trip people. You heard me right. You can trip people now. Out of all the functions the hook blade can do, my favorite is just running up to a random victim and making them fall flat on their face. This tripping action is required in a quest or two but if you’re bored for whatever reason, I suggest seeing how many people you can trip within ten seconds, you’d be surprise if you happen to do it in a large group.

                The final thing I want to go over is Desmond and his Animus Adventure Time. No, they’re not actually called that but I didn’t know what else to say. I mentioned earlier that you have to collect these little balls of white light known as Animus fragments. When you get a certain amount of these Animus Fragments, you exit   out of Ezio’s DNA sequence and as Desmond, in the Animus, you run to one of six (I just guessed right there…I forgot how many there were) mysterious gates that requires a certain amount of fragments to enter. When you go in you begin to play as Desmond in a first person view. At that moment, when I saw that it was in first person, I knew I was going to have a problem with this. Right now I’m thinking of a way to describe what you do as Desmond stuck in the Animus, but there really no words for it. The closest thing I can think of to describe it is “it’s like playing Tetris with a Portal gun”. This is the first time this gameplay has been seen in the Creed series and I wish it would have never appeared. I still don’t get the point of it, but when I reach the end, there better be one. Just saying. Personally, this is the one thing that bothers me the most out of EVERYTHING in the game.

          I know this is a lot to take in, and I’m sorry, Anonymous Reader. I really didn’t mean to make it this long, but oh well…I just wanted to make sure I was thorough--and now you know a bit of what you’re getting yourself into when you play the game.

     My overall rating for Revelations: O O O O C (4.5 coconuts)          

           

            So, tomorrow is Tuesday and that means *checks the schedule*  Oh…that’s the day I couldn’t think of anything to write about, hmmm…I may do a piece about where I work but I’m not sure. I’ll see how I feel tomorrow. Until then, Anonymous Reader.

                                              ~ The Ink Eater

 Quote/Event/Thought of the day: “I promise to be the very best, that no one ever was, since catching them is my real test, to train them is my cause.” --The Best Pokemon Theme Song Ever