Assassin's Creed: Revelations Review

End of an era or two for the Assassin's Creed franchise as Ezio Auditore da Firenze and Altair Ibh-La'Ahad make their final journey piecing the last of the jigsaw puzzle in the latest game - Assassin's Creed Revelations. With a slightly teary eye, the fourth installment heaps justice upon the two iconic protagonists, ending their stories with a deeply satisfying game.

Gameplay
Firstly Assassin's Creed: Revelations creates a beautifully huge playground for gamers to enjoy. Feathers can be plucked up and searched for, Templars and Guards can be hunted and stealthily assassinated and gamers can now even defend the Assassin Den's in the newly introduced Den Defense game mode (below).
   Once more Ezio expands the Creed by recruiting residents of Constantinople who he can then send off to Europe, Africa and the Middle East on assassin missions. The budding assassins can be given such missions as bribing thugs to taking entire cities.
   Ezio's armor and arsenal stay similar to what gamers have seen  before however the addition of the Hook Blade adds something different from the previous title. Grabbing hold of  those out of reach roof ledges, zip lining from building to building and flipping over guards leaving them confused and ready for assassination, are just some of the abilities the Hook Blade can offer gamers.
   A lot of the game play has not changed however with assassinations, free running, climbing and many more features having a sense of deja vu. Some gamers may feel tiresome of the similar animations but some may still  be content with the gameplay they fell in love with from the first games.


Features
   There’s also a plot of sorts, and this is where a whole-hearted recommendation becomes a little hard to justify. This is because the game, which is by no means bad, is the latest section of a plot, which has become so barmy and convoluted by now that newcomers will battle to follow what’s going on.

Playing Assassin’s Creed: Revelations as an entry point to the series is like starting to watch The Wire with the eighth episode of the second season.

The backstory runs thus; a bartender called Desmond has been kidnapped by a secret society calling themselves the Templars.

Apparently he’s the descendent of a line of assassins and the Templars hope to access his ancestor’s memories, in order to track down some artefacts that can change the course of mankind (or something).

To that end, they stick Desmond in the Animus, a machine that allows the user to experience parts of the lifetimes of anyone who shares their DNA.

With the Animus, Desmond relives the memories of first Altair, a Medieval assassin, and then Ezio Auditore, an Italian noble who turned assassin during the Renaissance and…

…are you still following any of this? No? Good, I thought it was just me. All you really need to know is that in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, the lion’s share of your time will be spent as Ezio in Constantinople, during the time of the Ottoman Empire, with occasional visits to the Animus and the Medieval Middle East.

Verdict  
The large portion of the game involving Ezio and Altair is absolutely ace; the sections involving the 

Desmond inside Animus Limbo!

latter are a bit brief and bit tooscripted, but overall they do the job. The parts set in the future (left), where Desmond has to navigate the inside of the Animus in some sort of first-person platforming game are badly made, but thankfully they’re kept to a minimum.

The real draw, though, is Ezio, and his engrossing travails through Constantinople. Forget the convoluted story - you don’t need logic when you have bombs and a Hook Blade.