Reviews// Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Once a den is taken by the Assassins, the matter is not cut and dried. If your Templar Awareness meter becomes full, the Templars will mount an attack on your den, and it will be contested (and unavailable for you to use) until you defend it.

Plants vs Templars
This defence takes the form of a quite compelling Tower Defence-style game, in which you deploy your resources on the rooftops while waves of Templar forces attack at street level.

You have various troop types, with differing weapons and costs, and even a range of defences. This is an entirely new element to the series, and it's a very entertaining and enjoyable one too. Swift decisive action is required in order to win.

While defeating the Templars is reasonably easy - defending your position once the city is taken is much harder, and the nature of the missions begins to change - to ones that are less rewarding in terms of XP, and which can even cost you financially. So, you then have another factor in the resource management aspect of the game: Master Assassins.

Harder missions may require these Master Assassins, but dispatching them overseas will leave your dens at home in Constantinople open to attack. Suddenly, the game has previously unplumbed depths.

Interconnected Ecosystem
The result of all of the additions and tweaks to pre-existing game elements is a hugely interconnected ecosystem. Things that previously were merely icing on the Assassin’s Creed cakes are now vital ingredients in the recipe.

Actions you used to take or leave are now vital to your progress. A game that was once superb is now sublime. If this was Ubisoft's plan all along, to gently ease us into a world of stunning complexity without frightening us, then Ubisoft has succeeded admirably.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations enables the player to take skills learned from the previous games, and to combine them to play a game that is far richer, more complex and more subtle than many of us might have felt tempted to play from the Get-Go.

Endless Love
All of this adds up to a game that is almost without end. While games like inFamous and Uncharted 3 are offering the single player 10 hours of fun, Assassin's Creed is offering 10 times that.

After you have completed the campaign, it is almost impossible not to re-enter the game world to ‘mop up’; to revisit memories that you failed to complete with full sync, and to do better; to re-capture all your dens, to train all your Assassins to Master level, to capture and defend all the cities of 16th Century Europe.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations spreads out a table from which you want to feast, and offers enough enticement to make you gladly do so. Even after pudding is complete, there remains enough left to pick on to give you sustenance for a very, very long time.

One thing that the Assassin’s Creed games are notable for, and which for this player at least is a disappointment, is the lack of puzzles. There is only one of any note in AC:R. That's not to say that there is nothing here that actually is mentally challenging! The Desmond sections on Animus Island are spacial puzzles. But it would have been nice to see more mental floss in the main storyline.


Multiplayer
The only thing letting AC:R down now is the multiplayer game. Maybe letting down is the wrong term. There's nothing wrong with the multiplayer per se, if you like stealthing around stabbing people in the neck. But it's really just a medieval version of the same kind of capture the flag, Red vs Blue game you've played a million times before.

It has some twists on the themes, but they are hardly game changers. The thing is, Ubisoft has created a story of such creative potential, and a world with such complex interactions that what the Assassin’s Creed series really needs is a MMORPG.

Yes, it needs a world in which players can take a role either in the present/future, the past or the distant past, and play as either an Abstergo agent, a modern day companion of Desmond and his resistance fighters or a contemporary of Ezio or Altaïr on either side of the lines of combat. Or even one of the thieves, courtesans, Romani or mercenary factions… it needs an MMORPG!

Pros
+ A rich interconnected game world.
+ Long lasting gameplay.
+ Massively improved economy.

Cons
- Buggy in places.
- Short on puzzles.
- Ezio almost never "dies".

SPOnG Score: 9.8 out of 10