Assassin's Creed: Revelations (PS3): Too much of a good thing

So yeah. I'm really behind one this one. I purchased this game around Xmas time but for whatever reason as much as I enjoy playing this franchise it never seems incredibly high on my to do list. I ended up waiting until a big thicket of March releases before I actually got around to it. So to some folks this review won't be anything new but then again, I'm not out to compete with major game review sites and mags, I'm just talking about things as I play them. So, without further adieu.

ASSASSIN'S CREED: REVELATIONS (PS3/XB360)

Our next installment of Assassin's Creed picks up with future protagonist Desmond Miles waking up realizing he is in the Animus. Finding the consciousnesses of agent 16, the assassin in the animus before him, Desmond learns after retrieving the Apple of Eden his mind basically overloaded and he has slipped into a coma. In a last ditch effort to save him, his team basically boosts the Animus in safe mode in basically a world of free physics. He unfortunately cannot wake up however because the Animus doesn't know where to put him and in order to find his way back, he needs to complete the memories of the ancestors before him before he can go back to reality.

In diving into the Animus portal, he finds himself back in shoes of a much older Ezio Auditore returning to the home of the Assassin's and the home base of the first Assassin's Creed. Upon reaching the library he finds a score of Templar's trying to open it and learns they have one the 5 keys needed to enter. After a bit of spat he then takes off for Constantinople to try to assist the Assassin's guild there and locate the remaining keys in the hopes of learning the true purpose of the Assassin's and hopefully finding a means to end this conflict between the Templars.

"So Desmond, You ever gonna get to be the star of this game?"
"Probably not."

It is really interesting to me how goddamn much they are able to flesh this Assassin's Creed II story out. II ended on a pretty haywire note and it left me with a lot of questions but I definitely left that game much more satisfied than the first one. Then Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood fleshed that game out further, with a bit more focus on the Desmond character. Everything about it gave this feeling that Revelations was going to be the big climatic finish. But what bothers me about this, and its been noted by others before, is that there doesn't seem to be any weight to the stakes. Yes, the Templars and Assassins are still trying to kill each other but really that doesn't even appear to be a major focus of the story. There is a bit of a side plot between the succession of the new sultan of the land, but if Ezio doesn't meet one of the heir's in the first scenes of the game, it could have been cut out completely with nearly zero impact to the overall plot line.  He's in a race to get these keys to Altair's library but he doesn't really have any idea or what he'll find. It just sounds like every serious point or event seems to take place outside the Animus, which you occasionally hear whats going on in between stages, or when you collect one of the keys you get to play a little further in the life of Altair and find out what became of him which never seem to last long enough. Occasionally they try to characterize Desmond in these obscure 1st person "puzzle" sequences, but they are slow, boring, and optional. Its basically all the fun of Portal, without the portal gun, GLA-DOS, Wheatly, puzzles, cake, humor, or entertainment. It falls completely flat. I hate to say this but from a story perspective, there is virtually no reason this game needs to exist other than the wrap up the tales of the previous characters, which should have been done like 2 games ago.

Essentially building bridges is all you do, and even that isn't much fun.

Still Lookin' like a dapper bad ass in his old age. 

Story aside, that isn't to say that game play isn't as good as it always has been. It's still loads of fun to parkour your ass from rooftop to rooftop and with edition of the hookblade and zip lines now everything moves even faster. There is not a lot of new innovation from this title from its previous one. Generally all the weapons are the same, you build up new assassins from the downtrodden of the streets just like you do in the prior games, but in this one you have to accompany them on a specialty mission before they can maximize their potential to be true assassins. You can send them out to renovate the city but it seems even less important to do this time around. Yes it opens up new shops and such and takes away Templar influence but this time around, and I had this issue with Yakuza: Dead Souls, I had that feeling of "god dammit. I've already done this shit, I don't want to do it again." So I found myself just doing things as I happened by them. there were only a few scant missions I used my Assassin's insta-kill on a particularly stubborn guard and many of the actual assassinations felt much easier to do than in the previous titles. They did add a bit of a tower defense mini game but really you are only forced to play it one time in a tutorial kind of thing, and if you keep your notoriety down from the Templars you'll never need to do it again. The only real new kill in your bag of tricks is you can construct grenades now as if your cavalcade of weaponry wasn't enough, but I doubt you will ever find need to use anything but your hidden blade. Its fast, efficient, and kills quickly.  I still think the combat sucks in this series. You are given all these different weapons and means to kill, yet every single weapon you get handles the same way, you are give a handful of different attack options but they are all useless because unless you hit your sneak kill, you are just going wait for an enemy to telegraph their attack and hit counter, then chain to the rest of the enemies. Just like the last 2 fucking games. For the majority of the game you can get by just throwing some coin, walking buy distracted guards, and then hidden blading your kills before they even know whats happening. Its all still pretty fun to play over all but really, its just more of the previous 2 games.

Graphically and musically, there isn't a very significant change from the other games. With the exception of some polish to some of the graphics, an entirely new location to run around it and Ezio Auditore becoming Oldzio Auditore, there pretty much isn't much change in the look of the game. Some of the tunes sound similar in comparison to the previous titles, but for a series of games as long and as epic as these are, you would figure there would be a more notable or interesting soundtrack to the titles. Go ahead, try to hum a part of your favorite Assassin's Creed song. Couldn't think of one? Neither can I. 

I'm sure the multiplayer is still fun, its a pretty original concept and it beats the hell off the slayer or team deathmatch concepts. Pretending to be a computer controlled character long enough to fool a target, that's loads of fun. But I bought he game used and didn't have an online pass and I'll be damned to pay an additional 15 bucks for something I'll play like 2 or 3 times.

Ultimately, I feel that Assassin's Creed is getting away from the concepts that would have made this series incredible in an attempt to try to keep up with other big name action titles. The core concept as I understood it is your are an elite assassin who can enter a room, pickpocket one target, stab another, and be out of the room before anyone even notices. But the longer this series begins to run on, the more it seems like the stealth aspect of the game is optional. And to me that is a serious problem and has to potential to kill off this franchise. Take a look at games like Thief or Hitman: Blood Money, these are titles where you actually get penalized for making your presence known and it makes sneaking up on a kill that much more exciting and shows a greater level of skill to be able to be in and out without alerting a guard. This seemed like something that Assassin's Creed should have naturally adopted but it falls even flatter with each release. The other HUGE fucking complaint that I have is Ubisoft knows they are wringing out 60 bucks a pop for each of these fucking games, and because of it, they refuse to put an ending in sight. They may have delievered on ending the tales of Ezio and Altair, but I am no closer to figureing out what the fuck in going on with Desmond in the real world, where they intend to go, or what the fucking point even is.

And now here I am, waiting for a 5th fucking installment of this fucking game to get even the basic fucking plot points answered. It's become complete infuriating to continue to play this game just to have them piss in my face just before the credits roll. I've never been so disappointed in an ending to game since the first Assassin's Creed game. Maybe that's why I keep putting this series off when they come out. No matter how much fun it is to play, how good of a story is told in it, no matter how great it looks or as memorable as it is, every fucking single one of them leaves me with this feeling of bitter disappointment. I am constantly being baited with the thought, the IDEA that all this is leading up to a massive finale that we might never see. There are talks that Assassin's Creed 3 is going to be completely retooled to have a completely different feel and have new characters and settings, but I already hear the apathy of its fan base getting tired of waiting around.  They better answer a FUCKTON of questions in this new installment because I guarantee that people will get tired of this game before it comes to a close. And then the remaining fans will never get their true ending or some slapdash rushed finish.

If you feel you need one more romp with our age Italian friend then I guess I could recommend Assassin's Creed: Revelations. But you'd probably leave more satisfied if you never finish it.

I wish I hadn't.