Assassin's Creed: Revelations (2016, Playstation 4) Review

DULL BLADES SHOULD BE PUT TO REST

Also for: Nintendo Switch, OnLive, Playstation 3, Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One

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I knew this day would come eventually, but I hoped it would not be this soon. Assassin's Creed: Revelations is the fourth game in this still on-going franchise (with its 13th mainline entry currently in the making), and as I try to catch up, I'm already feeling the AC-fatigue. Sure, this game works fine on a fundamental gameplay level, but I fail to see or feel a creative vision behind the third part in the story of Ezio Auditore da Firenze. I can only sense Ubisoft trying to squeeze every penny out of a popular video game character.

This is called business as usual, striking while the iron is hot, milking the cow, or however you want to put it. The entire Ezio trilogy feels like one game stretched out to unbearable length. If Ezio has one story, it's his first game, Assassin's Creed II. The rest is padding, and could have been told through the eyes of another protagonist, or in an epilogue, or whatever. My decision to not play the entire trilogy back-to-back is the only thing that saved me from actively disliking this entry.

In Revelations, the biggest additions to the experience feel so inconsequential that you wouldn't notice if they were absent in the next entry. One: you can now craft and throw bombs of a few different kinds. Two: if you play too carelessly, you must partake in a dull tower defense mini-game where the city guard march on one of your hideouts. Three: early on you get a hookblade, allowing you to zipline between buildings and climb faster. That's it. Maybe I'm forgetting something, but if so, that only proves my point.

Even though this entry further tweaks the established gameplay mechanics a little (so far the combat has improved with each title), the Constantinople-based adventure doesn't add enough to warrant another full-blown open world. I mean, why stop here? Assassin's Creed II only started with Ezio's mother giving birth to him. Don't we also need a prequel where we follow Ezio the sperm, as he assassinates all his competing sperm siblings to reach his mother's uterus first? See, there's still a little milk left in the cash cow.

In what way is the story weak, you ask? To begin, the setup is very thin. In the modern era, the bartender/assassin Desmond Miles finds himself comatose and trapped inside the virtual reality world of the Animus, after the traumatic events that concluded the previous game, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

There, he encounters the spirit of Subject 16, an earlier test subject who died, but has remained stuck inside the Animus in digital form. He explains that Desmond's brain is in shambles with all the cross-referencing of ancestors (Altair and Ezio), and that he must live through the rest of their life stories to help his brain sort things through. Only then can he reawaken from his deep slumber.

This is basically Ubisoft giving themselves green light to tell whatever story they want, disregarding the minutiae of previous events to throw whatever disjointed narrative they wish at us. Both Altair and Ezio were very prolific characters in the late aughties, and in the case of the latter - the hot-blooded, vengeful Italian stud - it is perfectly understandable. But Altair? I simply don't get the appeal of his stupid, psychotic arrogance, although he is treated more respectfully in this game than his previous outing (the first entry). His ending is at least a little touching.

And from there, things only get weaker. Inside the Animus, the introduction brings Ezio to the former Assassin stronghold in Masyaf in the year 1511. The old fortress is now overrun by Templars, but a helpful tutorial repeats the basic moveset and prepares us for hours of assassinating. In order to find some powerful ancient knowledge, Ezio needs to gain access to Altair's old library. But it is sealed off by a thick stone door, only unlockable by five different keys.

The search for these bring him all the way to Constantinople, where he must track them down before the Templars do. The keys are all sealed away in different tombs, and to find their locations, Ezio must get further sidetracked by the political schemes of the city's nobility.

Really, this is it. "Ezio needs to open a door in Masyaf, now go liberate Constantinople". The real goal of the game is so vague and the story sidetracks me so much that I soon forget why I keep playing. Constantinople is kinda interesting if you're a history nut, but often feels drab, as if presented through a brown filter. And the city provides dozens of side activities that only distract you more. Meanwhile, far away in Masyaf, the ultimate goal becomes just a faded shade of a memory fragment.

I just go through the motions, following the on-screen prompts with little care as to why. It doesn't take long before I begin checking online guides just to see how much I have left. And all of a sudden, the game is finished. Thankfully, it is the shortest entry since the first game, even if you exhaust most sidequests. It is also the most forgettable. I beat it one month ago and cannot even remember the ending.

In getting there, I repeated the same movements as in the previous games, whether in exploration or combat. I used the same scaling techniques, and fought the same variations of enemies in different armor sets. I tailed them using the same boring methods of concealment. The enemy is twofold, to fit the time and place; Ottoman and Byzantine soldiers.

Fortunately, the gameplay is actually decent. Playing the version on the Ezio Collection, I can enjoy the updated framerate and visual fidelity of the PS4. Ezio responds well to my input, and just like in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, the combat is tweaked with instant killchains to make it smoother. You have a good assortment of different weapons to master, suitable for a range of situations. And your assassin underlings can turn the tide in a bad situation.

Once again, I found the enemy AI lacking; at one point a group of around ten guardsmen chased me to a pier and tackled me into the water. As I tried to get back up, they gathered around the place I was hanging, blocking my way up, but they couldn't hit me. So I pulled one of them into the water, and he drowned instantly. I proceeded to grab the next, who also drowned. And then I caught another one, and another. Before long, the entire group had drowned and I could walk away with a stupid grin on my face. I even got a quick-kill PS Trophy for it.

The parkour is quicker, thanks to the new hookblade which gives Ezio a wider reach. The elevators from the previous game are back, and the ziplines are a welcome addition. All of them work well, and I didn't have too much problem with Ezio not following my commands this time. I also enjoy the assassin recruitment and management, which is improved a bit in this entry. A few of your recruits also get brief storylines of their own, which end up with them becoming the head honcho of their own cozy assassin's den.

But that's as far as my praise goes. I tried the new tower defense mini-game only once, and found it so dull that I went to great lengths to avoid having to play it again. Every little step of progress you make in the open world - unlocking a new piece of armor, buying a map, opening up a new shop - raises your notoriety bar a notch.

Once it reaches 100% you run the risk of getting one of your hideouts being raided by the city guard, which triggers the mini-game. Assassinating an official or bribing one of the town criers keeps notoriety low. It's yet another constant distraction no one asked for, but less of a timesink than the rudimentary, unwieldy tower defense segment, that goes on for minutes on end.

No, the only reason this game is even mentioned today is because it's part of the franchise - and of course, because it involves Ezio one last time. But even with his and Altair's participation it is often considered one of the weakest entries in the series, and for good reason. The story is pointless, like a long farewell, the stuff outside the Animus takes a backseat, and the side characters are generic, even from a visual design standpoint. In retrospect, I cannot name a single NPC. I wouldn't even be able to identify the main villain in a police line-up.

Also, my deep disinterest almost made me miss a part of the game. Not until about the halfway mark of the story did I figure out that Desmond actually has a little side game of his own. Through a handful of alternative portals in the Animus, you can enter a series of stiff first-person platformer stages. It comes interspersed with a fragmented re-telling of his own troubled upbringing as part of an Assassin's collective.

These extraneous vignettes feels like half-forgotten dreams and don't add much meat to the dish. Needless to say, I've forgotten most of it at this point. I'll probably need a recap in the next episode. But the same goes for this entire game - it's utter, bland mediocrity. Everything is competently made, but it feels like it is put together by an emotionless machine. There's not a trace of a heart or soul in it, and whatever good you may find was established by its predecessors.