The problem with having a successful franchise is that it's hard to keep the innovation and the awesome stuff going. Where do you draw the line, though? How can you tell if the devs are legitimately trying to keep telling a story that is too long to fit in one game or if they're just making cash off a solid, established and loved franchise?
Sadly, Assassin's Creed: Revelations feels like one final squeeze to the saga before they actually have to, you know, come up with something new for the series.
The original game was a total breakthrough. The idea was innovative, the execution was great, the engine was fantastic, it looked and sounded great and it had all the elements of a grade-A title. The sequel was even better. The whole setting for the story was different, the plot itself was deeper and there was the addition of a bunch of gameplay features that really enhanced the first game while keeping the essence of what made Assassin's Creed so good intact.
AC: Revelations is not a bad game (let's face it, you just can't make a bad game when there's such a huge budget behind it), but it's more of the same. There are no significant changes since AC: Brotherhood. The game world feels very much the same (even though the locations are different), the objectives for missions and side-missions are the same and so on. To add insult to injury, the few features that were supposed to refresh the game, such as a new tower-defense type of minigame or the bomb crafting system end up being underwhelming at best and annoying at worst.
Similarly to when Brotherhood came out, Revelations just plays like a bunch of content and features that got cut out of the original AC:2 and instead of coming up with a few DLCs to wrap the story up, they released, supposedly, a whole new title. It really does feel like the same old game, with a few reskins and name changes. In addition, the main storyline is disappointingly short, probably around 5 or 6 hours and its only purpose is not to fill in the blanks in the story, but rather just get you to a cliffhanger by the end of the game so you buy Assassin's Creed 3.
Graphically, it looks a tad better than its predecessor but still somewhat disappointing when compared to other games currently on the market. On the plus side, most mid-range computers won't have much of an issue running with high settings, same as with the previous games in the franchise.
In the gameplay department, everything is pretty much left untouched. There are some new weapons and moves, like the 'hookblade' or the 'counter-steal' but they don't really add any substantial depth to the previous mechanics. Other than that, it still is a sandbox game with a ridonkulous amount of collectibles and side-missions, so if you're a completionist and like shooting for 100%, it will keep you busy for quite a few hours.
My last gripe is with the story. The ending in Assassin's Creed 2 was.. out there. The franchise started out as a very solid, entertaining and thrilling story about world conspiracies and whatnot, and suddenly it turned into something out of the mind of L. Ron Hubbard. Now, as sketchy as it might have been at the time, I thought: "Well, okay. Where are they taking this?" and decided to give them a chance. The story in Revelations just feels blatantly rushed, weak and nonsensical. It's just tidbits and glimpses of Altäir's life after the events in the original game and a cliffhanger at the end. It doesn't tie things together. It doesn't provide you with more knowledge about what happened or what's going to happen. I'm all for building up the suspense, but, yet again, it feels like Ubisoft just needed to stretch things before coming up with the next sequel and ended up with a bunch of filler instead of a solid narrative.
In closing, Assassin's Creed: Revelations just feels like a very safe bet on Ubisoft's side to keep capitalizing on a product they know it works while at the same time cramming a bunch of superficial new features to sell it as new and improved. It's nothing exciting, innovative or memorable, but if you liked the previous games, chances are you'll enjoy this one.
If you're a fan of the franchise and want to find out more about the story/lore behind it, by all means, go ahead and play this one, but don't expect a different game.
7 / 10 due to lack of originality.
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