Games

Assassin’s Creed Revelations

Assassin's Creed has become a gaming institution. But unlike those other institutions, your Marios, Sonics or Zeldas, Assassin's is very much a product of the modern gaming world. Complex and deep, gorgeous and powerful, Ubisoft created an astonishing living and breathing universe with Assassin's Creed, but with four core games in the space of four years, have they overexposed the once unique world?

Revelations picks up the Assassin's Creed story at the end of 2010's Brotherhood, shedding further light and insight to the triple time periods of Desmond, Altair and Ezio. Sold as the final chapter that began in the original Assassin's Creed, Revelations seeks to provide fans with, well, revelations that set up the much-anticipated Assassin's Creed III in 2013.

The bulk of the storyline this time around follows master Assassin Ezio as he makes his way through the epic Ottoman city of Constantinople trying to secure the keys to unlock the secrets hidden at the heart of the devious Templar empire. The game also includes flashbacks to key moments for Altair as well as tangents into the modern day to catch up with Desmond as all three threads begin to entangle.

Revelations plays very much like Brotherhood with a couple of exceptions. The parkour-style adventuring combined with brilliant AI and crowd interaction is still present but Revelations introduces two new combat components that make the gameplay more interesting.

These two additions along with the tweaking of combat controls means that Revelations plays the best of the series so far. It flows better and allows for a lot more actual control over situations that would have conspired to defeat players in games past.

The first, and most important introduction, is the addition of the hookblade. The hookblade allows for branching combos to stretch even further but also gives Ezio the ability to zoom around the enormous city and makes travel, one of the more time-consuming elements from previous games, more bearable.

Another new innovation is the bomb construction skill which allows your assassination techniques to become even more advanced. Bombs can poison, distract, confuse and even blood-splatter your enemies giving gamers the chance to add an entirely new skill set to the plethora of ways to kill someone; with over 300 bomb variations, that's a truckload of murder options.

It sounds almost superfluous to say, but Assassin's Creed Revelations really does have some jaw-droppingly gorgeous moments. For a series built on some stunning CGI and in-game work, the teams at Ubisoft has surpassed themselves with Revelations by making the graphical elements mean so much more to the atmosphere and tone of the game, something that few other developers can match.

Newcomers to the Assassin's Creed series may be a little intimidated by the sheer, overwhelming amount of history that the previous three games have supplied the hardcore fans. And while Revelations attempts on occasion to give gamers a friendly reminder of what has transpired between the Assassin's and the Templars, this is not where anyone should enter the series.

That is not necessarily a negative point though, the series as a whole is a fantastic franchise that developed over the past iterations into probably the best stealth-period-action-adventure-sci-fi games ever and fans of the stealth-period-action-adventure-sci-fi genre would be insane to miss it. Handily the PS3 version of the game also comes with a copy of Assassin's Creed on disc, providing the perfect incentive to relive or discover the game that started it all.

While there is nothing in Assassin's Creed Revelations that is revolutionary for the series, there is enough of an evolution to comfortably say that Revelations is the best example of what Assassin's Creed is all about. The stunning world, the skilled stealth, the frenetic combat, the amazing storyline, all combine in Revelations to both tease and tantalize that the best is still yet to come.

8/10

PlayStation 3 | Xbox 360