And now it’s 50% off!

Assassin’s Creed: Revelation is a third person action/adventure title from developer and publisher Ubisoft. It is the third and final game in the Assassin’s Creed II trilogy, which has the main protagonist, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, continuing his quest to gain entrance to master Assassin Altaïr ibn La-Ahad’s library by finding four keys hidden in Constantinople in 1511 AD. Like previous Assassin’s Creed games, Revelations is running on Ubisoft’s proprietary game engine called Anvil that, despite being four years old, still produces fantastic visuals and audio.

Revelations takes place right after its prequel Brotherhood ends. Ezio finds himself the leader of the Turkish Assassin Order in Constantanople. There, with the help of several NPCs, Ezio begins his search for the keys to the secret Altair library Masayaf.

By far, this is the best Assassin’s Creed yet. Primary missions are broken down into nine sequences, with each sequence containing several memories. Each memory is unique but revolves around several themes, including item retrieval, escort and protection, hostage rescue, subterfuge, or espionage. One double mission in particular stood out for me. First, Ezio had to incite a riot by the citizens milling around the Arsenal gates by bribing nearby heralds. Once the citizens revolted, Ezio had to protect them from the attacking guards. After a few minutes the citizens would break through the gates and immediately, the second half of the double mission was available to Ezio. In the second part, Ezio had to fight the elite Janissary guards and make his way to the end arsenal warehouse. After being discovered while eavesdropping on a conversation, Ezio flees from the area while being pursued by about twenty guards. Needless to say, it was a violent, tense mission that I had a ton of fun playing.

Ubisoft has refined many of the secondary missions and activities, as well as adding new ones. Den Takeover, for example, is a mission type familiar to anyone who played Brotherhood, where you proceed to seize a Templar den by killing the den’s captain and lighting a signal flare. Here, however, it has been changed by making it possible to lose a den as a result of gaining notoriety through your actions, including killing civilians, restoring shops, and fighting the generally neutral Ottoman guards.

One new activity is bomb crafting. Specifically, you can create a variety of bombs from materials that you gather from around the city that fall under three categories:  lethal, tactical, and diversion. Tactical bombs are particularly useful because they either leave the enemy vulnerable to attack or aid in the evasion of Ezio and include caltrop bombs and skunk oil bombs. Diversion bombs are fun to use when you want to cause a little chaos and misdirect your enemies and include the gold pyrite bomb and cherry bombs. Finally, when you just want to kill the enemy, you have that option with lethal bombs.

Perhaps most fun of all is the hookblade. The hookblade is a replacement for the hidden blade. It retains all of the functions of the hidden blade and with the hooked end you can traverse the rooftops via zipline and hook on to out-of-reach hand holds, which is both fun and addictive in the large, parkour-friendly city.

There is a tower defense mini-game which was added that feels tacked on. It takes place when your assassin dens are attacked by the Templar. The menu system wasn’t very intuitive to me, and I simply had trouble keeping control of my dens. On the other hand, when I did lose control, I simply came back later and assassinated the Templar captain to regain control of the den. Despite this, I still had a blast with this game, calling in assistance from my disciples at a moment’s notice, hiring factions to run interference for me, or just sneaking up behind a Templar and stabbing him in the back.

Although four years old, Anvil is still a capable engine. Since Ezio is given the most screen time, his character model is extremely detailed, with bump-mapped clothing, facial hair, and wrinkles on his weathered face. The other main characters are also well detailed and hand animated, which becomes apparent in the real time cutscenes that move the narrative along. Because the engine has to render so many characters on screen at once, however, the secondary NPCs are slightly less detailed but nonetheless look and animate convincingly. What I found to be particularly impressive, besides the city being rendered in real time so that you can traverse the map without load times, is how detailed the landmarks are. From the Hagia Sophia to the Galata Tower, if you are lucky enough to visit these locations in Istanbul, you will be impressed by the virtual representation. From the top of these and other high points in the game, if you look down, you will notice that the entire city is visible with barely any pop-in textures. With a decently configured machine, this game will easily run at higher-than 60 fps for ultra smooth gameplay. Audio wise, the ambient noise is done well and sounds organic. The voice acting is convincing- the actors didn’t just phone it in and actually were engaged in telling a good story to the audience. The soundtrack is solid and is once again composed by Jesper Kyd. Overall, Revelations succeeds at giving Ezio’s narrative a beautiful playground to get lost in.

This is a fantastic sendoff for Ezio. If you are a fan of the story and gameplay of the Assassin’s Creed series, Revelations will more than meet your expectations for the sequel. If you never played Assassin’s Creed and are interested in the narrative, I suggest you buy the first three games and play them in order, just so that you can appreciate both the story and the refinements that each iteration made to the original. On its own, however, Revelation is a title worthy enough to add to your library.

-J-Man