It's been a little while since I've played Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, so the frustration of some of the mechnics (like the crossbow wielding guards on horseback) is almost a distant memory... and it seems like Ubisoft, for the most part, would like it to stay that way.

Assassin's Creed Revelations seems to take some of the best bits of the other titles in the series and then add a little extra to keep it different.

Despite the story revolving around Desmond who, for reasons made clear in the previous game, is floating around in the Animus, you'll spend most of Revelations as Ezio Auditore da Firenze.  He's in his early fifties now, but still as agile and flexible as ever and spending his time searching for keys left behind by Altair which, once decoded, will lead Ezio to an artifact capable of ending the war between the Templars and the Assassins once and for all.

Essentially this means spending time running, leaping and climbing all around Constantinople during the rise of the Ottoman Empire.  If you've played any of the previous titles, you'll know what to expect: assassinate a string of targets to gain allies and information that lead you to your goals.  Along the way there are numerous side quests to distract you allowing you to buy shops to increase your cash flow, recruit assassins that can then be call upon to assist you or sent off on missions to improve their abilities and increase the resources you receive from the surrounding areas.

While recruiting and training your assassins is cerainly helpful, towards the end of the game the micro-management of the missions can be a bit of a chore with the game constantly reminding you to stop whatever fun thing you are doing, find a pigeon coop and stare at a page of text for 10 minutes because the Templars are about to reclaim an area.

There are a couple of rather excellent new additions that Evio can (and will) take advantage of.  Firstly, rather than having two hidden blades, on of them gets replaced with a hook-blade giving him several new moves in combat, a greater reach when leaping or climbing and the ability to use zip lines that appear to be generously dotted around the rooftops.  Ezio also learns how to make various different types of bombs.

Yup, Ezio can stop running, leaping and killing for a while, find himself a convenient bomb cabinet and craft numerous different types of bombs.  Split into three types: lethal, distration and tactical you choose different components to change the blast radius, the delivery method (eg. fused or twipwire) and the sort of unpleasantly it'll inflict, like poison for a lethal bomb or smoke for tactical.  Using them correctly can lead to some great setups: running from a whole camp full of guards and leading them into a number of twipwire poison bombs certainly made me chuckle.

Essentially, if you've enjoyed any of the previous games, you'll enjoy this one.  There are still a few quirks with the controls and cameras that'll have you staring at the screen in disbelief as Ezio dives off a building in completely the opposite direction to the one you told him to (normally at the worse possible moment) but it is definitely an improvement over the previous titles.

However...

Like all of the previous games, there's always one area that seems to be less than perfect.  In this one (in my opinion, at least) the real down fall is the Desmond missions.  A set of five missions in Desmond's memories which are, essentially, first-person platformers.  While the memories themselves are interesting to hear, the missions are all set in a pretty bland environment and are not particularly enjoyable to play.  When you consider how full of character Ezio is, and how detailed and immersive the world he is based in can be, this dip into Desmond's mind is all the more painful and the game would have been better just creating five short cutscenes to tell the story.

 One thing I don't think I've touched on in the past, is the multiplayer.  Set around relatively small maps, the main multiplayer modes revolve around you attempting to find and assassinate another player, while avoiding the same fate.  Moving between crowds of NPCs and trying to move like an NPC to avoid giving yourself aware leads to a tense and enjoyable game and works really well... if you manage to get into a game where people are willing to play properly.  Unfortunately, this is where this style of game falls down.  Every single game I played, regardless of time of day or any other factor, had at least half the people playing ignoring any sort of stealth or blending simply to spend their time running around on the tops of stalls or buildings trying to find their target.  Personally I don't understand why... it's not a fun way to play and is deeply frustrating for any players trying to actually enjoy the match as it was intended, and it's a real shame because there is something rather special there.

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~ Naiboss