Assassins Creed Revelations: The Cons

Despite of the fact that Ubisoft has annualized the series it has still managed to pull out a good game one after the other and Revelations is no different, it is definitely a must buy. And although it’s a great game which lives up to the pedigree of its predecessors there were quite a few things that I didn’t find quite so appealing.

One new contrivance in Revelations is the hook blade and a superfluous one at that. It did very little to add anything new to the game except for maybe allowing hook/run and zip-line escapes, however these hardly made the impact of improving gaming experience. The main function was to help you climb and extend your reach while jumping but considering the fact that Ezio was already doing this in the previous games with his bare hands this was rather unnecessary. In fact if my memory serves me correct in of the missions of Assassins creed 2 the female member of the thieves/pirates actually teaches you a higher reaching leaping technique for climbing walls and buildings. Apart from that buildings were often very close to one another making the hook blade somewhat of a misfit in your inventory. As I have mentioned the only good thing about it was the hook/run and zip-line. You might find the hook/run convenient in some situations but why bother risking a collision head on when you can just swerve to the right or quickly jump and grab onto a ledge and evade the enemy that way. Zip-lines on the other hand are just far too occasional and when you did really need them they were simply nowhere to be found.  

Another thing I didn’t like was the new Templar Den side missions. These are basically a carryover from Brotherhood and I’ve always seen them as a repetitious exercise, a complete nuisance which often than not distracts you from the primary story line. However they are even worse in Revelations because not only do you have to capture new Dens but now you have to protect and defend old ones from Templar assaults. As far as taking over the dens is concerned there is no problem, however defending them is a pain because it always feels like the den furthest to you is being attacked which takes ages just to get there. They just feel annoying!

Something I believe that made AC 2 and Brotherhood really fun was the glyph puzzles. The biggest disappointment in Revelations was that sadly these are all gone. What remains are the Prince of Persia like Romulus treasure hunts, this time not for any treasure but for the Masyaf keys. Naturally the key hunts are plagued with the same problem as the treasure hunts from the previous game; they are straight forward and extremely linear with no freedom or mobility to move about, not even for alternative routes or pathways. Moreover unlike the treasure hunts from Brotherhood the key hunts do not involve any fighting or wild chases and the vaults are completely unguarded which makes the actual hunts seem dull, monotonous and un-lively. The loss of the glyph puzzles is seriously disappointing as they use to be an extremely joyful aspect of the game for me and Ubisoft has done absolutely nothing to compensate for this loss. The glyphs made the previous games a really challenging brain teaser and distinguished themselves as a unique and exclusive feature of Assassins Creed. Now that these are gone it just felt like something was really missing in the new game.

  

Final Verdict: AC Revelations gets an 8/10