Just Let Ezio Die Already
In short, so far this game has been everything I feared Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood would be. When that game was announced, the obvious kneejerk reaction to take was along the lines of, “Oh, they are cranking out a sequel in a year, it’s just gonna be hasty filler with a new map and oh look a crappy forced multiplayer mode to cut down on the used sales.” What actually came out was admittedly an evolutionary step over AC2, but it was hardly “filler”.
It tweaked the combat and traversal systems ever so slightly with great results. The focus on a single city in detail worked, yet still left room for a variety of environments on the outskirts. It added the whole “train up your posse of henchmen” aspect which was great fun. The multiplayer was badass. And the overarching story was advanced in significant ways. It really did feel like an Assassin’s Creed 3, apart from the re-use of Ezio as the main character.
Revelations, on the other hand, really is just a rehash of Brotherhood. It’s in Constantinople, which means there are more domes around and people are dressed differently, but apart from that it feels monotonous and generic. (And, so subtly I can’t really describe it effectively, it is way more annoying to get around in.) The only refinement to speak of to the systems are the “hook” blade which is pretty OK, and bombs, which are stupid.
Let me elaborate on stupid bombs for a second and how they make this game annoying. So, now you can carry bombs. Not just the smoke bombs you’ve always had, but a complex array of bomb types that you craft from components. You choose a shell component that affects whether the thing bounces, sticks, is a mine, etc., a gunpowder type which affects the radius, and the actual effect component that turns it from a smoke bomb to an explody bomb or whatever.
The thing is this: there are already way too many ways to get your business done in this game. There are like 8 ways to stab somebody, 10 ways to shoot them, and lots of ways to sneak around people or hide. These bombs are a), annoying to craft, b) yet more things cluttering your inventory that you have to select your weapons from, and c) just unnecessary. Of course, having the option there just to mess with when you’re bored has a certain value, much like sometimes it’s fun to poison a guard rather than just shoot him even though the poison is kind of slow and dangerous. Still though, these bombs just feel like a bridge too far.
And the game has this sad, almost pitiful air of desperation about it for you to use these bombs. Everybody inexplicably drops bomb components. There are chests full of bomb components strewn about liberally. There are bomb assembly stations beside each assassin’s messaging nest. There are challenges and achievements for using bombs. There are seperate missions to unlock new types of bombs. This game is constantly whining to you, “Please use my bombs! They’re really cool, I promise! Pleeeeeeeeaase!” You can feel some developer muttering under his breath that he worked for weeks on coding this so they better not axe the feature for next time.
There’s also a tower defence minigame, which is triggered when you let your infamy rise too high. I’m not opposed to this in principle, but in practice its hard to follow and controls awkwardly, yet despite this manages to be simplistic and dull.
Finally, even the story screams “filler”. The plot itself, thus far, is blatant wheel-spinning, as it centers on Desmond trying to escape an animus-induced coma, thus allowing a full game to take place without needing to advance the “real world” situation by any amount. The in-animus story is near self-parody levels in its blatant “Ezio must find the 5 secret keys to the Ancient Relic,” tale, only now it doesn’t even have the personal-revenge elements that motivated its two predecessors. It also feels… cheap, in a funny way. Since Desmond is in a coma the entire time, you only hear the voices of the other characters which conveniently saves some animation effort. The in-animus chapters are each introduced by a boring, “Ezio narrates a letter to his sister,” voice over that plays over a 5 second animation loop that sticks out like a sore thumb.
Undoubtedly there’s going to be a token revelation/plot twist introduced out of nowhere near the end, but it’s basically going to have nothing to do with what’s going on now.
I even have qualms with the multiplayer, though none of any significance. It is pretty much a continuation of Brotherhood and its DLC, only with some tweaks to scoring and the perks. I don’t really like any of the various game modes apart from the basic Wanted and Assassination, as I don’t find the mechanics lend themselves to capture-the-flag type rules. There are some inherent flaws with the game design that lead to the game being decided by luck, given players of equal skill, but if you put aside concerns about always finishing first, the moment to moment satisfaction of making a perfect kill or escape is great fun. You just need to swallow the fact that the other guy won because his kills kept getting Poach and Savior awards and he didn’t constantly respawn right next to his hunter.
My qualms lie mostly with the metagame, which has introduced a currency rewards system that you have to spend to unlock various perks and such. This would be fine, only you also need to gain levels to unlock these things too. Which would sort of be fine except I’m constantly levelling up faster than I can pay for the things I can now use. It was a problem in Brotherhood but it is worse now, where the game is like “Congratulations, you have unlocked an additional slot for a custom class! Now play for 4 more hours before you can afford to unlock any abilities to equip in it!”
Brotherhood looked like a disposable sequel, but I think it’s essential to the series and wouldn’t recommend anyone skip it. So far, Revelations feels like something I’m going to wish I’d read a Wikipedia summary of instead.
Trackbacks