Assassin's Creed: Revelations

[Roderick]

I might be, but then I am known for my abominable taste!

[miffy495]

I'm with Rodi. Not to the same extent, as I still think that AC2 was an improvement over AC, but I love the first game way more than a lot of people seem to and it was the breath of fresh air that AC2 wasn't. I like both settings a lot, especially as they're places that games pretty much never explore, but was such a fan of AC1's sense of place that I played all the way through Bloodlines, the sub-par PSP spin off featuring Altair on Cyprus. Twice. And I sill liked it.

[Orv]

Fair enough, you crazies.

I've only put in three matches, but I can already tell I'm going to be putting in a lot of time with Revs MP. It's a lot more refined now. For instance, the stun button works. How many people do we have with it on PC? I think we tried to get a MP game going for Brotherhood but it never got there, maybe we'll have better luck here.

[Thrik]

I am kind of excited about the idea of enjoying AS1's kind of locations but with the excellent gameplay of AS2 and beyond, which is what Revelations seems to offer. I think I'm seriously going to have to leave it like two years before I play it though or I'm just not going to enjoy it.

[miffy495]

Fair enough, you crazies.

I've only put in three matches, but I can already tell I'm going to be putting in a lot of time with Revs MP. It's a lot more refined now. For instance, the stun button works. How many people do we have with it on PC? I think we tried to get a MP game going for Brotherhood but it never got there, maybe we'll have better luck here.

I fully intend to have purchased it on Steam by the end of the year. If it goes on sale for the Christmas/boxing day thing, then awesome! If not, I intend to use some of the money that a grandparent will inevitably give me for birthday/christmas to purchase it anyway. I'd be up for a game on PC now and then.

[Orv]

Is that. . .is that John de Lancie? (Bill. I have yet to finish Brotherhood, and at the rate I'm going, I'll be done with Revelations before the next two hours are out.)

E: So. . .that was a thiiiiiiing?

So I mainlined the story, avoiding unnecessary bullshit time sinks, up to and including dens, recruiting and the economy. The only things I bought;

- The mandatory first spaulders

- Mamluk Chest and Greaves

- Whatever Riding Spaulders

- Heavy Sheath and French Bastard Sword

I barely had the money for that, and I only got the sheath and sword in the 6th Sequence.

Anyway, still have plenty of gripes. Lemme try to cover non-spoiler gripes first.

- Fuck anything to do with carriages. Those controls are still horrendous and strapping extra actions onto did more to piss me off than anything in this game.

- I'm not sure if I didn't notice in 2/Bro, but high-profile running seems to attract the full attention of guards a lot faster this time around. Bothersome, if only rarely.

- Bombs? What bombs?

- Kindly fuck Janissaries. I'm okay with one at a time, but when you're busy with one Mask and another one shows up and shoots you and you eat the full combo of the first one, you're basically dead. My damn steam name contains the word janissary and arghhhhhhhhhh. Hate.

- I only realized shortly before the end of Sequence 8 that I never once used a lift.

- The hookblade is pretty cool! Certainly wish it was around sooner in the series.

Constantinople seemed like an AC1 city built by Venice/Firenze standards of world design. I didn't mind it, but it was a bit tiresome at times with the absolute preponderance of Leap of Faith points. Ziplines are useful, but only to a limited degree. Outside of missions I used them maybe ten, fifteen times. The split of Galata and the other side of the harbor seemed needless. They've certainly handled as large areas before.

And now, SPOILERTH

Bravo Ubisoft, you recognized how much the players hate minstrels and you not only had us beat the shit out of them, but had the funniest part of the game involve being a terrible minstrel with awesome songs. Well done.

I avoided the Assassin's Tombs in AC2 as much as I could, because I was never good at PoP, and don't really enjoy parkour puzzles. Being forced into them four times was, surprisingly, only aggravating one of those times. (That being the first cavern under the Galata tower.) Every other time it was a fun exercise in fairly easy freerunning that really just makes you feel like a badass.

While I liked the story of the Altair segments (mostly), the only gameplay I enjoyed from them was escorting the Polos out of the city. Because what the fuck. I don't really have much to say on the-... no, actually.

"Sit and rest a moment." That actually got me to smile sadly and react a little. Brava.

Cappadoica was neat, if mildly annoying. I actually cheesed both the escape fight and the ones to get to the gunpowder fairly easily. The central pillar climb seems like it was just there to say "Look what we made!" but whatever.

I actually slow clapped when Sulzekah (whatever his name is) stood back up, that was a neat trick, and hopefully they don't use it again, it would spoil it.

Who the fuck, uses GREEK FIRE, in a HARBOR, when you're LEAVING BY BOAT. (Still the single most Michael Bay thing in AC to date, so good on them.)

I thought the little writing to Claudia interludes were nice. Not a whole lot to say there, just a nice touch. I liked nearly all the characters this time around, they were all well done. Suleimain especially, though I suppose that's intentional.

Right, I won't say much on this, because there isn't really a lot that needs to be said, but did anyone simply walk through the Arsenal at the end, just to be a complete badass? As much as I hated the carriage sequences, the parachute assassinations were pretty cool. And the final fight was just cool.

And finally, yet another fucking ending that makes me want to go out and kill Dan Brown.

/Spoilerth

So, now that I have the only MP character with having, MP anyone?

Edited December 8, 2011 by Orvidos

[toblix]

Regarding the guards spotting you, you know there are two kinds, right (yellow/red on the minimap). It took some time for me to realise the difference.

[Orv]

Regarding the guards spotting you, you know there are two kinds, right (yellow/red on the minimap). It took some time for me to realise the difference.

Ahhh, okay. I saw that, but so rarely looked at the minimap while sprinting around. Good to know, if a bit too late.

[Nappi]

Finished it. I was a bit worried that the tower defense stuff would ruin my experience but I only ever had to complete one (the tutorial). In other words, I trained 7 master assassin's by the end of chapter 4.

The actual story missions were probably the least enjoyable part of the game. What is more, some of the missions seemed rushed, almost to the point of being broken. The checkpoints in one race didn't register me passing by them 50% of the time, for example, and some of the chases were arranged so that you very nearly lost the target if you didn't immediately start running in the right path. Quite a few of 100% sync challenges were unfair or simply stupid (though, I didn't bother with them).

The core gameplay is still lovely, though. I enjoyed the change of scenery too, but unfortunately Constantinople wasn't drastically different from, say, Rome of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

The loading times were horrible.

And finally, yet another fucking ending that makes me want to go out and kill Dan Brown.

The writing in Assassin's Creed makes Dan Brown look like a literary genius. I'm still boggled by the fact that a triple-A game series can have an overarching storyline as insultingly horrible as this.

[Thrik]

OK, didn't quite leave it two years but it's now been a pretty long time since I half-finished Brotherhood and have given this a go. Now I don't know about you guys, but that was one of the most surprisingly thrilling game intros I've played for a while — after the relatively slow lead-ins that the previous two games had this was exciting as fuck, and the presentation of it was quite unlike what I've seen in the series beforehand.

I expect things will settle into a more traditional kind of gameplay before long having been ejected back into Animus Island for the first time after becoming Ezio, but I'm pretty happy with what I've seen. If this kind of pace can be kept up it could be the best Assassin's Creed I've played by far, if not then I guess at least it's taste of how they might be upping the ante with Assassin's Creed 3 to distinguish it from its predecessors (beyond setting).

Oh, and the music is just on fire this time.

[Erkki]

I'm trying to play this game on PC but I think it just doesn't work well at all on a 4:3 monitor I thought it was a mouse/keyboard issue and connected a PS3 controller, but it's not much better that way. So I think it just might need widescreen to work fully as intended. I did enjoy Ass 2 and AssBro and I played those on PS3 behind a TV.

[JonCole]

I actually made the potential mistake of playing Revelations earlier this year. I call it a mistake mostly because the general cohesion of the mechanics (as plentiful as they were) in Revelations trumped 3 at every turn and really made me take a look at what I was getting in this newest version. Sure, the stakes aren't nearly as high narratively but at some point I prefer iteration in gameplay rather than just throwing together a bunch of systems haphazardly without context.

[Roderick]

I've finally started playing the new Assassin's Creed... Revelations, that is! Let me post some of my ramblings here as I progress through the game.

First thoughts first: I loved Brotherhood and think it's easily the best game in the series so far. It was such a pointed, elegant game, compared to the blustering breadth of AC2 and the beginner's flaws of the first game. I think Brotherhood might actually end up in my top 10 of favorite games. In line with the development of the series, I expect Revelations to be just as streamlined. Perhaps not more so, since they've hit a sweet spot. Instead, Revelations will probably change some dynamics to spice things up.

And sure enough, we have tower defense. I'm not sure this is a better alternative to the Borgia towers or the cool sidemissions to steal or sabotage Leonardo's warmachines. But I guess at least it makes it interesting.

I like that we travel back to Masyaf in the beginning. I didn't recognize it from the cool trailer with Woodkid - Iron as its soundtrack, but in the game it's very cool. AC revels in building up iconic places and then returning to them for bouts of nostalgia. Brotherhood did it with modern day Monteriggioni, this time we travel back to Altair's crib.

Istanbul is a cool place. I don't know yet (don't tell me, please!) if we'll visit other cities, but I hope not. Part of what made Brotherhood so cool was that it took place in one location. Scaled back in size, the game came onto its own. Traveling all over a region to different cities in earlier games meant you never felt truly at home in any one of them. Rome is 'mine', by contrast. I hope I can say the same of Istanbul later on.

The pacing so far is good. Yusuf is a fun character and I digggg old Ezio with his cool beard. He started out as such a silly little punk, but he grew on me as he got older himself. Fantastic arc, spread over three games. That takes vision.

One thing I don't really like so far are the in-between bits with Desmond in first person mode. Not that they're bad, but they come instead of the cool/weird/disconcerting 'historic puzzles' from the previous two games, where you were tasked to find weird emblems or sigils in the world and then solve brainteasers. Those may not have been all stellar material, but I liked that it added yet another layer of things you could do in the world. Now all that stuff takes place outside it, and that makes it meh.

The new hook is cool, but not really necessary. The bombs are fun, but holy cow does Ezio now have a ton of weapons at his disposal. Can't even fit the whole shebang on one dial anymore, two are needed! That's prime feature creep, people.

As always, I'm playing without HUD, without looking at the map, and in French. Istanbul, le carrefour du monde!

[miffy495]

Yeah, I think Revelations gets a bad rap. It's a fine game, it's just that people were burnt out on Ezio by the time it came out. For what it's worth, I really enjoyed playing and beating it, even though it took me stretching the game over about 8 months to do so. I was a little burnt out myself.

[pabosher]

As always, I'm playing without HUD, without looking at the map, and in French. Istanbul, le carrefour du monde!

French? The only extra language option for me was Russian.

[Roderick]

I might have taken it too far. The experience of playing mapless is causing a lot of tiresome doldrums as I need to search the entire world for specific waypoints, and don't know where the danger zones are. Also, the weapon selecting seems finnicky enough that I want to see it in the HUD. So I might switch some of it on again. It's hurting the flow, which overrules my pleasure of not looking at interface.

I'm sort of projecting here, but I feel that since Ubisoft is primarily a French developer, the French version is super good. The voice acting is splendid, but I haven't listened to others so maybe the quality is high everywhere, also in Russian.

Revelations got a bad rep as soon as it was announced, but so did Brotherhood. I'm happy to see that, at least in this thread, a lot of people discovered - just like me! - that iteration can actually mean a terrific experience and should not be discarded out of hand as a bad thing.

[pabosher]

I actually don't like Revelations that much. It's OK -- good enough to finish -- but Brotherhood is by far my favourite in the series thus far.

[miffy495]

Yeah, I think for it's leap over 2, Brotherhood definitely has the place in my mind as "best". That said, Revelations is still only a little behind it. Worst you can say is that they added too much and made it cumbersome. If they'd given more time between Brotherhood and Revelations, it probably would be remembered much better. AC fatigue was setting in though, and I think you can really see that now with AC3's reception. (Note: I have not played AC3 yet, so it may well be as bad as people say. That said, I don't trust popular opinion on AC at this point, as I liked Revelations and liked AC1 enough to complete it twice.)

[Roderick]

Yeah, that's probably wise. I'm sure that there are quite a lot of problems with AC3, as there are with all the titles in the series (except for Brotherhood, y'all!), but it seems like this is a case of mismanaged expectations. It's pretty funny, because this has been a problem with all the games. In the first two, people expected the world and then came out disappointed when they were inevitably deeply flawed in some way. Now, sure, that's perfectly legitimate. But it gets a little crazy when five games in, people are still drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid.

Fool me five times, shame on me. Everyone should know at this point that AC is a weird and convoluted thing that does some things brilliantly and is in other areas. Especially the big games set in new eras, since there will be lots of experimentation there.

About Revelations: I can confirm that I'm not a fan of the tower defense stuff. I dislike passionately that you can lose areas and have to do them over again. I might just skip all that stuff entirely, if I can get away with it. Ugh.

[miffy495]

I'm pretty sure I did exactly one tower defense mission, the one required by the story. Honestly not even sure how you start the other ones. Finished the game just fine.

[Nappi]

I recruited and trained assassins as fast as possible, so that I wouldn't have to deal with tower defense ever. If I recall correctly, fully trained assassin's will never lose territory. It was a stupid mechanic that was replaced with different but equally stupid mechanics in Assassin's Creed III.

[Roderick]

Yeah, as far as I know, the Byzantine templars will attack your territory when your notoriety goes up too much? I kept giving money to heralds, but apparently not fast enough to nullify the mayhem I caused with bombs or something. Anyway, I can keep the territory safe if I have a fully leveled (lvl 10?) assassin as chief there? Worth stocking up on dudes first for, I'd say.

[Nappi]

Hmm.. It seems that at level 10 you get to do the first part of a Master Assassin, and the second part at level 15. After that the region is permanently yours.

[Erkki]

How do I recruit the assassins anyway? I'm just past the first tower defense mission and have just been roaming around causing trouble after that.

[melmer]

Recruits appear on your mini map, I can't remember if they are all visible or if they just pop up occasionally when you are near by

Maybe you need to further the story more to open this up