Assassin's Creed Revelations

Assassin's Creed Revelations is yet another open world, stealth, historical fiction, action-adventure game, about assassins... and some random guy named Desmond. This game actually comes after Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, but I was not fortunate enough to see it in the store or even hear about it until I looked it up. So this review will be based more on things I encounter through the game than plot twist and character development. The game starts out with Desmond the bartender stuck in the Animus on a strange island inside the Animus which is aptly named Animus Island. Also, for some reason the Animus thinks he is a corrupted file. A mysterious stranger who reveals himself to be subject 16 pops up and helps Desmond get back into the memories of Ezio because for some reason that will help him get out of the animus. You then get to go into the shoes of Ezio, who is now much older than he was in Assassin's Creed 2, and who is now on some random quest to get into Altiar's library. As soon as he gets to the library he is immediately ambushed (Who saw that coming) and defeated by a army of about 200 men. But then he escapes, and the actual game begins.
      The game has a few more perks in it than Assassin's Creed 2. For example, they made the story a bit more complex, and they didn't make the character a invincible killing machine, he actually gets hurt, and you have to play as him while he is limping around. Which is very interesting considering that when you are hurt you cant climb as good, you don't go as fast, and in general, you have to have a much more cautions approach when trying to lure guards close to a haystack.
      There are a ton of events that happen in-game that only happen once, which I am a bit disappointed about. Such as the rooftop defense (which I may or may not be disappointed about not having to do again), and the epic ship battle with the flamethrower. Also, they added bomb crafting. While some people may say that bombs are not needed and that its a bit overkill, I say I like it. It adds a whole new dimension to your attacks and allows you to go about the problem in 100 new and different ways, also it makes it feel as though you are progressing through time and not just being stuck with the same melee weapons over and over again.
      They polished up the climbing so you don't get stuck on invisible ledges or dance at the edge of a five foot drop, and there are a ton of new combat animations for your character so that fighting doesn't feel repetitive. Also, you change locations a lot and I never got tired of being in a single place for a extended period of time, and you got to go into a city that was inside a cave, which was a welcome change from constant rooftops and blue skies. They added a few quick time events, I remember one in particular that made the game more interesting. Sometimes the Templars would send a Assassin to assassinate you, when the assassin got close some high-strung music would start playing and if he gets in attack range you would have to fight him off in the form of a quick time event or he will stab you in the back. This  event will not kill you but it will severely harm you, so I do not recommend letting him stab you.
      Early on in the game you get a weapon called a hook-blade. This is a very ingenious tool/weapon that I have found to be very handy, considering you can do about twenty more assassination moves and can climb faster and higher than you could before. With the introduction of this weapon comes the introduction of a new gameplay mechanic, zip-lines. These handy little contraptions, which are conveniently scattered all over the city, allow you to travel much faster than you did before, and you can assassinate guards by simply jumping off the zip-line and landing on them, which makes for easy running assassinations.
      Along with all the cool new gear you get, you also get a whole army of assassins, who you can call upon to eliminate targets and distract guards, which makes your job that much easier. I cant find many faults with Assassin's Creed Revelations, maybe a bit of a spotty story line, but that may be because I haven't played Brotherhood. The carriage you have to drive at the beginning is lazy and hard to control, but then again I may just be bad at driving them. It is getting a bit easy, but that may be good for some people. The... err... yeah I got nothing. Overall its a good game, and I haven't even talked about multiplayer.
     Yes, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood has multiplayer. Its pretty fun, and extremely hard, considering you are facing a bunch of other highly trained assassins and not just some dumb guards. The main objective is to find and kill your target before he spots you, however, someone has been assigned to kill you as well so you have to avoid them while tracking your target. The only complaint I could have about multiplayer is that it takes forever to get all the good gear, but I guess that it's supposed to be like that. Once again, I have found another excellent Assassin's Creed game, the next one has some pretty big shoes to fill.

Assassin's Creed 2

Assassin's Creed 2 is the open world, stealth, historical fiction, action-adventure game following Assassin's Creed 1. It goes along the same story line except now Desmond the bartender has escaped from the evil clutches of Abstergo with the help of Lucy Stillman, who was with Abstergo just one game ago but was actually an assassin the entire time (Oh, look. Another plot twist). Together they went to a small team of assassins who (surprise surprise) had a bigger and better Animus.  So they tell Desmond he needs to train to be a assassin and that the Animus is the best way to do it, and thus the game begins. Except this time, instead of Altiar, you get Ezio; a Italian who is for some reason better than Altiar at climbing, and also has more emotion, so that you actually feel as though you can sympathize with him.
      As for gameplay, I would have to say that I like Assassin's Creed 2 a lot more than I do Assassin's Creed 1, if only because of the faster travel times and the extra polishing. The story goes along hand in hand with the first game so I would still give it a 8, although I might give extra brownie points for the seamless transition. Do you remember everything I said was wrong in the last review? Well they fixed those problems, at the expense of three others. Ill head right into the first one, which is Ezio wanting to throw himself of ledges and hug walls. For some reason whenever I try to get onto a rope-bridge or jump off a small ledge Ezio does a sort of dance at the ledge as though he's afraid of heights or something. Also, every now and then when I try to do a leap of faith he just jumps of and doesn't land in the hay. But those problems are few and far between, lets get into the real problems. Ubisoft decided to make little puzzle chambers which you can go through in orders to collect keys to unlock Altiar's armour, which was a really good idea. However, making it where you have no control over your camera angle is a very BAD idea. I cannot tell you how many times I fell off ledges because A. I could not see where I was going, and B. the camera changed positions suddenly when I was jumping and made me jump sideways instead of backwards. This little feature made me dread having to do the climbing puzzles and I hope they fix it next time. Next problem is the AI, its a little more buggy than Assassin's Creed 1, and has killed itself multiple times. I have had rooftop guards simply jumping at me when I was hanging off a ledge, and falling straight into some water which killed them instantly. Also I have had some particularly dense guards hit the guards in front of them when trying to take a swing at me, and they also lose sight of you very easily.
      Now lets look at the Pros, of which there are many. First of all you have a ton more movement options: including the jump-climb which is extremely useful, you move a lot faster than you did in Assassin's Creed 1, and the jumping and catching mechanics have been polished. Then there are the changes to fighting: you can fight with the hidden blade (E.G. You can block, regular attack, and better counter), You can assassinate people from ledges, hiding spots, and in mid-air. You have a ton more weapon choices (Which is actually pretty cool), you have smoke bombs, poison, and a gun (yes, a gun.), and you can disarm people. So, the pros definitely make up for the cons, not to mention I didn't even name all the pros and I couldn't find any more cons. You can even hire groups of people to do your dirty work for you, and with that coupled with the fact that you get two hidden blades and can do a ton of new assassinations, makes stealth gameplay even more viable than the last Assassin's Creed. Also for those who enjoy just running up to people and beating them to death, there are hammers, swords, brooms, and a smorgus board of dodges counters and attacks for you to use. All in all, I would say that Ubisoft has stepped up and made a better game than the last, which I am sure we are all glad to hear.

They didn't really get my good side on that poster.

Assassin's Creed

Assassin's Creed is a open world, historical fiction, action-adventure, stealth game that is about a person called Desmond Miles reliving the memories of his ancestors by using a machine called the "Animus". Although he seems to be the main character, you spend more time playing as Altiar, a assassin during the third crusade.  I wont spoil anything for those who have not played it but I will say that the game has a unique storyline that has a couple plot twist and would probably get a pretty high score if I were rating it. Oh wait... I am. Overall, in the story line department I would give it a 8 out of 10, although they may need to work on the part where we are supposed to love the character. It may just be me, but when going through the game it felt as though both Altiar and Desmond didn't really care. Every now and then a glimpse of emotion showed through. But mainly he just seemed to be lacking something that we could relate to. Especially Altiar, although I guess he is supposed to be a cold-blooded assassin.
      Lets move on to the gameplay, which is extremely good in my opinion. Throughout the game you have the option to be stealthy, or you can run through the streets kicking every guard you see in the shin. The stealth mechanics are good, although I don't quite get why going slightly slower than normal with your hands together in front of you helps you to be undetected. Considering you still have about 20 throwing knives strapped all over you, a sword dangling from your hip, and a large (but very effective) knife on your back. The combat mechanics are pretty good too, although it seems that the most effective thing to do is to just wait for them to attack so you can counter. There is a small lack of weapon customization, considering you only have what they give you and you cannot buy your own gear, but to be honest, I'm not sure if that's good or bad. It gets rid of any clutter you might have gotten and lets you stop worrying about money and focus on whether you want to sneak around people or just put your sword through them.
      The enemy AI is pretty well rounded all things considered. When attacking you in groups they make a neat little circle so that they wont kill each other and it wont be like a line to the whack-a-guard convention. also, while you can simply attack most of the enemies with a flurry of blows and walk away unscathed, some of them get smart and decide to counter attack you. Which is when you get into a staring contest waiting for someone to attack so the respective party can counter. I have to admit that I was thrown off guard when a enemy grabbed me for the first time and threw me to the side  making Altiar do a ugly face-plant into the nearest wall. As you progress you get abilities to counter such things, such as counter grab, which was extremely useful considering every other guard wanted to play "Who can toss the assassin farther".
      When trying to be sneaky and avoid confrontation you can use the "hidden blade", which ranks pretty high on the cool scale. It has a uncanny ability to kill guards silently, even when in the middle of a crowd. So after killing some poor random guard who was in your way you can just keep walking while people behind you call the guards and mutter to themselves how such a thing could have happened. Not to mention that the hidden blade is a one hit kill. There is one disadvantage though, you can only counter with the hidden blade in combat. This means that you cannot block or attack with it, and learning how to counter with it takes a lot of practice and attention to timing. The missions are a bit drawn out and repetitive. Every single time you want to assassinate someone you have to gather information by doing menial little chores, going through cut-scenes you can't skip and generally messing around. After you do all that you can finally assassinate the target, which is extremely fulfilling, even though after it you know you have to do the entire process all over again.     
     On to the next order of business, the freedom of climbing along rooftops and parkouring all over peoples houses like someone who just got out of the mental ward. This part of the game keeps it fast paced and makes it feel like a true open world game. You can use climbing to get to objectives in different ways, to be more sneaky (because we always need more sneaking), to get away from those annoying beggars, and to run away from guards. While we are on that subject, lets talk about how the guards detect you and begin chasing you. Assassin's Creed gives the guards a means of detecting you, Which comes in the form of having different levels of alertness depending on the situation. For example, when a person dies, and the guards see the body they will be on the lookout for any suspicious activity, mainly you running along the street knocking citizens over and laughing. Also, after a assassination on a high-priority target every single guard in the city will be on the lookout for you. Once they detect you because you staid in their sight for too long they will begin chasing you, and the only way to lose them on foot is to get out of their line of site and hide. You can hide in haystacks, on benches, in rooftop gardens, and with monks. 
     All in all I would have to say Assassin's Creed is a good game. Its not the best game in the entire world but it has good combat, good stealth, good AIs, all wrapped up in a good story with decent characters. Sure, it needs a few tweaks here and there, but When it comes to games, this is one of the better ones.

(You can get a great view of the beautiful scenery from the top of a tower)