Few series have established themselves with such speed and efficiency as Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft’s renaissance tale of political intrigue, vengeance and endless backstabbing. Where the first game, set in a medieval replication of the Holy Land, was beautiful but bland in terms of its repetitious gameplay, its creator’s willingness to throw resources at the franchise has resulted in yearly sequels, each one more intricate and stuffed with content than the last.
Ezio Auditore, the boisterous yet charming Italian lead of this nested trilogy, once again takes to new streets and rooftops, this time those of Constantinople, hastily erected in the previous year by an army of artists and coders. The storyline has you taking out Templars and foiling plots, but Assassin’s Creed has arguably become a game more about its side-quests than its main narrative, which is beginning to stumble as the scriptwriters race to lay a path ahead of the relentless stampede of players each year.
As such the map is always covered in quest markers that vie for your attention. Recruiting soldiers is as much a part of the game as buying up property, perusing bookshops, acquiring art and renovating rundown parts of town, so much so that its easy to forget your primary job description. Even a Tower Defence minigame manages to make its way into this year’s update, in which you protect threatened Assassin Strongholds from invading armies. The huge amount of content is generous, but the series has reached a tipping point where the distractions are now eroding the core.
And it’s a strong core. Traversing the city is a joy, as it’s always been, while the central premise that has you searching for five keys to unlock a door is reassuringly straightforward. Each key is located in a different dungeon, and these are the standout moments of the game; intricate, smart puzzles that mix platform design ingenuity with a purity of focus. Here, away from the hobbies of the outer city, the strengths of Assassin’s Creed shine, adding to the sense that the copious embellishments are all filler, not killer.
Where Assassin’s Creed Revelations has bloomed into fine maturity, however, is in the distinguished multiplayer. This area of the series never seemed like a particularly comfortable fit with a style of play that was always about the solitary stalker, hidden in a crowd, leaving a quiet crumpling body and no suspect in sight. This DNA isn’t a part of the boisterous games of cops and robbers that define modern multiplayer, which are often about teams hurtling about wide expanses. Restraint is a rarity in contemporary multiplayer design, and yet Assassin’s Creed is a game built around the art of subtlety.
As such Ubisoft Annecy has done well to thread this characteristic into Deathmatch, an old name for a new take on one of the core game types plucked from Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. Here each player is simultaneously a target and a pursuer. It’s your job to find a single pre-assigned target and take them down before any other players who share the same mark get to him or her. Meanwhile, you need to watch your back for the player who has you marked for kill. The tension between being both predator and prey is fascinating and gives the mode a near unique feel in contemporary games.
Tweaks from the previous game improve the experience immeasurably. Rather than following a compass to find your target, now you pick the character out of the crowd. The target portrait in the top corner changes colour when you’re close, but that’s the only visual read-out you have to help you in your aim. Audio hints let you know when a pursuer is close (via tension-building whispers that increase in volume and frequency as they move in for the kill).
Meanwhile a palette of different abilities such as the chance to disguise yourself as a different assassin or use throwing knives at a locked on target add further nuance and subtlety to the experience. Bonus points are given for more stylish takedowns, an important distinction when the aim of the game is to secure the highest number of points, rather than necessarily the most kills.
The other core mode, Artefact Assault, is a stealth-based take on that other stalwart of competitive gaming, Capture the Flag. Once again, this somewhat routine game mode is given fresh vibrancy thanks to a smart, considered approach, and a clutch of features that make sense in the universe. Two teams of four attempt to sneak into the opposing side’s territory to grab their artefact and deliver it back to their home turf. When in possession of your opponent’s artefact you can stun pursuers, but not kill them, so the emphasis is on evasion.
A huge array of social features have also been introduced into the game, principle of which is the friends HUB, which by allowing players to issue challenges to their friends, acts in a similar way to EA’s magnificent Autolog. There’s a great deal of content here for a game that only first flexed an online muscle last year.
Indeed, breadth is a watchword throughout Assassin’s Creed Revelations, a game bursting at its hastily-stitched seams with content, the single and multiplayer modes bulked out yet further with a series of exploration puzzles that allow Desmond, Ezio’s descendant, explore backstory. A wide game that offers countless hours of content for the perseverant, then. But at the same time, it’s a game that feels as though it’s making up for something with this embarrassment of interactive riches.
There’s no denying that, as a piece of virtual tourism through the ages, the series has no equal. But today, with endless piles of side-quests, there’s also a sense of ennui creeping in, a lack of focus that no amount of micro-improvements can disguise. As such, Revelations is a strong, assured conclusion to Ezio’s storyline, but one that begs for a fresh start reboot in whatever comes next.
No comments:
Post a Comment