Assassin’s Creed Revelations

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.

This article was first published on The Telegraph site here.