Assassin’s Creed: Revelations seems to have made it quite obvious that what I look for in these games is quite different from everyone else playing them. By “these games” I mean either the Assassin’s Creed franchise itself or the Open-World genre.

The revelation (tee hee) that I’m looking for something different in Open-World games is hardly new. What has me scratching my chin over Assassin’s Creed, on the other hand, is the fact that most people suggested I skip Revelations. It seems that the rest of the world insists Brotherhood is the best the franchise has had to offer, and yet I found it to bring some of the flaws of the franchise front-and-center. Revelations, on the other hand, seemed to deliver the sort of experience and improvements I can appreciate most.

While everyone else couldn’t stand all the little side missions in the first Assassin’s Creed, I enjoyed nothing more than wandering the city, nabbing up each little quest marker and completing everything in an available area. The story mission always came last. The structure in Revelations is somewhat different, but it opens the world up more than Rome had been in Brotherhood. The player is able to spend several hours just wandering the city, completing the different quests and capturing the various towers with only a couple of blocked off areas.

This is where Assassin’s Creed gets its chance to shine best. Present the player with an objective, then allow them to figure out a path on their own. Hell, Assassin’s Creed could be the next Deus Ex if they weren’t so insistent on those strict Hollywood style action set-pieces. A sort of “rehearsed gameplay” design philosophy, where the only way to get it right is to try, try again. I spoke of this frequently in my Brotherhood review, as it seemed to plague that game worse than any other iteration of the franchise.

As such, the hook-knife upgrade made in Revelations is perhaps one of the best additions to the franchise. It not only makes travel around the city easier, faster and more enjoyable, but it also provides more options for the player. Certain objects in the environment begin to have dual use instead of a single purpose. A player can now simply use the hook to flip over a guard while fleeing, making it easier to escape instead of being forced into confrontation. In other words, it is an upgrade that speaks to the best parts of Assassin’s Creed gameplay: more options.

Yet this wouldn’t be Assassin’s Creed if they didn’t get something wrong for everything they did right. Notoriety has always been a tad silly since its addition in Assassin’s Creed II, what with being able to just tear down a Wanted poster at any time to bring the rating down. A player can literally get away with anything without having to suffer major consequences. In addition, being able to purchase and renovate shops can cause a player’s wealth to explode quite early in the game.

In order to try and make notoriety meaningful while controlling the rate at which a player purchases and renovates shops and guilds, Revelations has made the latter influence the former. Each time you purchase a shop your notoriety increases significantly. In addition, the number of ways to reduce your notoriety has decreased. The easy methods of ripping down posters are no longer present. You must instead wait until you can pay off a herald or take down a key witness surrounded by guards (an act in itself which may increase your notoriety).

It was a noble effort to try and make notoriety less of a joke while also providing greater control over the player’s money over time, but it instead reduces the likelihood a player will bother with renovating all the shops this time around. Especially as the ultimate cost of notoriety is the chances the Templars may attack a stronghold and thus force the player into a Tower Defense mini-game that ranges from being kind of fun to a pain in the ass.

Ubisoft’s greatest struggle with Assassin’s Creed is in trying to figure out what they want the gameplay to be. It is certainly one thing to offer a variety, especially if you want to reach a broad audience, but what you end up with is a lot of people that like half of your game and dislike the rest. Or you have conflicting opinions in what the sequels should have.

It seems unanimous, however, that Assassin’s Creed is at its worst when they are trying to railroad a player along a certain path. Whether it’s part of a side quest or part of the story, forcing a player to approach their objective in a linear manner for the sake of seeming more like Hollywood only results in a more frustrating experience. It forces the player to sit back and figure out what the developer’s script says rather than mapping out their own solution. This is perhaps why the Templar strongholds were one of the better additions in Brotherhood, executed best here in Revelations by being available as early as possible. It provides an environment that the player can approach at any time, giving them free reign to reach the objective.

If Ubisoft wants their game to be a linear story told in a specific manner, then they should either give up making a series of games and move on to film or refocus the game so it is more streamlined for their purpose. Either way, they need to figure out what it is they want to do instead of trying to throw as many ideas into a box as possible.

P.S. The Portal-esque puzzles are a lot better than the mind-numbing brain-benders from the previous two, which also helps make Revelations the best of the “Ezio Trilogy”.