Assassin's Creed: Revelelation (2011) Ubisoft

Assassin's Creed is one of my all time favorite series, one and two were god tier games. Then Brotherhood was released and the series seemed to go downhill, elements were added that seemed to deviate from the series and detracted from assassinations. They also started trying to get Desmond a personality, which is akin to giving a rock a mustache.  It seemed they focused more on the multiplayer than many of the aspects that gave the other games real meat.

Then Revelations came out, the game that focused on Desmond and really tried to give him a personality and make you understand him. With his personality being that of mud, this failed, but they did finally explain his back story ... which is ... nice? The story finally ended the history of Ezio and Altiar, this is almost worth buying they game ... or just watch it on youtube. The newest things they add to the game almost destroy the strategy purposed of the game, the bombs. The second new aspect is a tower defense game. That's right you can play assassins vs templars in a linear tower defense game. This is just what every Assassin's Creed game needed.

Assassin's Creed II: Revelations - Is a game created by Ubisoft in 2011 as the second "expansion pack" of Assassin's Creed II. It takes place in Constantinople with Ezio as the lead once again. The series seems to have devolved from where it was going.

Story line:The storyline for Revelations is very convoluted and at times not even present. The story is sort of split into two branches. A small area exploration searching for key location that you got from a hidden book. The other branch is some strange revolution or something that's happening. They don't really explain it, Ezio shows up and recruits near 50 young assassins to control places around town and around Europe. Ezio is looking for keys to get inside Altair's library and finds out the keys are in Constantinople. After this nothing much was explained to much and it can get confusing as to why you are doing what you are, its better to just follow what the mini-map says.

Character design: This hasn't changed much, the characters have always pretty much looked the same. The NPC's look good and they develop well ... sort of. All I'll say is that this game really ties up all of the loose ends.

Game Design:For a game called Assassin's creed, the number of assassination is extremely limited. The majority of the game is spent babysitting young assassins, tailing people and jumping from place to place dicking around. The latest installment to the game is the tower defense game. The addition is, besides the tutorial, is completely optional. When you are "known" by the Templars you may have to do this tower defense game unless you: Bribe a Herald, Kill an Official or just die during a mission. Doing this (enough) removes the alertness of the templars. To prevent the tower defense game all together all you have to do is level you young assassins to "master assassin" and make them the leader of the Den that gets attacked. Do this for all of the Dens and there will never be a problem, ever.

The, few, assassination that there are, are very challenging and fun. The biggest flaw of these few assassinations is that you need to kill them in a specific way to get a "full synchronization" which takes away a portion of the planning phase of the kill. The other missions are pretty much following people, fighting guards and walking around.

         The tower defense mini game is actually pretty much despite how rare it is to actually play it.
         The game requires a small amount of strategy and some thinking. This makes it fun to play and
         different from what you would expect from an Assassin's Creed game. It's worth busting your
         ass trying to play it.

         Tactical Aspects:The major tactical aspects of this game are, bombs and how to use them,

                                      knowing your surroundings, understanding what your items do and
                                      knowing how to utilize your surroundings. The majority of these
                                      have been in the other games, save the various number of bombs
                                      and how to use them right.

               Bomb's - Besides the smoke bomb they added several new bombs and categorized
                              them.They are: Lethal, Tactical and Diversion. Most of these traps are
                              completely useless. Some of these can be used to add more thought to
                              what you're doing, while others completely ruin the fun and thought and
                              just make everything die and you get away with no issues.

               Surroundings - Not much has changed. I don't think they added any new hiding spots and I

                                         don't think they really changed much from the hiding spots.

                Items - Besides the bombs, they didn't add much to the game. I think they added new
                swords and hammers but, that's it.

In conclusion: As an Assassin's Creed game, I really don't feel that this really fits the bill. With the minimum amount of assassinations, focusing on building your young assassins and a weak storyline. This game just doesn't feel like a real Assassin's Creed game. Ending the Ezio and Altair stories is nice but it doesn't make up for lacking in what makes this series ... well this series. As an expansion it's fine, but for a full retail price game it's not worth it.

          TL;DR: It's an okay expansion, but for full retail price it is not worth it. Wait for the the price to
                         drop.