It Took a Game Like Assassin's Creed...

Written by Michael Rohde Wednesday, 01 February 2012 06:00

It took a game like Assassin's Creed: Revelations to tear me away from Dark Souls. I'm thinking it's going to be worth it.

If you're a regular reader of GoozerNation, and I know you are, you are fully aware of my obsession with Dark Souls. I have written before that Dark Souls has consumed me. Dark Souls released in November and since then I've put in over 100 hours with the game. That might not sound like a lot, but you have to take into consideration that I only play for an hour or two, five or six nights a week. And I don't think I'm even close to finishing it. But 100 hours with any game, no matter how much you like it, is a lot of hours. That's why something had to give. Something had to come along and distract me enough to put a game other than Dark Souls into my console tray. It wasn't Guitar Hero 5. I got that one from a Goozex trade last week or so and I haven't even put it in the machine yet. I'll play it eventually. Probably on some night when I have a cheap six pack getting cold in the fridge and I want to relive my glory days of being a juke box hero. But that night hasn't arrived yet. Instead, something else arrived via a Goozex trade in yesterday's mail, and that was Assassin's Creed: Revelations.

My first experience with Assassin's Creed was in 2007 when the franchise was born. I knew little of the game except that I was vaguely interested in it. I also knew that my brother's birthday was coming up. So I made my one and only purchase at a GameStop and picked up the original Assassin's Creed. I borrowed it from him when he was done with it. And I really liked it. I liked the sequel even better. And when Brotherhood came out in 2010 I was hooked on the series. It's a very good game. The climbing mechanics went from bad to better to completely awesome. Assassin's Creed is one of those series that gets better over time.

Here we are in 2012 and the fourth game in the series is now available for $30 brand new on Amazon, even though it released as a Holiday blockbuster only a few months ago. It's still worth 1000 points on Goozex. I'm definitely planning on flipping Revelations to break even on the points when I'm done with the single player.

Last night I played the game for about an hour and completed the introduction to the game. It consisted of a lot of cutscenes. A LOT OF CUTSCENES. Can I emphasize that again? The first hour or so of the game is you sitting back and enjoying some beautiful cutscene animation. Yeah, you do some platforming and some swordplay, but there's no open world exploration. There is a carriage chase action sequence that you have to muddle through. It took me more retries than it should have to learn not to ride over the brown road, which causes far more damage than the bad guy ramming into you.

Besides the cutscenes and the forgettable carriage chase, I completely fumbled the controls. After playing so many months of Dark Souls, I had to completely relearn how the Assassin's Creed controls work. I'm hoping tonight the control scheme becomes second nature again and I can simply play the game instead of remembering that the right trigger is for running and not the B button... But I digress.

I left off last night where I think the intro to the game is over and I can delve into the open world exploration and start searching for the five keys. That's where I'm hoping the game will start to shine. I'm looking forward to playing much more of Assassin's Creed: Revelations.