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Assassin’s Creed 2 was one of the most surprising comebacks of this generation. Its predecessor showed great promise, but the game was eventually a repetitive bore-fest. Ubisoft learned from its inadequacies and followed it up with a stunning open world action-adventure that introduced a new character, new locations, an intriguing story, and game-changing gameplay elements.

Such was its success that Ubi decided to make Assassin’s Creed, an annual franchise. Brotherhood, which followed, introduced multiplayer and new locations, but didn’t do much to move the series forward. A year later, we have Revelations.

The latest game was marketed as the conclusion to the story of Ezio Auditore, the protagonist since Assassin’s Creed 2. Another hook was the ability to also play as Altair, the hero from the first game. Altair, however, only appears intermittently and aside from providing a bit of nostalgia for the fans, doesn’t really do much to mix things up. Ezio, on the other hand, has now visibly aged and evolved into a respected figurehead for the Assassin’s Order in their fight against the Templars. Sadly, what should have been an epic end to Ezio’s story is instead an unfulfilling ride that really doesn’t evolve the franchise either in terms of gameplay or story.

The action now moves away from Italy to Constantinople. It’s no match for the beautiful Italian cities, but the Middle Eastern architecture and the busy city bazaars ooze a charm of their own.

Ezio is equipped with a hook blade that he can use in combat situations and during the free running segments to reach far away ledges. While this does help, it also adds a lot of interruption to the otherwise fluid platforming. Revelations is also obsessed with bomb-making, constantly giving you ingredients and filling the city with bomb-crafting stations, which will let you create various sorts of bombs to create diversions, incapacitate enemies or just blow them up. That’s fine, but it does defeat the purpose of being a stealthy assassin, as does the clunky nature of the hook blade mechanic.

Another new gameplay addition to Revelations, comes in the form of den defense. There’s a constant cat and mouse game between the Assassins and Templars to control various areas of the city, and when Templars attack an Assassin stronghold, you are tasked with protecting it via a tower defence mini game that doesn’t work too well. Restricted to a low vantage point, and the control options feel clunky and way too limited. What’s more, these mini games play out almost the same way each time. A bit more work has gone into recruiting assassins, with a deeper, menu-driven mini-game that lets you send recruits to other cities to reclaim strongholds, levelling them up in the process.

It’s disappointing that these additions don’t work well and come at the expense of what we’ve loved about the past games. The horseback riding and the cryptic glyphs on iconic landmarks; they’re gone now. The game does try to introduce a bit of variety via first-person platform puzzles when you play as Desmond, but this too is poorly executed.

There is sort of an ‘Oh, my god!’ moment at the end, but it really doesn’t make up for the lack of direction that plague most of the game before it. The multiplayer is Revelations’ saving grace. As in Brotherhood, you still stealthily stalk your target with a blimp on the radar as your only guide, while at the same time watching your back as another player stalks you. The new Death Match mode takes away that radar, while the Capture-the-flag mode replaces the stealth with free-running as you outrun enemies to take flags back to your base.

Much of what made Assassin’s Creed 2 great is still here, but the devs seem to be running out of ideas, taking away things we loved and half-heartedly replacing them with elements that just don’t fit. It’s time for Ubisoft to turn things around once again.

Platforms: Xbox 360 (Rs 699), PS3 (Rs 699), PC (Rs 999)