A serial killer is on the rampage in Istanbul. Assassin's Creed: Revelations review

Desmond Miles, probably the least popular character in the Assassin's Creed series, is in serious trouble. After the events of the last installment of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, which we will not outline (the story continues), he fell into a kind of coma and is trapped in Anima. However, the device that helps him uncover the legacy of his historically active ancestors through his DNA continues to help him uncover the past of Italian assassin Ezio Auditore da Firenze.

While battling terrifying thoughts in the virtual environment of Animus, Desmond meets a man who calls himself Sixteen. The Animus is his forced home because he can no longer get out of it. To prevent his fate from following Desmond, he fulfills one Ezio event after another.

Ezio's story begins in 1511, a full twelve years after the events of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. The Assassin arrives in Constantinople, today's Istanbul, Turkey, to uncover the legacy of the legendary Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, the hero of the first installment of Assassin's Creed. We thus get to uncover memories within memories, the story sometimes gets tangled up, and we still can't get rid of the feeling that the series would benefit from omitting both Desmond and the Animus and focusing only on the historical part.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations is the last renaissance game and the last game featuring Ezio. Playing as Desmond, sometimes in first person as well, is straightforward, and the same goes for Altaïr, who you certainly don't play as much as the game's cover suggests. He is a minor character and his levels are quite linear. It only acts as a small distraction. Even so, his presence will please, especially the fans.

The main playable character of the game, which reveals the true open-ended gameplay of Assassin's Creed, is Ezio, now much grayer, more experienced and more sarcastic. Constantinople is a beautiful, vast and sophisticated city. In it you will find countless details, residents, shops to renovate and assassin lairs to occupy.

But it wouldn't be the Assassin's Creed series if the insidious and manipulative Templars who want to take over the city didn't appear on the scene. The story is good, but the period virtual backdrops and valuable information you can read and learn from the game are much more captivating.

Stealth gameplay combined with free movement in the environment is the most polished yet in Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Climbing and running on the towers and rooftops of historic Istanbul is still great fun and the feeling of free movement is priceless. In addition, your acrobatic and movement abilities are even richer than they were in the past.

The local assassins give you a hook that you can use to grab onto buildings, giving you a few extra centimeters to grab onto when jumping. The same goes for climbing up a building. You will also get further than without a hook. The tool will also come in handy when going down ropes suspended from the roofs of buildings.

Due to its shape, the hook is also suitable for combat. And even though your movement abilities have been enhanced, long distance transportation is more complicated. Unlike the previous works, there are no horses here. Riding on them was replaced only by a few sequences where Ezio is dragged across the land by a team of horses, so that later he can drive some kind of carriage pulled by him.

Recruiting assassins, training them and sending them on missions is slightly redesigned and even clearer. In order to get a volunteer for your association, you will first have to gain someone's sympathy. But an ungodly man, caught for stealing food for his own family, is always happy to repay you. Kindred assassins can be called for help, or sent to different cities on various missions. However, their help is unavailable during this time.

Once the assassins are experienced enough, they can take care of some of your lairs. During their defense, one of the other novelties will come across, namely a variation on real-time strategy, not unlike the so-called "tower defense" genre.

You have to protect the entrance to your building, so you deploy assassins, snipers on the roofs, build barriers on the ground and face waves of templars. Fun for a while, but this strategic mini-game doesn't take the game anywhere further, and its presence feels a bit like a punch in the eye. Like something the developers added just to not say that the game has little news.

The game tries to be believable, and thus brings a fair amount of violence. Ezio kills with his shooting knives, but he also occasionally makes direct contact. The handling of fights has remained unchanged from last time, once again you can fight multiple opponents at once and change the targets of attacks. Ezio is an even more skilled swordsman and has learned several new moves. Sometimes you can get your hands on a stronger weapon like a mace, and some of the firearms like a rifle or a crossbow will be enough to eliminate the Templars from the roofs.

The paranoid multiplayer is back, in which you spend most of the time trying to kill your opponent while you watch your own neck. New modes have been added, such as Deathmatch, in which the radar disappears to reveal the approximate location of the enemy and also removes clones, so you know exactly who to go after. It's less suspenseful and more straightforward.

Artifact Assault is a variation on the classic Capture the Flag multiplayer mode. This mode probably stands out the most on Xbox Live. Your task is to get the enemy's flag to your lair. You can change the appearance of your character for online matches, and it's possible that the multiplayer game will keep you busy for a while. However, we believe that Assassin's Creed is primarily a single-player game, and the multiplayer still feels "not to say". In terms of quality, it cannot be compared to the story mode at all.

At first glance, the game looks the same as last time and it must be said that we did not find any changes in the Anvil graphics engine. Still, the game looks great, the visibility is great, and there are so many moving characters on the screen that it sometimes makes you dizzy. The musical accompaniment is brilliant, as is the professional dubbing, which cannot be faulted.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations thus brings quite a few novelties, some of which are debatable, others fine. However, they don't take the game too far, because it is driven by the classic, several-part polished assassin gameplay full of sneaking, jumping, climbing and silent killing