Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Mod parkour

Perhaps the same could be said of Ubisoft’s attempts to widen the series’ established horizons. Take the ’Den Defence’ mini game, for example. Here Ezio becomes general, positioning his fellow assassins on roof tops to fend off invading Templars. At best it’s a half-baked take on tower defence; at worst it's indicative of developer willing to make bad decisions in its frenzed endeavour to justify the release of an overly familiar sequel.

Minecraft

At least the early acquired hook blade is a decent addition to Ezio's arsenal, the blade varying his usual free-running by having the player hit a button to deploy the extension, so enabling the crossing of bigger gaps and the use of taut ropes as zip lines.

Alas, this free running action still suffers from the series' long standing contextual issues. Ezio - or Altair during his short interludes - fluidly shimmying up buildings, and effortlessly hopping across rooftops one minute, before irritatingly leaping in the complete opposite direction the next - prompting much gnashing of teeth. I'd graciously admit to pilot error, but it happens often enough for the issue to certainly be a flaw of design.

The roof fairy

The game then begins barking at you to create a variety of bombs upon the numerous bomb production tables scattered throughout Constantinople – often in the unlikeliest of places.

To give Ubisoft its due, it has created a huge assortment of types, from poison gas and shrapnel grenades, to the more psychological blood bombs - which spatter victims in blood, so making them run for fear they've been wounded - and even trip wires.

Chasing status

It would, however, take a player of unrivalled patience to experiment with the myriad ingredients when the payoff is all but identical regardless: explosion, guards come running - or die screaming - and Ezio gets to where he needs to be. There’s also something odd about looting bodies only to find that each and every Templar carries fuses and bomb casings in their chasm-like pockets.