Mass Effect 3: Revisited

There are two things I want to cover about ME:3.  The first part is regarding the multiplayer and the second part is a giant spoil-rific discourse on the ending of the game.

Multiplayer

ME3's multiplayer (MP) is great.  For anyone who knows me or has read a good deal of this blog, you know I'm not a fan of MP modes for most games unless I'm playing with people in the room.  I hate CoD and Halo online because it's you, Mr or Mrs Normal vs a virtual phalanx of 12 year olds with mouths that would cause sailors to blush who have nothing better to do with their time than play that one game.

Why do I like ME3's MP?  Well, it's basically horde mode only.  You're part of a squad of up to four people trying to defend a base against waves of enemies.  The game can be set up to fight specific enemies or choose them at random (for more XP/Credits) and you fight a particular faction for 10 waves plus extraction.  The same goes for location, pick one or leave it on random for more credits and XP.

You might say, "What?  You favor a rewards based economy in a MP online setting?!"  Yeah, I do, in this case.  You do better, you get more cash.  It gives you an edge.  You use that edge to kill more stuff and get better.  You use the XP to level up your squadies and you use the cash for permanent upgrades as well as one-shot upgrades.

Allow me to explain.  As you probably know the ME universe classifies anyone without brittle bone disease as one of six classes.  So does the MP.  The fun part is there aren't just Shepards to choose from in MP, you can actually acquire (by luck and lots of credits) almost all of the major races in the ME galaxy.  Very cool.  They're mixed in so you can have an Asari Vanguard or a Quarian Engineer.

As you gain experience it is distributed throughout your CLASS.  There are 5 available squadies in each class (a male and female human and three alien race memebers).  If you spend all your MP time using your Krogan Vanguard, all the vanguards gain the same XP and can be leveled even though you never used them.  There is a cap at level 20 to keep balance in the MP (not enough points to fully level your class skills).  Once you hit 20 you can just keep playing at harder difficulties or you can "promote" the class to the main game.  This gives you a galactic readiness boost as well as ups your N7 rating (an amalgam of all your current levels and promoted units).  This is how the MP crosses into the Single Player (SP).  I also feel it helps with the replay value of the MP since you can play through again with slightly different evolution.

Credits and Equipment
As you gain money you can buy packs of equipment of varying cost.  The packs contain random equipment and squaddies.  The higher the cost the more likely you are to get rare items or races (you only get humans from the start, you have to get Asari, etc from the equipment packs).  Equipment ranges from weapons and mods to new race/class combos and extra experience boosts.

Note:  You can also pay real money for equipment packs.  However they're not cheap considering your $1-3 purchase only nets you five items each time.

Weapons and mods are permanent and you can always use them.  If you get the same weapon twice it upgrades the weapon instead up to level 10.  Eventually your level 1 Asari Adept could start off with a fully upgraded super sniper rifle (not actually a weapon name) if so you choose.

Other items can only be stocked up for single use.  You always bring your maximum into battle, ie medi-gel, rockets, ammo packs, and instant shield recharges. There are also items that increase how many of each you can carry into a battle (starts at 2, maxes at 10).  Essentially you'll have 50+ rockets but each full MP mission you get two rockets for use in all 10 waves (they're a one-shot kill if you hit!).  With a full team there could be 8-40 rockets and on Gold they don't stop flying in later waves.

There are mods that are in effect for entire missions.  These are ammo mods, armor mods and weapon mods.  Ammo mods are cryo, incindiary, etc ammo types of varying degree.  Armor mods will grant you faster shield recharge, stronger powers, cooldown bonus, etc.  Supplemental weapon mods can increase the strength of your weapons, help them penetrate armor, make them more accurate, etc.  In the MP screen these appear as "Equipment" and you can have one of each category equipped (or none).

New race/class equipment usually carries some bonus experience for that class and will often result in a free level up at lower levels of the class.  If you already have that race/class combo then you'll usually receive the ability to customize the appearance a bit.

Part of the team
The mechanics of the multiplayer are slightly modified from the single player.  There is no power wheel and there is no weapon wheel.  This removes your ability to pause the game, look around and assign a target for your abilities.  Everything moves much quicker than SP.

In MP each character has an assigned set of skills.  Three skills are active (biotics, tech, armor, etc), and two are passive (fitness and the class skill tree).  The skills are assigned to right, and left bumper and the Y button.  Then cannot be remapped.  As I mentioned before you will never max out your evolutions so it's important to have a defined strategy when leveling out of combat.  If you're heavy on combat abilities bring lighter weapons or just one so you can use your abilities more often.  If you're favoring passive skills then you can probably afford to carry a beefier arsenal.

Those one-shot items you carry into battle are activated by your D-pad.  If you are knocked out of battle, just like in SP mode, someone can come revive you for free, however if you have medigel left, you can revive yourself.  When you're out of medigel and your teammates are either a-holes or couldn't get there in time, you bleed out and die (there are some enemies who can insta-kill you, too).  At this point you go into spectator mode and follow around your still-breathing teammates hoping they can beat back that wave.  If they die, the mission is scrubbed and you're awarded any experience and credits awarded to that point.  If the rest of the team lives through it you're revived for the next wave.

Note: When you're stuck in spectator mode you can change the camera angle and call out things other players can't see, such as a Banshee sneaking up behind them.  Very useful.

Each wave consists of random objectives that are usually just "kill everything you see" with increasing difficulty.  There are three other possible missions: kill four targets in succession, defend a certain area while being IN the area, and activate/deactivate four objectives.  Each of the non kill-everything modes has a timer and you fail if you don't complete the wave in the allotted time.

For killing in succession the commanding officer will call out targets who are highlighted whether you can see them or not.  The targets aren't always the most powerful creature, either.  On occasion you'll get lucky and one of the high value targets is a grunt.

The other two variants are pretty self-explanitory.  Either you're running around defending a guy who takes about 10-15 seconds to activate/deactivate something (and isn't shooting) or you're defending a certain area while standing in it.  I find the latter to be the hardest variant because in order to finish the wave properly you sit in a relatively small area which is just over the radius of a grenade blast.  And there will be grenades.  And blasts...  It's VERY easy to get overwhelmed as almost all of the defense areas have limited cover and you're easily overrun.  When you're in the Gold difficulty level you spend a lot of time high-tailing it out of there, killing everything that follows and running back in, hoping you can accumulate enough defense time before the wave timer causes you to fail.  It sucks.

What really makes the MP go is that it's very difficult to grief other players.  Your squad most likely won't make it through an encounter if you're not willing to help each other out (with the rare exception of a useless teammate who isn't worth reviving).  Teammates can't harm each other so you never have to worry about a pistol whip from a bored 12 year old.  If someone steals your kill (and they will), XP is distributed for damage done, not for finishing off the baddie.  So wearing down a brute to the very last tick only to have a vanguard or sniper finish it off will award you with a majority of the XP.  Bioware made it very difficult to be rewarded in any way for being a dick.

Basically Bioware made a reward and combat system that removes almost ever reason I dislike online MP gaming.  I've been enjoying it immensely.






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Warning, this if full of spoiler.

The ending"s"

There's a lot (a LOT) of.. discussions going on about the end of ME:3.  And for good reason.

Despite how Bioware feels or what they say, there is only one ending to Mass Effect 3, and it has slight variants.  No matter what you do, all the relays end up blowing up.  You cannot prevent this from happening regardless of choices made throughout the game or at the end of the game.  The variants have to do with whether or not the Earth is blown up, if your team survives, and, if they don't survive, when they die.

There are a lot of flaws in this ending too.  Lots of gaping plot holes that lead people to figure they just "called in" the writing.  I reached the end of the game and saw Garrus and Tali live through the ground battle.  I chose to destroy the Reapers and all of a sudden the Normandy is trying to outrun the destruction of the relays.

Why?

If my ground forces survived the fight what prompted them to leave me behind as they tried to save their own skin?  Shouldn't they have been in the fight the whole time to give Shep the time to figure out how to win the galaxy?

Also, invariably there are thousands of ships from the reapers, council races and more floating around in the Sol system as well as thousands of scientists who all know how they work.  If they all survived the fight, why does the very end of the game make it sound like only the humans lived past the events of ME:3 to repopulate Earth?  It's well established that the mass relays are gateways between major clusters and that inter system travel is commonplace technology.  The galactic community would remain.  They would just move slower.

I'm reasonably certain that the non-Earth races didn't just decided to off themselves because it wasn't their planet.

I'm not calling bullshit on the style of the ending.  If Bioware wants everything to blow up, fine.  But what we have is an ending that seems like it was conceived by some kid in 10th grade who always thought, "I hope I make videogames some day and I hope that the last line of my game will be 'Tell me about the Shepard' ".  That's right.  Up until the final battle the story and immersiveness of the Mass Effect galaxy is phenomenal.  Then you get to the end and the writing turns to shit.  It jars you out of your Mass Effect world and throws you into a world not unlike the sins of George Lucas's later years.

For shame, Bioware.  For shame.

Mass Effect 3: Your spell fizzles...

(kudos to anyone who gets the reference in the title, answer below)

Anyone who has been reading this blog knows that I'm a very big fan of Mass Effect. So when I finally got my hands on Mass Effect 3 (ME3) after being on vacation during its release, I played the crap out of it. There isn't a lot new in ME3 so I'll just cover the main changes from ME2 and anything else pertinent.

When you start ME3 and attempt to import your character you very well may be instantly disappointed because you'll see your very first bug. Thankfully my main Shep had no problems importing. Not thankfully he's an ugly SOB. I spent around half an hour trying to make a Shep that looked like me on the original game and gave up because, well, I wanted to play the game. The result was that I spent the next two games hating how my Shep looked and just getting used to a hero who had gotten 43 lashes of the ugly stick before he joined the Alliance Navy.

About the story.

Bioware sort of glazes over Shepard breaking off from Cerberus somewhere between the end of ME2 and six months before ME3. The timeline is very sketchy. At the end of the main storyline in ME2 you tell The Illusive Man to either "fuck off" or "kindly fuck off"... then fly around in his ship doing other missions and getting paid for a while until you finally blow the shit out of the Mass Relay in the Batarian's section of the galaxy (with a giant freaking MOON) in the Arrival DLC, which is definitely after the main quest. It's understood that sometime after that, the Alliance breaks apart your team, commandeers the Normandy, and grounds/discharges Shepard because he killed billions of Batarians trying to save the universe from mass extinction.

The funny thing is that after the first two games the galactic governments are still basically saying, "Crazy old Shepard is up to his old antics!"

The game starts just as Earth is learning about the Reaper invasion. Earth is one of the first civilizations targeted, and you're on your way to talk to the heads of the Alliance government to tell them they're getting their asses kicked by Reapers. Basically Bioware's future Earth is filled with ass-faced politicians who wear bags over their heads 90% of the time and have no idea what happens outside of their office and checking account. So foreign policy hasn't changed one bit from today's USA.

Half way through the conversation the Reapers start... reaping. The opening part of ME3 is one of my favorites. It illustrates better than any other game I can remember just how weak and desperate a situation can be. Everything around you is blowing up and everything keeps going from bad to worse without being over the top (or under it). Eventually you make it to the Normandy and fly away to the Citadel to attempt to rally support to take back Earth in the same Normandy that Cerberus built and Shepard stole. True to form, bot the Normandy and Citadel have received a few cosmetic updates.

It should come as no surprise that nobody gives a Krogan fecal pellet about Earth's problems and Shep spends the next few months playing fetch missions for everyone on the Citadel. As a bonus, you've also got to contend with almost limitless Cerberus forces since the Illusive Man thinks that he can handle the Reapers by controlling them and obviously killing Shepard is a good way to make that happen. You'll do a tour of most of the other race's worlds, fighting Reaper forces, Cerberus forces, and some Geth.

Before ME3 was a lot of mystery. You were always chasing the unknown, which was a lot of fun.

ME1: What the Hell is Saren doing and how do we stop him?

ME2: What the Hell is behind the Omega 4 relay and how do we stop it?

However the plot of ME3 is somewhat... subdued.

ME3: Kill reapers and when the Hell is Shepard's sexytime?

The game play:

Pretty much identical to ME2, however you no longer carry heavy weapons. You'll find the occasional BFG conveniently lying around most boss fights, but you can't keep it and there isn't any spare ammo.

Shepard is no longer locked into class-specific weapons, but at the same time Shep can't carry an arsenal without some drawbacks. Shepard now has an arbitrary carry weight limit. It starts off around 20 or so and can go up to 70 or perhaps more for other classes (I played a vanguard). It doesn't work exactly as you would expect, though. You can carry everything you want, but the weight of the weapons in total will affect your power recharge time. Keep it under the limit and you get a bonus. Go over the limit and you're penalized up to 200% either way. Loading up with big, heavy hitting weapons will severely penalize your power recharge. But carrying no weapons isn't going to be a big help either.

The game constantly displays tips you during loading sessions, often advising you to carry a fast weapon and a slow weapon for different enemy types. Here's my advice. Always buy the SMG ultralight materials upgrades. Eventually it'll get 80% off and it's like a free weapon. They do almost no damage, but are useful if you've got Cryo Ammo for freezing a room of enemies to give you more time.

There are a LOT more guns this time around. Between the five gun types (pistols, SMGs, assault rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles) there are probably 40 weapons total. Each weapon has stats for weight, capacity, rate of fire, damage, and accuracy. Each weapon has two slots for mods and five types of mods that affect the stats in one way or another. Furthermore, you can purchase whole weapon upgrades on the Normandy that give them minor boosts in damage, accuracy, and weight.

Your armor is about as customizable as in ME2. N7 armor gives you a 50% health boost and all the armor offers a straight up trade with other attributes, save for a few pieces that hide and extra 5%.

Characters

The squad in ME3 consists of a mostly Normandy Veterans (lots of pardoned Cerberus personnel) and a few new guys. Someone you'll meet right away is a Latino Soldier named.. well I honestly can't remember his name because he annoyed the shit out of me and I kept hoping I could get him killed (spoiler alert, I couldn't...). You'll spend a lot of time doing missions and saying, "Well hey, if you want to get on the ship, great." and getting new team members, again depending on who survived the last two games you'll have a lot of familiar faces.

You and your squad now have a more diverse powerset. In ME2 there were four powers, now there are five. There are six upgrades per power with the last three involving choices as to how you want the power to evolve. Generally the choices are tradeoffs between damage and area, health/shields and weapon/power damage, that sort of thing. Some characters can significantly effect the squad as a whole which can be very useful if you plan on letting your Shepard lack in some areas.

Grenades are back as powers now. So you can toss them until they're gone if they're available to your class. As far as the biotics and tech powers go, they're largely the same with a few exceptions, depending largely on who survived the previous games.

Squadmates remain largely useless in combat and do about 1/10th of the work Shep does until you tell them to focus on an enemy. Their mapped powers change from the primary to whatever would be more useful to the situation at hand. So if your primary mapped power is pull, but you're targeting an armored bad guy, it'll change to something that works on armor (usually).

The big difference in ME3 is now the squad hangs all over the ship interacting with each other. This can be rather entertaining as the squad will bicker with each other and recount old times. It adds a lot of depth to the characters. There is a trade off, though, there seems to be fewer conversations between Shep and the squad this time. I hope you enjoy combing each level of the ship for conversations because that's what you'll be doing between each mission.

The war

Everything you do in ME3 is to contribute to your War Assets and Galactic Readiness rating. Ultimately you're attempting to rally the entire galaxy to save Earth if possible. This involves every species to whatever extent is possible. Generally you'll do a mission or three for a race and they pledge their support during the final push.

Most of the stuff you find throughout the galaxy will contribute to this. Like finding a squadron of fighters that got lost, or finding a flag so some Turian squad's morale will be bolstered. Minor stuff like that. It all has a point value, some of it is almost insignificant, some of it is a giant help.

More on all this later.

Exploration

This will be fast. Because there is none.

Apparently from ME1 to ME3 nobody thought to build another stealth ship, because the Normandy is the only one that can come and go where it pleases. In ME3 the galaxy map gradually lets you go to almost every system from the previous games, letting you fly around to known systems to your heart's content. However the Normandy can now send out a SONAR like ping that can find things withing something like a 1 or 2 AU radius. All you're doing is looking to see if something might be on a planet or floating around in the form of wreckage. If a planet has something on it, you scan for it ME2 style and send in a probe. Unlike in ME2, probes are unlimited because you'll only ever need 20 or 30 throughout the game.

Scanning doesn't come free, through. Every time you send out that ping, an "awareness" meter will begin to fill and a few red arrows will appear on the edge of whatever system you're in. Keep scanning wantonly (sometimes just twice will do it) and the Reapers will show up on the edge of the map like some intergalactic troggles and chase you down until you leave the system. They come back every time you re-enter that system until you complete a mission, at which point they universally lose interest in you and kindly go back to whatever low traffic area of space where these god-like creatures must be looking at Reaper porn or something. Otherwise why would they NOT be hiding out at each Mass Relay? Yup, the only reason an advanced race like that would be hiding has to be porn.

Paragon/Renegade

Okay, here's where things get iffy. The good/bad, +/- scale in games has always been a strange line to walk since the ending of the game is almost universally the same aside from a few shining examples such as Jade Empire, ME1, and Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (yeah, I remember it!).

Just like in the previous games you'll spend a lot of time being a nice guy or a dick. Just like in the previous games if you're nice enough or dickish enough, you'll get special conversation options that are reserved for people with enough points on either side. The problem here is that I always seemed to be able to take either choice despite the fact that my Renegadity was always over 75%. That's just how I play my main Shep. He's generally a dick but isn't stupid and bullheaded.

Whereas ME1 and 2 managed to more or less lock you into one style, ME3 gave me the option of being completely bi-polar. Shooting a hostage taker in the face and pissing on his mother's grave for effect one moment, kissing a civilian's boo-boos and brewing hot cocoa for orphans the next. You get the idea.

Trigger pulls for "bold Renegade" actions and "bold Paragon" actions are fewer and farther between than in ME2, if I'm not mistaken. And almost universally the "bold Paragon" move is to, and I kid thee not, hug someone.

Old choices/New choices

This is where ME3 really "suffers". ME3 makes an effort to have you focus in on three important stats. The Readiness Rating (a percent), War Assets (total military strength) and your Effective Military strength, which is War Assets * Readiness. The problem is that at the beginning of ME3, your total available War Assets are finite. And your Readiness rating starts off at %50. Meaning that you have to work incredibly hard for the 'best' ending(s).

The only way to affect Readiness is to play the multiplayer game (which is actually fun, but won't be reviewed) or to play minigames for your iPhone/iPad. Either way, to get your readiness rating you have to fork money over to Bioware, sortof. See, in ME3 your new copy comes with a code allowing access to the multiplayer game. If you buy it used, you need to buy a code. And the iGames aren't free, either.

The finite available War assets aren't supposed to be a problem, but they are because the sum of all your decisions throughout the ME universe will factor into the total possible points. Meaning that there is a theoretical maximum and minimum points available.

The controversy really comes from the inability to easily determine what paths would lead to the greatest success. Presumably, you should be able to play ME3 through without importing a character, and get the best ending without playing multiplayer or paying for iCrap.

How many play throughs will it take you to determine how to optimally gather galactic forces? 10? 20? 100? Each time you'd need to spend dozens of hours doing the same lame fetch missions to see if you can get your military strength to the highest possible number.

As I understand it, there are over a dozen possible endings to ME3 with the main determination being the major decision at the end of ME2. Many of the endings are remarkably similar, and none of them are very descriptive. Even so, you have a major decision on how to handle the reaper problem at the end of ME3 which can determine what happens. I wasn't happy with how things turned out.

You can look at this two ways. You can say Bioware gypped you out of a descent ending, robbing you of any sense of fulfillment, or you can say that you played out a story in the way you chose and you got what you earned.

I'm more 50/50. I think that after spending well over $200 on a series of games I'm entitled to a lot more closure if I managed to save Earth and/or the galaxy, however if I wasn't able to save anyone, well, there is no more story to tell, is there?

In conclusion
I think ME3 is a damned fine game. The missions range from defending one of the multiplayer levels from a few waves of enemies to epic battles across the face of a planet. Often I felt like the decisions I made no noticeable difference in course of the ME world. Finally, I feel that Bioware does owe its players a lot more of an ending. We've paid for it, we've earned it, and we've learned to expect it from a Bioware game. (I could and probably will devote a separate entry to address game endings)

Is it perfect? No. Is it better than ME2? Probably not. Is it better than ME1? Yes. It is simply the conclusion to ME1 and 2, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I'd recommend anyone with any vested interest in Shepard's universe to play it.

Bonus: Annoyed the crap out of me

1. The reaper Troggles. Every time they enter a system they make the noise that originally terrified you. The sound effect quickly went from blood curdling rumble to annoying bass from the jackass in the rice burner outside.

2. The SPECTER firing range locked the game every single time I entered it. I'd have to save the game and restart the XBox in order to get in to test out weapons.

3. No definitive damage for any weapons. Even with the firing range you wouldn't know a weapons true abilities until you played a mission with it. The test dummies on the range weren't effective test subjects at all.

4. This one was a big annoyance. It probably should be in the main review. ME3 suffered from a good deal of deus ex machina. In many situations it's just fine because you're attempting to make things happen. But there are a few fights with a kind of hopeless boss that are infuriating. Mostly because you could easily beat the sonnofabitch if you had more time. And a lot of fights that don't end when you would expect.

Your spell fizzles

My brother and I had a game called Eamon on the Apple IIGS. It was a text based adventure and we were too young to really understand how to play it. When you tried to cast spells they would only work if you were a high enough level, otherwise they would "fizzle" and if i recall correctly, sometimes your companion would laugh at you.

Dernit Ubisoft!!

I had decided that the next Assassin's Creed game wasn't for me. You know, because I kept putting money in Ubisoft's coffers despite their games being identical and all? Well I saw the new trailer and then I see this shit.

Seriously? You sling three identical games at us with the only difference being the BEARD. Which, to be fair, worked on me...

Now you want me to play in colonial America; I hated to study this time period back in school... Fuck.

Assassin's Creed: Reva...something or other

It was bound to happen. Ubisoft (or maybe their masters) got greedy and pushed out too many Assassin's Creed games and now we have "Revelations". Side note.. What the hell is with "Revelations" being used for sequel names these days?..

If you've read some of my previous Assassin's Creed reviews you'll know this is one of my favorite all time franchises. However this time I'm almost bored with the series and haven't gotten half way through the game despite having had it since launch. I don't want to get lazy with this review but Ubisoft got lazy with Assassin's Creed so it's fair territory to keep this short and sweet.

There really isn't a lot to be said for AC:Rev that I haven't said about AC:II or AC:B. Rev is the same damn game with a handful of minor differences. Ezio is an old man. There are a handful of stages for Altair. There are bombs. There are (so far) optional "Den Defense" mini games. And finally, you play some mini games in FPS mode exploring Desmond's past. I will review these new parts in kind.

1. Ezio is older. His beard is now gray and for a while in the game you're so beaten up he can't climb. But later he gets better and also a "hook blade" which is the most ridiculous game mechanic addition in a long time. It sorta gives you another six inches of reach and lets you use zip lines.

2. Altair's stages (half of the "Revelations") fill in a bit about what happened before and after the first game of the series. They're interesting but the mystery and lore of the games is really removed by their presence. I guess that's why that Lost show was so great. I've never seen an episode, but they apparently never answered more questions than they asked. Perhaps Ubisoft was trying to avoid the critical mass of mystery:known that Lost and other shows/games had and though, "Well, we'd better wrap this up."

3. Bombs. Yup, about this time gunpowder was everywhere, so it makes sense that people would have grenades/bombs wherever. And if you thought Assassin's Creed needed to be easier, well, now it is. There are lots of different kinds of bombs and they're separated into a few categories; deadly, distraction, and well, there's another category but it's sort of irrelevant since the bombs either kill people or don't. You'll get a few types of shells for the bombs that basically make them explode on impact, stick to stuff, have a timer or a tripwire. Finally you add gunpowder that affects the radius and some substance that affects how the bomb works.

The bottom line is that the game is now completely out of balance. If you need to take out yet another faction leader. Just drop a bomb from the rooftop. Mission over. AC:Rev is the easiest of all the games I've played. And it wouldn't be so bad if bombs were rare and/or expensive. But NOOoooo... They're bloody everywhere! There isn't a spot in the main game where you can't see either a bomb box or a black market guy where you can buy more. So unlike in the previous three games, AC:Rev is no longer about being stealthy or subtle. Nope. Now you just rain death from the rooftops until your mission is complete. If you run out of bombs, odds are you've got 25 bolts and so you waste 'em with your crossbow.

4. There are "Den Defense" mini games that make absolutely no sense within the context of the game and are literally just a tower defense game thrown in. I've only played one of them. It was mandatory. And I have no clue how to access any more.

Here's how it works. At some point in the game you find that one of your many Assassin Dens is under attack and you decide to go help out. When you get there you find a handful of jarring inconsistencies with the AC world. The first is that, quite conveniently, there is only one route from the bad guys to your door. Well, thanks all you random citizens for blocking up the ten or thirty other paths to the Den! The second is that whomever wants to storm your building decided to keep back all his good troops and send the guys who can't climb everything in site... or fight. The third one, and worst, is that you've spent a LOT of time recruiting people to your cause in the game, however when the assault begins you just start buying up more and more assassin's. They jump on the roof, perfectly trained and ready to fight. When you're done, they just disappear back into thick air, never to return.

Perhaps I'm missing part of the Den Defense mini game. But as it stands, it doesn't feel like it adds anything to the game but silliness.

5. Since Desmond is "stuck" in the Animus (did I not mention that? Well he is) you don't interact with the real world at all. Throughout the game you'll see little balls of light called Animus Fragments. Collect enough and you get out of the main game and head into one of the Desmond side games. These all consist of small first person puzzles where you navigate your way through a 3 dimensional maze. Your only tools are the ability to make ramps and planks on which to walk. Throughout the mazes you'll see scenes from Desmond's past and he'll narrate his life for you. This completes the "Revelations" of this game.

When I played through AC:B I felt I was getting bored. With AC:Rev, I know I am. I've had the game for months and haven't bothered to play it very much because I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere in the world of Assassin's Creed. AC:Rev doesn't give you the sense of progress a game with this many sequels should have. Rev is just a giant pack of new levels for AC:II complete with a different set of accents and words that the Animus doesn't translate.

The back stories aren't interesting, and I'm pretty sure having Desmond's past narrated subtracts a great deal from the experience. Before he was this cocky kid sucked into a world he would never understand. Now he's this cocky kid whose background anyone who calls themselves a writer could have created.

Again, I haven't finished AC:Rev. It's so flavorless I don't have the drive to go after it again. I've been side-questing in Skyrim the whole time I could be playing AC:Rev. And if I didn't have Skyrim I'd be playing Mass Effect 2 in preparation for Mass Effect 3, or just tooling around in any number of other games.

I heard there was supposed to be yet another AC game coming out later this year. A "3". It'll have to wait for the bargain bin no matter how much hype they have.