So, my wife bought me AC: Revelations for Christmas, and I just can't seem to find the desire to stick with it. I've been sort of inching through, and just finished up the part where you learn about bomb making, but just don't feel much of a burning desire to continue on. Maybe it's the fact that it's been a year since the last one and it doesn't feel fresh, or maybe it's that I have SW:TOR sitting there, along with cleaning up some quests in Skyrim.

Does it get any better, or am I just burnt out on this series for now? I feel guilty ignoring the gift that she went out of her way to get for me.

I feel exactly the same. Every time I sit down and try to play it, I end up turning it off after 20 minutes because I'm bored with it. The story is nowhere near as engaging as the previous two games and something just seems off about it. Maybe it's that the start of the game is spent introducing you to the new side games which are pretty average at best or that the Turkish assassin could be called Joe McTesticles for all that it matters he's that forgettable and generic. The Altair bit felt weird too, the combat felt janky as fuck but maybe that's just because I've been playing lots of Arkham City which is just so much better at the whole surrounded by dudes combat.

I really want to see how the story ends but I can't see myself pushing through the early game jank anytime soon which is sad.

The game does pick up, for sure... but it never really reaches the heights of the previous installments. I do feel like the ending is important though, so maybe just Youtube that?

@Extreme_Popcorn: Yeah, I think messing around with Skyrim for 2 months may have spoiled other open world games for me for a bit. I feel like I'm just going from map marker to map marker in AC now.

Once you get past the bomb making tutorial stuff you're good to go. Revelations opts to get all the tutorial stuff dealt with early on rather than space it out like the previous games do.

There's a lot of mixed opinion about Revelations and the mixed opinions seem to be either people really enjoyed it or that people still liked it just not as much as the previous titles in the franchise. If there's one big criticism that could be levelled at Revelations it's that the game follow a "more of the same good stuff" feel rather than one that feels like it's introducing new and exciting features, gameplay mechanics and so on. So if you did enjoy the previous titles you should enjoy this one, just don't go into it expecting much different from those you've played before.

It starts after Sequence 3 or 4. Revelations has some exciting and intriguing missions, it's just that the game as a whole is less fun. It lacks the innovation of II and the overwhelming amount of bullshit of Brotherhood.

Still, it's a pretty good game. The Templar lair equivalents in this game are super fun and the game plays around with the usual AC mission by spicing it up (the Romani Curse being my favorite).

@ztiworoh: I feel your pain. I would hate it if my wife bought me that game and was asking me, "So are you enjoying it?". Because I would have to say...NO. I love me some Assassin's Creed, but that one is is killing me. I am thinking it has something to do with just beating Arkham City and playing a bunch of Saints Row: The Third. Whatever it is...the thing that grabbed me about AssCre: Brotherhood is decidedly NOT THERE for Revelations. I will muscle through, but I emphatically understand your feeling so far. I am struggling to get through the first hour.

Desmond Memories take care of all of that. Find like 35 feathers and call it quits.
 
Also the Altair parts are really goddamn awesome. They essentially remade MGS3 with Altair.
 
The ending too, and how it actually made sense this time.

AC:R was somewhat of a let down for me as well. I rented it and played through the campaign in 2 sessions, but I never felt the overwhelming sense of wanting to explore more like I did in AC:B. Rome was HUGE in AC:B, and Istanbul felt cramped and redundant by comparison. Also, I think the tomb sequences felt too scripted almost like they were forcing you to play a certain way. I agree that the Desmond Memories sequences were probably the most interesting part of the game, and playing as Altair spiced things up in between. Everything else felt lackluster and recycled.

I've been having a blast with this game so far. But I also really like first assassin's creed so I guess my opinion on any of these games doesn't really count.

I just beat it the other day and while it wasn't the big eye opener that 2 and Brotherhood were it's still a solid game. I'll fully agree that for the most part it's more of the same so I'd definitely wait to recommend it to someone until it hit a sale but the story stuff is good and I personally really enjoy the multiplayer quite a bit.

I haven't finished it yet, so I guess there's an outside chance this opinion could change, but I think it's a big drop off in quality from Brotherhood (and probably AC2 as well). The mechanics are a bit bloated at this point (bombmaking is a really unnecessary addition imo, along with a few other things which feel like they were added just so they could say they added something), the missions aren't particularly well designed or interesting, the 100% 'sync' mechanic is poorly implemented and feels arbitrary this time around, the game flow is disjointed and scatter shot, the 'restore the city' stuff felt unjustified this time around, the different enemy types aren't very well explained, the city isn't particularly interesting and neither Altair or Ezio's stories feel like they're going anywhere or really needed telling in the grand scheme of things. Also, the whole 'collect the x artifacts!' premise is just the laziest of lazy game writing.

It still isn't a bad game per se, but not in the same league as the last two. As great as Brotherhood was, I don't think every game in the franchise now needs to follow the Brotherhood blueprint. I feel like the next one absolutely needs to be AC3, it needs to really freshen things up and a lot of the excess fat and busy work which has built up needs to be ruthlessly trimmed. I also think they need to lean back towards the idea of the Assassins being a secretive group manipulating events behind the scenes, not a small army which hangs banners up and engages in street warfare.

Its true it wasn't as good as AC2 or Brotherhood, but once it picks up it really goes. Some of the Altair stuff is really neat, and the ending was pretty awesome. Also not as cliffhangery, so a good payoff i thought.

The ending is excellent, and probably the best ending they've done for an Assassin's Creed game. There's also some incredibly excellent mission design that is, again, some of the best missions they've ever done (I will not spoil anything except to say there is one mission where you dress up as an Italian lute player to sneak into a place; it's as incredible and hilarious as it sounds). But the AC2 framework is really showing its age. They've bolted so much onto the core that it barely qualifies as a stealth game anymore, and all the new stuff really brings the problems that AC2 had (namely, braindead AI that is apparently so deaf that they won't react to a gunshot that killed one of their friends even if there's six other people strewn about a small room) into light. The Hidden Gun is the perfect example of this; what started as basically a god weapon you got really late in the game and made you feel invincible in AC2 is now standard inventory, but the enemies seem no smarter or able to react to it even though more and more enemies in this game have guns. Likewise, while some of the writing is very good, the stories they tell in Revelations are weak. The Desmond stuff provides interesting context fo the character, but also invalidates some of what made him a relatable protagonist in the first place (how can you be this average guy forced to become an assassin when literally the first Desmond mission is him talking about how he was raised in the woods by his Assassin parents who were living off the grid, hiding from Templars, and forced him to train for hours upon hours a day?); the vast majority of the Altïar stories have nothing to do with the ultimate conclusion of that story, instead focusing on a character that is apparently central to his life but was never in AC1 or the PSP game; and the Ezio story might as well be a retread of Brotherhood, except the stakes don't feel anywhere near as high. And like @Jimbo said, the 100% Sync is pretty poorly implemented in spots and the Mediterranean Defense has become way too bloated and filled with busywork.

It's still a good game that's worth playing if you're heavily invested in the story (like I am), but fuck Call of Duty - this is the franchise that truly shows how dangerous it is to push a new one out the door every year.

This series revived it's hopes in Assassins creed 2 and killed it with their yearly cliffhanger series( Brotherhood and revelations)

I really wish they would of just gone straight to 3 and forget and not ruin the franchise .

I think Revelations is easily the weakest game in the series and not that fun compared to Brotherhood. It is a step back and I hope they do not mess up AC 2012 like they did last year.

Yeah, Revelations was easily a step back from Brotherhood. Too much garbage, too many lack-luster missions, guards that all have eyes like fucking hawks, tower defense. I'm curious what they're going to do with the series this year. I got WAY less interested when everyone started using guns in Revelations. If 2012 takes place in modern-day, I can only imagine how much worse that is going to get.

i quit the game myself. I got a decent ways in. The tower defense stuff, bomb making...didn't do it for me. Even the little hook mechanic just felt unnecessary. The missions and story wasn't working for me either. Then I tried one of those Desmond first person puzzle things. Ya, that put the nail in the coffin for me.

Loved Brotherhood too...dunno won't went wrong here but I have no desire to play this game.

To me, Revelations was superior to Brotherhood at least when it came to the story.. And I played Brotherhood maybe a month before Revelations, so I had that very fresh in my mind still. I don't get the love for the story of Brotherhood. To me it felt really disjointed, Cesare was a boring villain, plus I thought the focus on the Borgias instead of the templars in general was a major weakness. The only Borgia I thought was really interesting was Rodrigo, and he was barely in the game, and got a really lame end. Plus the Machiavelli/Volpe stuff was so annoying and predictable. Revelations crafted two characters in Sofia and Yusuf that I cared far more about than anyone in the first three games, except maybe Mario and Barty, and also made me care about Altaïr, who I couldnt care less about until this game. It also had a far more satisfying conclusion to Ezios part of the story than in Brotherhood, where that whole last bit with Cesare felt like playing an extra DLC mission to me.

The next game really needs to be Assassins Creed 3 though.

I didn't enjoy the game to begin with, but after a few sequences in, and doing a couple of Altair missions, I was hooked. Those Altair memories are the best parts of the game, fantastic to watch and play. The last half of the game is great, I loved it.