But really, you are Desmond, who is in a coma from the last game, thus his best “friends” decide that the way to keep him alive is to throw him into a machine called the Animus so he can relive Ezio’s life so that can save his. However, that doesn’t go as well as they expected and Desmond loses his grip on reality! That’s totally what we wanted! And now he is banished to living in a reconstructed subconscious called Animus Island.

This setup promises that you literally fight to survive, thus Revelations is obviously going to be a super exciting iteration of the Assassin’s Creed series, right?

I'm 50 years old and at the top of my game AND ALSO THIS TOWER! Take that 20 year olds! I'm so hip! OH SHIT, MY ARTHRISTIS

NOPE. In fact, this is a pretty poor version of Assassin’s Creed. The single player is incredibly short compared to Brotherhood, and does not feature a lot of the fun mechanics that breathed life into the series. In fact, it feels like Ubisoft decided that their previous designs were way too good, so they scrapped them in order to make something terrible.

And they did that by improving fucking up how the characters look and feel. Ezio, who I understand is older, moves like he is a drunken man with two broken legs and afflicted with several seizures. Yet during loading sequences, Ezio moves like a bullet, which is totally how he maneuvers in the actual game. You’d think a game that requires a lot of sneaking, escaping, chasing and climbing would feature a character who would be able to do that, right? Guess not.

However, it’s not all that bad. Ezio’s poor movement can be forgiven a bit, thanks to the introduction of the glorious hookblade, which is singlehandedly the most useful item in your arsenal. You can use the hookblade to grab people, trip people, jump faster, grab ledges easier and use it to zoom down the few ziplines around the main world. Unfortunately, I found that ziplines tended to go in the direction I didn’t need to go in, thus rendering their usefulness pretty abysmal.

Because using the hookblade is fucking sweet!

Speaking of not being able to use stuff to your advantage, I would like to point out that bombs are the most worthless item in the universe. You will only ever use them when the game tells you to, because why the fuck would you use them at any other point in time. They take way too long to explode, do barely any damage, and alert everyone in the nearby area to you. You might as well just use your Assassins to handle any diversions, because the Assassins bar reloads faster than it takes for a bomb to explode. And even though you can make bombs of various types, you’ll only ever use the impact bombshell, because all the other ones are so rare.

The faces of every character look absolutely terrible. I still understand that everyone is supposed to be older, but the facial animation looks horrific. And who was in charge of this amazingly handsome face? Mrrawr, rawr.

Hi gurls

Sadly, you don’t get to see this glorious face all that often because you are going to be way too busy playing the super fantastic, totally awesome tower defense minigames! OH BOY! In these sequences, you are faced with real time strategy using a currency system with a fixed earning rate, thus you are constantly trying to catch up with the Templars who have flamethrowers while you still have crossbows and rocks. Oh joy!

These minigames are extremely annoying, because the game pulls stupid ploys so that the player can never get a 100% synch for them (which requires you to not lose any units). And just in case you were managing to defeat the Templars, ACR will throw war machines and overpowered bomber units who can destroy any barricade in one shot. Wait, you wanted to win? Nope.

Which would be just a platformer, but something feels similar...

Now remember Animus Island? That’s where you go to talk to Subject Sixteen (and his incredibly sexy face) and allow Desmond to focus on his past.  It’s really annoying because Desmond is a whiny bastard and his levels have a Portal-esque platforming feel but without the Portals. The worlds are cool looking, but that’s just to hide how frustrating they because Desmond cannot jump for crap and falls off platforms really easily because his shoes are made out of butter.

Even so, the missions still have the Assassin’s Creed feel, but a lot less of the “run around in ancient ruins”, “race some thief/assassin”,  and “chase this escaping Templar in an old crypt” missions. Many of those mission types don’t even exist anymore, which is both good and bad. I liked the ancient ruins puzzles where you climbed around a lot. Those were pretty fun, Revelations has about three of them in total, and they pale in comparison to the ones featured in Brotherhood.

Luckily, Revelations redeems itself with its multiplayer. The netcode has been dramatically improved. Games are incredibly easy to find and they handle like a dream. My only complaints are that there are not enough maps, and the fact that you have to buy weapon upgrades (not with real money, mind you) is lame.

Overall, Assassin’s Creed Revelations is a testament to the fact that just because you can have six development studios working on a game at once in order to push it out in a year, doesn’t mean the game is going to be very good.

Verdict: PASS (but buy it if it is on sale)

The game looks nice and the developers spent quite some time in the visual appeal department, while shunning the issues with the gameplay.

You’ll get bored with this game rather quickly.

Verdict: PASS

I want to make it clear that MNC is not really TF2, since the only thing it shares are the classes, apart from that there isn’t much more in common. The characters are original enough and the class base traits and roles are unique. The game is goofy, chaotic and rather fun and the community is rather lively so it’s easy to get into games pretty quickly.

MNC is one of my favorite Xbox games, and now that it is on the PC, I’m ecstatic. The content provided on the PC exceeds the Xbox version. And with a high replay factor, there really isn’t much to lose.

Verdict: BUY

Note: This is one of my old reviews that didn’t transfer over when I first started reposting Steam reviews on this site.

Then enter to win our Frozen Synapse Giveaway! All you have to do is simply leave a comment. So go go go go go!

Contest ends next Monday, 6/6. Please leave a legitimate email address so we know where to send the copy. Game copy is the Steam version of the game.

Good Luck!

EDIT 1: Entries are now closed and winners will be chosen shortly.

EDIT 2: Winners have been chosen and notified. Thanks for playing!

And this form of gameplay takes time getting used to, mostly because you have to account for the fact your opponent could have killed one of the units that you are about to move. Unfortunately, this can be a cause for frustration, as there are quite a few maps where units will be stacked up against you, but you don’t really have control over this as maps are randomly generated. And with all randomly generated content, there’s always the case where you get a really bad seed and your experience isn’t as fun or balanced as others.

You better answer yes.

But looking past that, Frozen Synapse is a well polished game. The developers have literally implemented TONS of features that you wouldn’t expect to find in a computer game (like the in-game IRC client). Though that might be because the game is powered by the Torque Engine, which is easy extensible and tends to always output very pretty games.

Speaking of pretty, the color scheme is nice, if a bit samey, there really isn’t any variety to it other than Dark Blue, more Dark Blue, a smidgen of Dark Blue, and did I mention Dark Blue? Luckily it blends together really well and looks well designed. The same can’t be said for many of the game’s prompts like the unit actions menu. If a unit cannot do an action at a specific place, please don’t even show me that action. This way the menu isn’t so large and obtrusive in comparison to the incredibly tiny unit modifiers, because the game doesn’t scale properly for high resolutions. Fantastic.

Now the problem with a lot of indie strategy games is that their player base dies out within a month or is dead on arrival. But with Frozen Synapse, you won’t have to worry about the multiplayer dying out quickly. Frozen Synapse has a great online community that you are always informed about EVERY SINGLE SECOND in the form of player invites. I was trying to play a couple of campaign missions, when I was bombed with eight invites to start a multiplayer game. It’s great that the community is so lively, but maybe I just want to explore the game a bit without the constant prompts. Don’t believe me? Let me show you:

Short of switching the game to offline mode (why would you ever want to do this), there is no way to turn off the invites.

On the plus side, multiplayer is extremely well designed for this type of game. There are a lot of game modes, and how you play them is rather cool. In a sense, multiplayer skirmishes are state based, in which you don’t actually have to be connected to your opponent to play a game. One person could perform some actions and then leave and the next time they play, they can continue the game by committing new operations to perform. In my opinion, this is a really good idea.

Best part is that he's a main character and no one likes him.

The same cannot be said about the campaign story. It really isn’t all that compelling and the characters are rather bland. But it’s all okay because all you need to know is that you are some technological simulation thing that allows you to fight without you actually dying. What’s important is the thrill of having your plans work out. It is incredibly rewarding to see a move set be executed perfectly.

In the end, Frozen Synapse is a decent time waster that doesn’t require your full attention. It’s the equivalent of telling someone what moves to make in a game like Chess, but leaving the outcome of your moves up to chance more than anything.

Verdict: Depends. If you like strategy games, you should check this out. If you don’t really fancy strategy games, then pass on this.

You can read my review of the game here.

To enter this contest: simply just comment on this post! Be sure to leave a valid email address so we can send the code to you. Steam is required to download and play the game. One comment per person, please.

Contest ends 5/20/2011, good luck!

EDIT: Comments can take several hours before they show up. This is because the comments have to be approved first (to filter out dupe submissions).

EDIT 2: Comments are now closed and winners will be drawn soon.

EDIT 3: Winners have been drawn and notified. Thanks for entering!