Assassin's Creed: Revelations - Xbox 360

What We Already Know: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations marks the final chapter for franchise protagonists Ezio and Altair, bringing the series forward to 1500s Constantinople, and taking it into even more surreal territory as Desmond Miles struggles to escape from his own mind, where has been trapped in some bizarre Inception-like coma. Fun, fun stuff.

What We’re Seeing Now: At E3, the only single-player content we saw was the gameplay video shown during Ubisoft’s press conference earlier in the week. My time with the game was limited to a quick game of Team Manhunt. For the first round, team A hunts team B, and then it swaps for the second round. This mode will be familiar to anyone who played Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood’s multiplayer, and you can expect to see many of the same multiplayer modes from Brotherhood in Revelations, along with a few new ones as well. For now, though, it was all about Team Manhunt.

But before we jumped into the match, we were shown a brief intro cinematic with a nicely detailed Abstergo Industries scientist informing us that if we play our cards right, and work our way up the training ladder, we’ll gain access to Abstergo’s inner sanctum where we will find out some super secret truth about our world. Like in Brotherhood, Ubisoft has given multiplayer its own standalone narrative thrust, which I could not appreciate more.

As you’d expect, Revelations plays exactly like Brotherhood, and is obviously the best looking entry yet. Maneuvering through the crowded streets of Constantinople in itself is a welcome change, and, unsurprisingly, a lot of work has been put into making Constantinople, and presumably the other cities Ezio and company will be visiting, the most detailed and alive settings to date.

Sadly, I didn’t have much time to take in the sights, as I had a team of skilled killers on my trail. Priorities people. For the first round, I did the hunting. My character was a brawny, bearded dude carrying a mace with a rounded, gold orb at the top, the kind perfect for smashing skulls. Tracking down targets plays out exactly as it does in Brotherhood, with a location indicator ring at the bottom of the screen that acts as a compass of sorts, tracking your target’s movements. When you get close, the indicator tells you if the target is above or below you (or says nothing if they’re on the same level as you). Then it’s all a matter of spotting the enemy among the pedestrians, and taking them out, which we did with glee.

I didn’t get to see it play out, but a Ubisoft rep said that in addition to wracking up experience points the traditional ways (hiding, stealth kills, stunning to avoid kills, etc.), you’ll also be able to earn XP for pulling off team actions, like, perhaps, laying a trap that an enemy steps in while pursing one of your pals. That’s just a hypothetical, but gets at the spirit of what these team actions might end up being.

We didn't see much, but what we played left us wanting to see more. Big surprise, huh?