The Most Wonderful Time of The Year

Oh and it's Christmas too? I was talking about coming home for the holidays and spending six hours a day on the Xbox. As a serious point though, I need to take more breaks, I'm starting to get quite bad headaches.

Okay, moving on from that downer of an opening, I'M BACK HOME FOR CHRISTMAS! I finished up all of my deadlines before the end of term, and now I have a month to catch up on my gaming backlog. First on the chopping block is Assassin's Creed Revelations.

Nothing is True, Everything is- HEY PRESENTS!

I'm a very big fan of the Assassin's Creed series, and I've got the hoodie to prove it. If nothing else, the AC franchise shows how well trans-media can function in order to create a strong central narrative within a rich varied universe across games, books and even film. Ubisoft have seemed to scale down some of their trans-media activities recently, but I'm hoping they'll be stepping it up a notch for 2012 and the build up to AC3. Basically, I want Project Legacy back.

I loved AC: Brotherhood, so much so that it was probably my game of the year for 2010. It took all of the mechanics from AC2 and improved on them, as well as adding a layer of strategy and micromanagement. Training your recruits up from mere vigilantes to true Assassins was both enjoyable and rewarding.

Back in June, I suggested that AC: Revelations was going to be the same as the previous game, but better. The series has a history of taking the previous game, adding on some more involving content and introducing a new mechanic or two, which is fine. Revelations appears to have hit some kind of critical point. There's simply too much superfluous content, In addition to the main plotline, you have Assassin recruitment, Master Assassin  training, Mediterranean defence micromanagement, bomb challenges, faction challenges, Den Defence, Full Synchronisation on missions, Templar Dens, Book collecting and Animus Data Fragments to collect. That's all the content I can think of off the top of my head, but their may well be more. The game seems to really lack any sense of direction. Even the plot, which admittedly I haven't got too far into yet, seems to lack any real drive.

I'm not saying Revelations is a bad game, because it isn't. The characters are far better realised (specifically Yusuf). The dialogue specifically is incredibly well written, more so than in previous games. Istanbul (or Constantinople) is beautiful to play around in. A piece of advice to anyone playing; run everywhere. The fast travel system saves time, but you miss out on the excellent atmosphere of the city. You also collect far more Data Fragments.

Chrono Trigger came out on iOS recently, and after two days of not planning to buy it for a while, I bought it. The Square Enix pricing policy might seem expensive, but seven quid compared to how much it costs on DS isn't too bad. Up until recently, I wasn't really a huge fan of JRPGs, but since the original Final Fantasy won me over, I've been willing to give them all more of a chance.

I'm glad I did, because Chrono Trigger is awesome.

The art design: Lovely. The story line: Little flimsy at points, but enjoyable. The characters: All excellent, especially Frog and Robo (you know, because frogs and robots are both awesome). The combat is a brilliant fusion of action-adventure and traditional turn-based RPG. The game really pushes the boundary of what I have come to expect from JRPGs. There's not a huge amount of things to do outside of the main plot, but that's actually fine, because the main plot is so varied and interesting,

This is me, a humanoid frog and robot,
 standing round a table. Buy this game.

  Righty ho then. I'm off to go wrap presents, or buy a turkey, or something Christmassy. I'm sure I won't get distracted... by... OH MY GOD.

But that's for next time. See y'all in Alexandria!