Review: Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – The Lost Archive (DLC)
It’s no lie that I felt Assassin’s Creed: Revelations was getting a little stale. While the story missions picked up pace towards the end, and the added hook blade and bombs were nice additions, the game remained largely unchanged from Brotherhood. It’s easy to say that they only had a year development cycle, and that’s fair, but I wish they’d taken some more time to make it the real evolution of the franchise I had hoped for.
For all this though, you can’t argue that they rested on their laurels when it came to the Desmond segments. While Brotherhood gave you the ability to run around modern day Monteriggioni, apart from a few collectables and a pretty big cliffhanger, there wasn’t a huge amount to it. Revelations on the other hand went completely in a different direction, and since Desmond was trapped in the lower levels of the Animus, it really gave Ubisoft a chance to explore some rather unique gameplay possibilities. Cue the first person puzzle platforming segments, aimed at exploring the past and upbringing of Demond through abstract environments and audio files. While we’re all eager to hear more about Assassin’s Creed 3, Ubisoft has offered some single player DLC in the form of ‘The Lost Archive’.
Should you return to the Animus, or is it best to leave this out of the history books?
In The Lost Archive you play as Subject 16 Clay Kaczmarek (Desmond being Subject 17), and through the seven memories you’ll experience his induction into the Creed, his break-in to Abstergo to learn more about the Animus, and learn where he’s been in history through said device. Thing is, it’s not that simple. Instead of seeing these events and experiencing them with other characters with a clear narrative, you’ll see them through fragmented memories of photographs and audio filled with creative platform sequences and powers. I’m not saying that this is bad, I really enjoyed this change of pace in the gameplay, but I feel that this may have been better showcased through a short animated feature in the style of Assassin’s Creed: Embers (well worth a watch, as long as you’ve finished Revelations). The Lost Archive won’t provide you with many important story cues, but it was nice to hear and learn a little more about Subject 16, as he was an interesting character in Revelations.
Thankfully they don’t throw you in the deep end, as the opening introduces you to the primary mechanics again, though is short enough so as to not over stay its welcome. If you’re unfamiliar with this gameplay style, or maybe you haven’t gotten around to playing Assassin’s Creed Revelations, let me describe it briefly. Unlike the regular gameplay of Assassin’s Creed where you’ll find yourself scaling buildings, training up new recruits, as well as the usual stabby-stabby, these sequences are played out entirely in first person. This gameplay feel like a natural evolution of the glyph puzzle sections seen in Brotherhood, and as well as serving up some challenging puzzle platforming, they also give a little more backstory to the characters including Desmond. Once you’ve mastered the basic movement (familiar to any first person gamers), you’re soon introduced into the idea of spawning blocks to help you navigate the environment. This is done with the triggers, and you can cycle the shape between a long rectangle and an angled surface, giving you enough flexibility to move around in 3d space. You’ll soon encounter obstacles ranging from lasers to instant death areas/boxes and even rivers of energy, it’s all very surreal. You’re only allowed to have 3 platforms present, and placing another means the first one you placed disappears. The platforms are spawned from a fixed viewpoint, meaning you can place one below yourself as you fall, potentially saving yourself from going splat. These two block types are the same seen in Revelations, but later on they introduce a new square which gives you a huge jump, a little like the blue gel seen in Portal 2.
A number of the individual segments can be challenging, with many pits to fall down, however the checkpoints are very frequent so as to avoid potential frustration. The movement is something that you’ll need to get used to very quickly, and initially it can feel a little clunky as the walking seems as if you’re using an 8-way d-pad. I found the later memories to be much more interesting, partly due to the more creative and abstract nature of the environments you traverse, but more for the fact that it introduced some new gameplay not experienced in the original Revelations segments. It seems odd that they hide this away at the end of the DLC, especially since gamers who are interested will most likely have played through the main game,. Overall, my 100% playthrough (yes, there’s collectables) took me around 2 hours. There’s some good voice over work from all characters involved, and it was nice to get a little more confirmation on Lucy Stillman’s role in the game, plus there were some potential hints at what other time periods we may be heading to in later instalments of the franchise.
As much as I hate to bring value proposition into a review, I feel it’s very important when discussing DLC, primarily because there are no set values, making matters harder to judge. The Lost Archive is available for 800 points (£7.99 on Steam and PSN) and for 2 hours of gameplay, this is way too much. The content is good, but not for that price. I very much enjoyed it while it lasts, but I would have much preferred some core Assassin’s Creed gameplay similar to the sequences that released for Brotherhood.
6/10