Ezio collection revelations view

Among Assassin’s Creed fans there is pretty much no point in debating – Ezio was the best assassin the franchise ever created. With three games to follow his character, we saw his charm, humor and growth as a character. Now with the Ezio collection, the whole experience has been remastered, letting new fans experience the most raved about games, as well as giving veterans the chance to return to Italy. But is the Ezio collection all it’s cracked up to be?

As the story and characters are the same, we won’t reassess them here. Suffice it to say that Ezio is still as charming and human as I remembered, making his story a delight to play through. Desmond is actually less irritating than I remembered, and the story as a whole is intriguing, fast-paced and enjoyable. But you can read more about those aspects in our original reviews of Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood and Revelations. So, let’s look at the remaster separate from that.

Ezio collection desmond

The quality of the remaster is greatly varied between the three titles. Assassin’s Creed II is by far the weirdest looking game of the batch. At first, I thought that textures had been upgraded without making changes to the original models. Instead, it looks like the models have been adapted slightly, but not all of them look better – Ezio’s Uncle Mario looks bug-eyed most of the time, and the various enemies range from looking outdated in their rendering to outright absurdly awful. It’s all the more jarring when beautifully remastered fabrics are draped over such characters, making them look like their human suits don’t fit but their clothing is perfectly tailored.

Thankfully, by the time you get to Brotherhood, and particularly Revelations, the characters look significantly better. Ezio’s beard might occasionally shift pigment range, but for the most part he and his allies are consistently well created. Plus, the bustling city filled with people and outfits of all types look phenomenal; it’s this installment that looks the most like what we’ve come to expect from a PS4 game.

Ezio collection cheer for Ezio

The cities, too, are well recreated. The signature moment of syncing with the high points of towers, looking down on the panorama of the city below is still breathtaking and highly enjoyable. I did have a couple of those cinematics bug out on me while playing, but they were mostly the, um, high point of exploration. I was still confused about the placement of notoriety posters sometimes, though – who is putting up posters in places only those doing parkour can see?

While the cities are still vibrant and enjoyable, filled with the hustle and bustle of various groups of pedestrians who are perfect to use as camouflage for your assassinations, they aren’t nearly as expansive or complicated as nostalgia led me to believe. Most locations are pretty close together, and with buildings practically on top of each other, running alone rooftops is a breeze even without the extra gadgets that came in later Assassin’s Creed installments.

Ezio collection who put a poster here

That said, the parkour in the early games is still rather frustrating. Ezio just doesn’t do what I thought I was controlling him to do, and I often found myself shouting at the screen that he wasn’t meant to jump, or fly off to the side, or whatever other fumble took place. It’s still fun to traverse the cities, but the advances to the parkour in more recent installments are much more apparent when you attempt to control Ezio’s clumsy movements.

Combat is also still the same as it was originally, which means not too great. I usually play pretty stealthily, filling every haystack with dozens of enemies. However, when forced into open combat, it’s perfectly viable to simply wait for them to attack one at a time, doing a counter kill against each opponent. It’s so basic and easy and boring; sure, it’s really satisfying to kill all the enemies with wonderfully gory animations, but you can only see your hidden blade go through an enemy’s skull so many times before you lose interest.

Ezio collection leap of faith

If engaging in open combat is boring, it is more than compensated for in the joy that is the assassinating mechanic in the game. I still enjoy falling down from the rafters to kill an unsuspecting baddie, or using a poison dart or unique distraction bomb to cause absolute mayhem from the safety of my hiding spot.

Ezio collection revelations

The remaster runs rather smoothly on the whole, with only a few stutters and issues that I encountered along the way. Most notable is that loading times have been almost eliminated. Going from one map to the next, or reloading after desyncing from a sequence (because Ezio decided to leap off a high point instead of climbing like you were trying to get him to do) now takes only a couple seconds instead of the ages that I used to spend running around the blank space of the animus. This is a significant upgrade from the original release and makes the whole experience much more enjoyable; I was actually willing to travel back and forth from the cities to my base of operations and back again as often as I liked without being hassled by the irritation of loading times.

Ezio collection revelations textures

 

Last Updated: November 22, 2016

Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection
If you never played the Ezio Assassin's Creed games, this remaster is a superior way of experiencing it. If, however, you played them before, I'm not convinced that this remaster offers enough to make replaying them worthwhile unless you are truly that desperate for an Assassin's Creed game this year.
7.5
Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection was reviewed on PlayStation 4

33 Comments

  1. Lord Chaos

    November 22, 2016 at 12:35

    I actually miss playing AC. Should maybe see if my 360 can still start up and start playing Rogue.

    Reply

    • Andre Fourie

      November 22, 2016 at 12:45

      I fired mine up again the weekend and played Ghost Recon. Awesome AF. forgot how much I love that game.

      Reply

    • Matthew Holliday

      November 22, 2016 at 12:46

      Rogue was fun, same with black flag.
      I enjoyed the ship stuff more than the actual assassin stuff

      Reply

      • Lord Chaos

        November 22, 2016 at 12:48

        I really enjoyed the ship stuff, Got Rogue on release but it’s still in its plastic and the 360 hasn’t been on since before that.

        Reply

        • Matthew Holliday

          November 22, 2016 at 12:50

          better deplastic it and get on it then, Rogue is better than both AC3 and syndicate.
          Im not paying for another AC game untill they reintroduce ships.

          Reply

          • Lord Chaos

            November 22, 2016 at 12:51

            Will do then, could be something fun to do over the next month.

      • Andre Fourie

        November 22, 2016 at 12:48

  2. Hugh Lashbrooke

    November 22, 2016 at 12:37

    > you can only see your hidden blade go through an enemy’s skull so many times before you lose interest.

    And they say video games have desensitised us to violence! n00bs.

    Reply

  3. Hammersteyn_hates_Raid0

    November 22, 2016 at 12:39

    I haven’t played any of those /

    Reply

    • Lord Chaos

      November 22, 2016 at 12:41

      For shame. And you call yourself a console peasant. 😛

      Reply

      • Hammersteyn_hates_Raid0

        November 22, 2016 at 12:42

        Shame nothing, I saw this one trick pony a mile away

        Reply

        • Lord Chaos

          November 22, 2016 at 12:44

          I wanted to send you a friend invite on Steam, but you’ve been offline for so long that Half-Life 3 would be released before you would’ve noticed.

          Reply

          • Hammersteyn_hates_Raid0

            November 22, 2016 at 12:47

            I promise everyone I’ll always be online as soon as console gaming dies. My steam account has about as much content as your average EA game

          • Lord Chaos

            November 22, 2016 at 12:49

            Well, for the price you pay for a single console game you could fluff up your steam account rather nicely.

    • Ottokie

      November 22, 2016 at 12:42

      same

      o/

      Reply

    • Andre Fourie

      November 22, 2016 at 12:44

      Me neither. Started on the first AC, then I got bored. Very bored.

      Reply

      • R1ker

        November 22, 2016 at 15:10

        The first one was a grind. The only reason i actually finished it was because i wanted to see how the story played out. But AC2 is a totally different game. You should really give it a shot.

        Reply

    • Marc O Polo

      November 23, 2016 at 08:34

  4. Mistake Not...

    November 22, 2016 at 12:42

    • Hammersteyn_hates_Raid0

      November 22, 2016 at 12:43

      hahaha

      Reply

    • Andre Fourie

      November 22, 2016 at 12:46

      XD. ROFL.

      Reply

  5. DragonSpirit009

    November 22, 2016 at 12:51

    I really want to play all the AC games. Only played a part of it when I was sharing a flat with a friend who actually had one of the games. Was instantly hooked.

    Reply

  6. 40 Insane Frogs

    November 22, 2016 at 13:10

    Just in case any one brings up that retarded Polygon comparison video.

    Reply

    • Ottokie

      November 22, 2016 at 13:13

      I saw it this morning. So much lolz

      Reply

    • HvR

      November 22, 2016 at 13:24

      Geoff should really grow his beard back, he looks like a kid in this video.

      Reply

  7. VampyreSquirrel

    November 22, 2016 at 13:23

    Played AC, AC2 (and 2.5, 2.5.2) and about half of AC3 and then lost interest completely.

    Reply

    • HvR

      November 22, 2016 at 13:25

      You stopped right at where it started getting good

      Reply

      • VampyreSquirrel

        November 22, 2016 at 13:47

        So I’ve heard. AC3 lost me half way in, and I was not in the mood for more AC when Black Flag came out.

        I’ll get Black Flag at some stage.

        Reply

        • R1ker

          November 22, 2016 at 15:12

          AC3 probably has the longest into to a game ever. To be honest I also got bored there. I got black flag on a steam sale a while ago but still needs to start it.

          Reply

          • Dresden

            November 22, 2016 at 15:42

            Same here, got mine for about R70 or something like that. It’s still lurking in my backlog, will most likely start when I get round to finishing Witcher 3.

  8. Bruce Bielie

    November 22, 2016 at 13:37

    Thanks but no. You know when you play a game and you feel like you are watching 5 day cricket? That is how I felt playing the first one. I hate 5 day cricket!

    Reply

  9. MakeItLegal

    November 22, 2016 at 15:10

    game developers should build all games with scalablity built into it…the way remasters are happening , build it into the core game , then when u shank the consumer again they at least get upgraded visuals and more stable engines .v #build4thefutrepls

    Reply

  10. Milesh Bhana

    November 23, 2016 at 08:11

    damn, you had to play 3 AC games back to back for this review? How long did that take you?

    Reply

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