That Rev Chap

This is the game I spent most time on this weekend. At least five or six hours of it. It’s repetitive, yes, but that doesn’t matter at all, as the mechanics are so much fun. Run, jump, fight, run, jump, fight, run, jump… Repeat for hour after hour without getting bored. I’ve done six assassinations now and there’s been a big jump in difficulty. Not so much in combat, where I still feel very hard done by if I die, but in the “stealth” – which is less about not being seen and more about not being noticed.

Some people, I’m sure, must get very angry with the game when a lunatic pushes them into a guard during a stealth kills mission, ruining a few minutes of careful stalking and stabbing. I can understand that. To me, though, it always feels like it’s my fault. I need to allow for them, to stay away form guards when they’re around, make sure to stay back, work out where the guards are and how to get past. The stealth missions now tend to have time limits, but they’re not so tight that you need to power through and get lucky. You have time. Failure is caused by overconfidence, impatience and, yes, some luck.

Anyway, I’m loving it. I’m finding it more difficult to lose pursuers – and running away is the better option than fighting now, for the most part, as a heap of dead bodies left lying around near a mission starting point is a very good way to make things more difficult.

It takes a while to work out the rules of the game – and it is a game with simple rules rather than anything approaching reality – but once you do there’s a brilliant game in a brilliant world. Taking things slowly, refusing to “teleport”, doing everything you can, exploring and just running across rooftops for the sheer joy of it, it’s a wonderful world.

(Being pulled out of the game for lengthy cut scenes full of exposition still grates, though. I don’t care about the plot at all and would be quite happy without any.)