With everybody from Mario to Saints Row scoring perfect 100s from game reviewers this season it's good to see a big-name title that bucks the trend. I suppose that doesn't apply if you're Ubisoft.

The Ezio saga finally comes to a close in Assassin's Creed Revelations, the third and final chapter of the series that kept getting announced instead of Assassin's Creed III. Fans will explore the ancient city of Constantinople, walk in the footsteps of the original Assassin's Creed's Altair, and finally put this puppy to bed so we can move onto a fresh setting, like New York City, Moscow, or ancient Egypt. As long as we've got handholds, we'll be happy.

But are game reviewers happy with the third installment of Italian-style exploratory killing? Not 100 happy, at least.

Yet it can't excuse everything. Assassin's Creed Revelations has been developed by six studios across three continents - and in a little over twelve months. It shows. Revelations' fractured campaign doesn't suffer from a lack of ideas, but the new inclusions either fail to add anything meaningful, or, in some cases, actively detract from the experience. You can't really blame Ubisoft for not trying here; there are plenty of new additions to deflect the common accusations hurled at yearly updates. You can, however, criticise the way in which these concepts have been integrated.

Destructoid
Revelations offers the same game as Brotherhood, but in a straitjacket and a new coat of paint. Gameplay-wise, it's still a fun, deep experience that any fan of the franchise will enjoy playing because it's not very different from what you're used to; you've just already played it last year, and the year before that. Ezio's final chapter in the franchise is a shadow of the past two games, and you realize how sorely you miss the "real-world" characters like Shaun when they do make an appearance for a few seconds. More importantly, there are just no great characters in Revelations.

The famous Piri Reis is far from a Machiavelli or Leonardo da Vinci and feels like a throwaway character, while Yusif, the leader of the Brotherhood in Constantinople, is just not interesting enough to care about. A female character inspired by one of Albrecht Durer's famous paintings acts as Ezio's love interest in the autumn of his life, but even she seems to be there just to make Ezio a little bit more human. That leaves Suleiman I, still the young scholar during the game's time frame, as the game's strongest support character, although his impact on Ottoman rule is mostly lost to all but those familiar with the period's history.

Telegraph
...the map is always covered in quest markers that vie for your attention. Recruiting soldiers is as much a part of the game as buying up property, perusing bookshops, acquiring art and renovating rundown parts of town, so much so that its easy to forget your primary job description. Even a Tower Defence minigame manages to make its way into this year's update, in which you protect threatened Assassin Strongholds from invading armies. The huge amount of content is generous, but the series has reached a tipping point where the distractions are now eroding the core.

And it's a strong core. Traversing the city is a joy, as it's always been, while the central premise that has you searching for five keys to unlock a door is reassuringly straightforward. Each key is located in a different dungeon, and these are the standout moments of the game; intricate, smart puzzles that mix platform design ingenuity with a purity of focus. Here, away from the hobbies of the outer city, the strengths of Assassin's Creed shine, adding to the sense that the copious embellishments are all filler, not killer.

GameSpot
Nevertheless, Revelations is as absorbing as its predecessors, because it's so much fun to move through Constantinople and other key areas. This is due in part to the world's sheer beauty. Deep golds and reds make a stroll through the grand bazaar a feast for the eyes, and famous landmarks like Hagia Sophia cut striking silhouettes against the night sky. Row a boat across a strait, and you marvel at the authentic wake that ripples behind. A mauve haze softens the horizon as day passes into night, and makes you keenly feel the passage of time—a thematically relevant effect, considering how conscious the older Ezio is of his mortality. Of course, previous Assassin's Creed games looked stunning too, but Revelations is no less impressive for it. Not that every detail is perfect: citizens still occasionally pop into existence before your very eyes, and you might spot a guard clipped halfway through a rooftop. But such quibbles hardly matter in a game this visually spectacular.

The other reason exploration is so joyous is that the simple act of moving from place to place is so satisfying. Animations remain superb. Ezio doesn't grab some unseen outcropping as he scales towers: he reaches for actual ledges and outcroppings, which makes his impossible acrobatics feel authentic. Climbing a tower reaching into the heavens, admiring the view, and then making a leap of faith into a hay bale hundreds of feet below is a delight, as it always has been. But Revelations expands the parkour aspect of the game by giving you use of a handheld hook. With this hook, Ezio can scale upward more quickly and glide down ziplines—and even assassinate rooftop guards as he skims past.

GameTrailers
The stab-or-be-stabbed multiplayer returns from Brotherhood with a few tweaks. Set inside the Abstergo templar training program, as you level up you unlock cinemas that give you some insight into the organization. Where you had to earn all your abilities before, you're given some right out of the gate this time. It doesn't help much, though. Higher level players have a distinct advantage—particularly in the team-based modes where things like invisibility give them a decided edge. There's a plethora of options including variants of deathmatch and capture the flag across nine different maps, but if the perks aren't ruining the good time it's the skill-free instant kills. It's a fun diversion, but it still feels like empty calories.

Strategy Informer
We really have been spoilt this year. With the release of Revelations, Ubisoft have finally turned their initial concept into a truly unmissable game. Pulling the narrative together alongside some vital gameplay additions, this is the best, most complete Assassin's Creed title to date. In the space of four years, the series has turned it's infantile expectation into a showing of maturity and extreme class. It seems the developers have grown up alongside their assassins, nurturing the series with enough confidence and pizazz to execute a top contender for game of the year

With the regularity of a flip of the calendar page, November brings us another Assassin's Creed, the fourth major console game in the series in four years. This year's edition is Assassin's Creed: Revelations.

More Ezio. More adventuring 500 years ago. More towers to climb and Templars to kill. They're pushing it, no? But maybe this game is worth your time…

Stephen Totilo, who enjoys this series a lot: This game starts badly. Actually, it's got problems even before it starts, because the sales pitch is that this game wraps up all of those unanswered questions you have about Assassin's Creed. If you don't have any questions—if you don't want to know why Desmond stabbed so-and-so or how a guy named Altaïr ibn-La'Ahad is connected to a dude named Ezio Auditore da Firenze—and if you wouldn't buy a game just for its multiplayer—then stay away. Far away.

This one is for the fans, the fans who might be happy to know that somehow Ubisoft's phalanx of Assassin's Creed studios have managed to make a game that is as stuffed with single-player content as last year's bursting AC: Brotherhood and has even more multiplayer options. You mostly play as an older but still nimble and deadly Ezio in 16th century Constantinople, exploring the most beautiful if topographically uninteresting city in the series. You also play occasional flashback missions as Altaïr and some very strange inside-the-computer-world missions as modern-day Desmond, whose consciousness has been fractured.

You have to have an appetite for the series' formula, established most successfully in 2009's Assassin's Creed II, to even tolerate Revelations. If you do—if you like climbing through an open-world city, taking on main story quests, tons of side missions, lots of stealth, acrobatics and assassination, the new game presents the most intoxicating version. I spent five consecutive hours yesterday ignoring the storyline in the campaign, because I was pulled into a loop of taking over sectors of Constantinople, recruiting and training assassins, sending those assassins on missions around the Mediterranean, and becoming such a master of the game's elaborate chemistry set that I had two minions ranked up to Level 15 Master Assassin before I hit a storyline mission that introduced the concept of training people to become Master Assassins. And the Desmond stuff… wow. It's very good, for once. Plus there's the wonderful stealth-based multiplayer, expanded this year to even include more lowbrow deathmatch options. This game starts rough with a Michael Bay-style first chapter that pretends the series if Call of Duty,. And the genius of the new bomb tools take a while to reveal itself. But this is no mere franchise-milking here. This game is, somehow, the real deal. Should you get it? Yes

What happens when bad-asses get old? They look back into history at the fates of other, long-dead badasses. Watch the latest trailer for the finale of Ezio Auditore's saga and see how UbiSoft plans on making the gray-bearded assassin go out with a bang.

Hollywood loves nothing so much as copying successes. It's how gladiator, vampire and zombie trends start to run amok. And now that historical action hybrids are all the rage—Sherlock Holmes, The Da Vinci Code, we're looking at you—there's apparently a rush on projects centered on Leonardo DaVinci. Slashfilm's got the scoop here.

In a way, the prototypical Renaissance Man could be a great polymath action hero. He may not have been a brawler but he invented amazing contraptions during a time of antiquarian tumult. That's enough for Tinsel Town. It's probably not a coincidence that these projects are finding traction at a time when the Assassin's Creed games have introduced Da Vinci to new audiences via a powerful entertainment medium. Now, if DaVinci's in the Assassin's Creed movie that's in development, then someone might have to call in the Templars.

Young Leonardo Da Vinci Action Movie ‘Leonardo' in Development at Universal [Slashfilm]

Whether it be Florence or Jerusalem, Vence or Tyre, Assassin's Creed has done a remarkable job of bringing cities to life. Constantinople is the lastest city to get the AC treatment.

This teaser trailer for the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Revelations shows life in Constantinople. It dazzles, just like the city it portrays.

Last year, the multiplayer for Assassin's Creed Brotherhood proved to be a surprising and promising addition to the historical adventure series. A new video for Assassin's Creed Revelation reveals the new abilities, modes and locations coming to this year's sequel.

Batman has his own stories but now and then runs into Superman. In Today's Speak Up on Kotaku commenter Aikage imagines a video game universe filled with countless games linked by a single continuity. What an Oddworld idea.

Video games need to take a cue from comic books.

It'd be great if instead of endless sequels, we got games in a similar vein, in the same "universe" but different main characters. The closest thing to this I can think of was Dragon Age 2 compared to Dragon Age: Origins. Different main character but the game takes place in the same universe.

If this doesn't appeal to you think of it this way, You're playing Uncharted and one of the treasures you're after is something that was being created during your play through of Assassin's Creed. In comic books the effects of one comic frequently will be mentioned, or have an impact in another comic. This sort of interrelatedness among the issues leads to awesome things like...the Avengers movie! (hopefully).

Anyway, if you could design some video game crossovers regardless of publisher/developer who would you have meet?