Parent's Guide: Assassin's Creed: Revelations - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Assassin's Creed: Revelations, much like the previous games in the series, follows the story of the two warring factions, the Templars and the Assassins, the latter of which the protagonists Ezio and Altair are part of. On a mission of great importance to the order, Ezio's research has led him to Istanbul, where he hopes to find details of the all-powerful Apple of Eden left behind by Altair. In traditional Assassin's Creed style, you'll be able to explore a huge historically-inspired city filled with spires, domes and palaces which the ever-nimble Ezio, now pushing fifty, can scale effortlessly, as he goes about his quest. Stealth is the name of the game here too for the titular Assassins, as plenty of your missions will involve tracking, distracting or often eliminating your targets.

The controls are pretty complex, as you need to hold down several buttons at once in most cases - for example, jumping from rooftop to rooftop requires you to hold down RT and the A button whilst pushing the left analogue stick in the right direction. Ezio et al have dozens of moves under their belts, which are split into low profile ones which don't draw attention to you, like walking through town or stealthily assassinating someone with a hidden blade, and higher profile actions like leaping up the sides of buildings and swinging a gigantic sword around that are bound to get you noticed.

While Assassin's Creed: Revelations is flagged up for having (infrequent strong) bad language in it, a fair amount of it is in a different language, meaning that they probably won't recognise half of it - although words like 'bastardo' do bear a striking resemblance to their English counterparts. As for the strong violence, think leaping from the rooftops stabbing your unsuspecting victims in the neck, with spurts of blood flying out - it's not gory to the point of making you wince, but it's a tad on the extreme side, particularly in the slow motion kill sections.

Like any 'hardcore' game worth it's weight in metacritic ratings, Assassin's Creed: Revelations has an obligatory online multiplayer mode, requiring an Xbox Live Gold account and an additional online pass for 800 Microsoft Points if you happened to buy the game second hand, borrow it off a friend or your copy didn't come with one. Amongst the now-standard kill everyone Deathmatches and capture-the-artefact modes, the most imaginative mode is basically a giant game of hide and seek, where one team plays as a random set of Assassin's and must slink unseen through the city, whilst the other team try to find you. Unfortunately, there's no offline multiplayer modes to play through whatsoever.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Xbox 360