Assassin’s Creed Revelations’ is a game for history buffs, lovers of 16th century Constantinople, conspiracy theorists and anyone who would like to shank Adrian Peterson and Derrick Rose in the streets of 16th century Constantinople.

Judging from the game’s ad campaign, Peterson and Rose are either big fans of the series or are paid to pretend they are huge fanboys. Whatever the case, we truly hope we spot one of them while we’re hiding in virtual hay bales, because we’ve got scores to settle with both for making us lose drunken bets we made against their teams in Vegas.

Even if you don’t find any cloaked superstar athletes to assassinate online, the game still has plenty to offer.

For starters — a carriage chase. An early montage takes you away from the series’ familiar outstretched rooftops and crowded courtyards and hands over the reins to race and ram a rival into oblivion. Since our previous experiences with horse buggy racing had been restricted to Thursday nights at the trailer park and some obnoxious, controller-breaking missions in ‘Red Dead Redemption,” that fact the racing and ramming are so exciting is a testament to the time spent on game development.

This being the fourth ‘Assassin’s Creed’ game in as many years, you’d expect the developers to have fallen into a ‘Madden NFL’-like routine of offering more of the same with simple tweaks, but the gameplay has more varied attractions than ladies’ night at your local bar.

Without giving too much away — partly to avoid spoilers but mostly because the Dan Brown meets Doc Brown narrative in the game goes way over our heads — the game always keeps you guessing. Players control a rotation of three AC standby protagonists, one of whom has lost his mind and engages in missions that resemble the wacky ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ boat ride in tone. On the way, you learn all sorts of stuff you’ll never remember about the golden apple of magic and how an ancient order of assassins have battled over the eons against the Temple something something.  See, we just played a minute ago, and we don’t even remember half the storyline.

After a few hours after getting the game, we realized we’d been hiding in a hay bale and leaping out to stab people for far too long and it was time to hit the other stack of hay. Adrian Peterson and Derrick Rose have bedtimes too, right?

RATING: 8.5/10

Assassin’s Creed Revelations ($60), was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, published by Ubisoft and is available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Rated M. The publisher provided a copy of the game for review.

Read Phil Villarreal’s blog at becauseitoldyouso.com and follow him on Twitter: @philvillarreal

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