Okay I’m about ten days late, but it’s been a busy time, what with uni starting back up (even though that doesn’t happen till tomorrow for me, I’ve had to give fixing my sleeping schedule a go) and a buttload of personal stuff. Never mind that, here we are, and indeed a happy new year to everyone!
Let’s kick this post off with a little update for everyone who’s had trouble adding their exclusive multiplayer character: it’s fixed! What happened? Well the deal was that a lot of players who had purchased a pre-order from Gamestop (though for European countries, it was also delivered by different retailers but with the same benefits, at least for me it was) were unable to add their multiplayer DLC codes, and thus found their Ottoman Doctor/Crusader unavailable for play. A few days ago a hotfix was released by Ubisoft and now all characters should be perfectly available for play. I haven’t been able to find a comprehensive list of things fixed in this hotpatch (then again I am no Online Sherlock Holmes) but I think they’ve fixed a few other things as well.
One of those is the bodyguard ability.The bodyguard now appears to be capable both of climbing buildings and a great many other things that it wasn’t able to before. Just the other day I had one climb up and try to stun me. Thinking it was a player I thought “Hey, easy kill!” only to have my hopes and dreams (okay, a few hundred points) taken away when it turned out to be nothing more than a bodyguard. If you’ve spotted any other improvements that haven’t been mentioned in a patch (and maybe the bodyguard was mentioned in a patch, but I am notoriously unobservant), then please feel free to drop a comment with just exactly what.
And then we move on to the most exciting news I’ve heard in a while: the Mediterranean Traveler Map Pack for Revelations, which will be released on january 24th 2012.
Oh beautiful Siena, how I've missed you.
That’s right, Siena will be returning! A player-favourite by many, they’re finally adding this beauty of a map back into the game, and quite frankly I can’t wait to slaughter some people in there. That said, Siena is obviously not the only map to be added. It is in fact one of three maps returning from Brotherhood, being added to Revelations along with three new maps. The new maps are:
- Dyers
- Imperial District (of Constantinopel as far as I can tell.)
- Jerusalem
The old maps being added are:
- Siena
- Firenze (Oh the roofing that went on there… -Shudders-)
- San Donato
Now obviously I can’t say too much about the new maps yet since I am hardly a tester of any kind, but they look cool enough. Dyers is apparently set in Rhodes as well, just as Knight’s Hospital is, though it seems Dyers is meant to give you a new perspective on the city by showing off its less prosperous parts. The Imperial District appears to be a map that is meant to show off some of the incredible work that was done in the single player by being an almost exact copy of the single player “Imperial District”, which is by no means a bad thing. Go and play through it again to get a feel for the land if you like, I think it’ll certainly help players who are just beginning the multiplayer by giving them a map that they already know to some extent. Jerusalem I am looking forward to as well, simply because I already loved the city’s architecture in the first game, and that was what? At least 300 years before the setting we’ll get now!
Then there are obviously the returning maps from Brotherhood, which I think every Brotherhood player can get excited about. I know I am, and not just because of Siena. All three maps are quality maps, though one is left to wonder why they were left for a DLC while a map like Mont St. Michel was added, arguably the most dreadful map in the game for many of us.
I mean look at it, far too many rooftops!
Oh well, what’s done is done I suppose, though I perpetually cringe every time I get dropped in Mont St. Michel (which is to say, every other game.) Moving on to the two maps I haven’t discussed yet, we have Firenze and San Donato. Firenze was famous, or to me at least, in that pretty much the entire center of the map was a haven for roofers. With the Mercato Del Vecchio at its center, it could’ve been expected. After all the market is an open space towered over by arches on all sides, which make perfect staging points for kills. Quite honestly I can’t even blame people much for roofing on this map, since it just provides too many good opportunities for kills. All the same I’m quite excited about Firenze making its return, simply because it is a beautiful map in itself, I love Florence and I’m rather curious how Deathmatch will work out with just a part of the map available for play. The center, perhaps?
Oh look the only quality picture I could find... Is of people on the rooftops.
And then there is San Donato, a personal favourite of mine though I must say I hadn’t quite realized it until we neared the end of Brotherhood. San Donato is one of those maps, to me, that are just plain good. It does everything right, and even with the big monastery-like-building in the middle (can’t for the life of me remember what it was exactly) which didn’t really help with roofers, there was plenty more of the map to explore and actually play on. I’ve had some memorable Manhunt matches, hiding there in the center, and that church with its chasebreakers (if you’ve played it you know the one) just never stops being fun to hide in.
The map that does things just right.
Right! Well I coul add a section where I rave more about Siena, its beauty and the lack of any high buildings, but I think I’ll spare you the headache and simply thank you for reading instead. Having rather stupidly forgotten about this in the last posts, I realize now that I could’ve easily added an invitation for playing with any of you. Let me do that now. I play on PS3 and my username is simply “Keden”. I’ll be happy to accept a friend request and play a few matches, though I must warn you that I am a dreadful player in the free-for-alls, but always happy to have my ass whopped by a reader. 
For now, do keep checking in, even if I take a while between posts, I most certainly will be keeping up with my writing. Take care and till next time!
