I love me some Assassin's Creed, but the franchise has finally pressed its luck.

Revelations (at least 60% of the way in) isn't so much a conclusion as a regurgitation. Once again, Ezio is leaping around, killing Templar agents who are stupid enough to walk around a town with Assassins falling out of the sky. Once again, there are eight trillion silly little trinkets and doo-dads to collect, all put in the most absurd places. And oh yes, you get to retrain another pack of assassins, using the game's ingenious method:

"We need more brave men and women to join our prestigious, secretive order that involves the most extreme and demanding of skills."

"Let's walk up to random people on the street and ask them to be Assassins."

"Nice."

Hope you enjoyed clicking on a bunch of random jobs on a map of Europe and having your minions do them in text format, 'cause that's back too. And yes, you can see the exact percentage chance of them completing it, ensuring none of your goons ever once fail. EXCITEMENT! Within weeks, you can pull a pickpocket off the street and have them conquering entire cities. The Mediterranean Defense mode reminds me a lot of Carmen SanDiego, minus most of the fun.

One of the hooks of the game is Ezio's old age, but his abilities are entirely the same and he's still wooing twenty -somethings, so the game doesn't feel any different. (There's at least one mission with a geriatric Altair that explores this more thoroughly, but it's all too brief.) I was hoping to play as a fading old man who replaced his athletic ability with guile and dirty tricks, but I'm still chasing hoodlums on rooftops.

Revelations DOES add three new features. Sadly, two of them suck. Bombcrafting is indeed fun and I love playing with the explosives. Tossing a Lamb's Blood bomb and freaking everyone out while I loot the goodies? Slick.

And then... there's Den Defense mode. It's sorta like tower defense, except it sucks. The Desmond portions are equally ill-conceived, and are reminiscent of Mirror's Edge minus the solid level design. (Um, guys, nobody BOUGHT Mirror's Edge... take a hint.) I don't know who bought Assassin's Creed to play a first-person platformer where you summon Lego bricks to walk on in some digital Tron-scape, but if you're one of them, congrats!

The franchise still has some flash - the half-dozen dungeon setpieces are great fun - but it all feels as old as Ezio looks. It's almost as if making a game a year could have negative consequences on content evolution.

And I miss having Veronica Mars as my sidekick. Remember Veronica Mars? That show was great. Great, that stupid theme song is in my head now.

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I played through the Kingdoms of Amalur demo (mostly to get the ME3 items), and was pretty pleased with what I saw. The game is completely devoid of original thought - dark elves, gnome inventors, hacking and slashing, skill trees, conversation wheels, morality choices, etc. - but well-executed, and the combat is nice and crunchy. I'll probably get it on the cheap down the road. Kinda strange to see EA releasing a Dragon Age clone to compete with their own franchise, but after DA2's lukewarm reception, maybe they're turning the screws on their Canadian buddies. It's not like BioWare's formula is some big secret anymore.