Nyonya, New York Chinatown

I like the decor, I'm a big fan of flat hard chairs, for some reason.  The place is cash only - as if the six square blocks of Chinatown is a null zone where your credit card no longer works.
Stangely, the service was very coffeehouse - they just brought out the occasional dish as it finished cooking.  We got our appetizers last, but I won't complain overmuch - through all the confusion, we got a completely extra dish that we didn't order.
The roti was the fluffy kind that you so often find in malaysian restaurants - it gets chewy as it gets cold, though.  The hokkien mee was good, but not as strong in flavor as you expect hokkien mee to be. Lobak was good and crunchy. Chow kuey tiao was only "okay". Curry mee was really good.  Roti telur was a bit flat also. I guess a number of the dishes were underseasoned.  Chendol was covered with the brown coffee-ish goop moreso than coconut.  Maybe we should've let it melt to a more chendol consistency first

AC:R, Day 4

I steadfastly refuse to reconsider my method of playing the game.  Even after the two Batmans punished me for trying to finish the fetch quests before the story quests, I am resolute.  But there were some stirrings of doubt today.  I have conquered so much of the city and the outlying areas via paperwork, that I've found myself in a classical business conundrum: the more you control, the more upkeep work you have to do.  I try to move the story along, but every minute in the game that passes allows my iron grip on the cities of the Mediterranean to slowly subside.  I have to keep sending out minions to keep control of the many, many cities I'm supposed to be running.  It's nearly all-consuming at this point, navigating my way to story missions while stopping at as many mission centers as possible on the way.  But again, not going to change my ways.  Over 50% of Constantistanbul is renovated, and it is all mine.  Except for one den!  For some reason I have failed to capture the northernmost den despite repeated attempts!  Infuriating.  The captain in that den rabbits every time I so much as put a toe inside its borders, and man, can he get to his escape point fast.  Just murderous.  I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too.  Mark my words.
In story-related news, I've tailed a suspected traitor to the Prince and found him selling weapons to a deposed royal who is mounting a revolt.  The Prince and I agreed both need to die, but the suspected traitor turned out to be loyal, just setting up an ambush.  Whups.  Hey guy, you need to let some of the rest of us in on these kinds of plans.  Else someone asks some Assassin to murder you, and now look what happened.  Anyway, looks like it's up to me to finish what he started and single-handedly punch everyone's ticket to Stab-Town, Home of Traitors And People Who Looked At Ezio Sideways.
As for the Masayaf keys, Sofia is helping me track down some rare books, which apparently in turn lead me to those sneaky hidden passageways where I undertake various missions in order to retrieve 'keys'.  Have I mentioned?  These 'keys' pretty much look like fancy CDs?  Well I mean, of course they're artifacts from the Original Civilization mentioned in previous games, similar to the Apple of Eden, but I'm not understanding how Ezio is using them to view Altair's memories.  In the latest memory, Altair is 60 (he was 24 and 26 in the first two) and is busy regretting his whole life with his wife, Maria - especially the part about letting Abbas get control of Masayaf while he was away fighting the Mongols.  Abbas has gone all "Scar" on the region, and now lazy Assassins lie in the Masayaf streets, and other supposed indicators that the Creed has really gone downhill under Abbas' reign.  Well, they try to make it clear in the brief time that they have.  Anyway Abbas is being an idiot, and demands the Apple, despite knowing that it's power could destroy everyone.  Altair's youngest son is killed, Maria is killed, etc. etc.  The usual.
I got to get back to my territory control.

AC:R, Bomb Review

A word on bombs, since they're such a big new part of the game.

Shells Types: Any shell can be used for any of the three types of bombs - lethal, tactical, and diversionary.

•  Fuse Shell: These babies bounce, and detonate after 3 seconds.  Great for bouncing one around a corner or under a roof.
•  Impact Shell: These bombs detonate immediately upon hitting something, great for immediate incapacitation in the middle of a fight.
•  Tripwire Shell: These bombs are planted and then are triggered when someone walks near it.  Great for patrolling guards and undetected murdering.
•  Sticky Pouch: These bombs stick to things, such as guards and walls, and will detonate after 5 seconds. Great for stealthy murders and reaching someone who's guarded.  Just stick a bomb on someone who's walking in his direction. 

Powder Types: Any powder can be used for any of the three types of bombs.  Powder is the 'boom' part of the bomb, packed into the core near the fuse.

• Indian Gunpowder: For smaller explosions, when you don't want to kill passersby or draw too much attention.
• Arabic Gunpowder: For medium explosions, when you want to cover a couple of guards, but not endanger too many people
• British Gunpowder: For large explosions, when you want to cover a lot of area.

And finally, the effects, the 'filler' part of the bomb, which will explode outwards when the bomb is triggered.  These I will divide into their respective pouch categories.  You initially have room for 3 bombs in each of 3 pouches, lethal, tactical, and diversionary.

Lethal Effects: 

• Shrapnel: Murder-licious.
• Datura Powder: Poison-y goodness. 
• Coal Dust: Concussive death.

Tactical Effects: 

• Lamb's Blood: Being covered in blood so suddenly is apparently enough of a shock that most every just stops in their tracks in horror
• Caltrops: We had these in Batman!  Well, you did if you had the Catwoman DLC.  Caltrops are little spiky jacks that cover the floor and make everyone standing in the area hop around in pain
• Phosphorous: Your basic smoke bomb, which I almost never use for escape, but almost always use to blind a huge group of people (using British Gunpowder for maximum area) and then take my time to slice n' dice.  Or drop one on a group of guards and walk past them casually.

Diversionary Effects: 

• Salt of Petra: Creates a smoke signal which will attract any guards that happen to be looking in that direction.  They will run over to where the signal is and investigate while you take whatever they were guarding.  I haven't found a good range on it yet - sometimes the guards I want to see it don't seem to notice the smoke.
• Sulphur: Creates a noise that nearby guards will rush to investigate.  It's easier to gauge the distance on this one.  Also, the game is quick to point out that there are two factions of city guards, and if you get both to investigate the same spot, they'll break out into a nice little fight.
• Skunk Oil: This one is a bit more situational.  If you need to separate one person from a group, getting him covered in skunk oil is a great way to do it - he's stunned for a moment, and anyone that was near him is sure to keep their distance.  I've never had a use for it - if I want a guy dead, I'm happy to also kill anyone who's next to him.
• Pyrite Coins: Explodes fake gold coins over the area!  Peasants will rush and and push guards down in order to get at them.

So you can see how many options there are.  It's just about verging on ridiculous.  Oh well, I guess AC:R wants you to have your options. 

AC:R, Day 3

Day three in Constant-istanbul-ple, and I have faffed around until my wrists hurt.  By liberating templar-controlled dens, I've unlocked more available assassins to recruit.  Once I have assassins to train, I stop at every available moment to send them out on missions in the greater world map.  I've taken over all but one templar den in the city, and also every town available to me in the Mediterranean area, by sending out higher and higher level of assassins to do my bidding in distant regions.  It requires some upkeep, but it generates money and xp, and it's just a matter of sending guys out occasionally, so it's not really difficult.  I lost a den, actually, and had to spend a lot of time getting it back, THAT was quite infuriating.  My templar awareness bar wasn't even full, but I should have been more urgent about getting it down when it was glowing red like that.  One of my dens came under attack, and I went there to do the Assassin (tower) defense mini game, which I promptly lost.  They brought riflemen who can shoot down your rooftop assassins!  Not even sure what I was supposed to do about that.  So, I lost the area, no second chances or 'Game Over, Try Again'.  You just lose it to the templars and have to re-do the templar captain-hunt to get it back.  Aggravating.  You can bet I'll keep a closer eye on that awareness bar from now on.  Actually, seeing as I've almost renovated everything in the city, it's probably not going to be a huge deal in the future.  Also, once my apprentices have trained to become Level 15 Assassin masters (and I do a few sub-quests to promote them), the den I leave them in charge of can never revert ever again.  Awesome.
I'd have happily faffed on forever, but I realized that, despite all my renovations and obscene hourly revenue, the shops still wouldn't sell me better armor.  My health bar was still only five bars long, which is about one good swipe from the more dangerous city guards.  That probably isn't the way the game is meant to be played. So I got back to work on the story missions.  I helped some Romanis, Thieves, and Mercenaries, to get on their good side, and then decided I needed to make a friend higher up in the political echelons.  As it so happened, I saved the life of a Prince of the city, grandson of the current Sultan, so he became an ally and source of new missions.  Do you want to know how I did it?  Yusuf got wind of an assassination attempt (not by actual Assassins, obviously it's kind of a misnomer, the group name) and we infiltrated the Prince's welcome home party as italian minstrels.  Hilariously, Ezio is able to string together some notes and some half-assed rhymes to distract the attentions of the party-goers as the other Assassins (group name, not perpetrators) took out the would-be assassins (perpetrators, not group members) without causing alarm.  Old Ezio's already grizzled look was not enhanced by the frippery of the italian minstrel outfit, but I did get to punch out those dudes from the last game who always came up to you with a song and a hand out.  Also, at the end, Ezio snapped the head of his lute clean off and drove it through some guys heart.  Huzzah.
The nice Venetian lady who is proprietor of a rare bookstore is helping me find those Masayaf keys that I originally came here for, and I slogged my way to two of them so far.  The bonus objectives were terribly unreasonable.  I can't go through 5 different rooms and 30 guards without detection.  Once someone saw me, I threw up my hands in disgust (as I so often do) and went on a murdering rampage.
Somehow, Ezio is able to use the keys to experience Altair memories?  Who knows if they will explain that one.  At any rate, when I return to HQ with a key, Ezio sits down and we take a brief sojourn into the world of Altair.  We haven't done much as Altair, of course.  These mini-quests in AC are always "follow the directions carefully, now back to your regularly scheduled faffing about." Sequence 4 is now completed.

AC:R, Day 2

Day two in this new land of Constantinople / Istanbul, and I've had it with being hand held!  I'm off to strike it rich on my own without you, Yusuf, you wait right there in the HQ while I murder my way across this city and back.
He taught me a while ago about territory take-overs, and in the tutorial part, it was WAY easier than it is in practice.  But it seems that I won't have to do it overmuch, as there are only maybe 7-9 territories in the city, and soon, they will all be mine, muahahahaa.  The concept is, to walk up to the restricted area around a Templar Den and go into Eagle Vision to identify the Templar Captain.  You do this by hovering over likely candidates for about a second and when you find him, it notifies you clearly that this guy is your target.  All you've got to do is identify him, kill him, then climb a tower and light the signal, and the den is yours.  Shops in the area can be renovated, more assassins can be recruited, and everyone's happier.  The problem is the identification part, actually.  You can't exactly just stand around and peer at people - it's a restricted area, so the guards are onto you no matter how casual you might act.  And the Captain is often in annoyingly difficult-to-reach locations; of course in the tutorial, you can see him from a nearby rooftop and then send a thrown dart spinning his way and that's the end of it.  In some areas, he's practically stashed inside a building behind several guys standing watch.  You have to get creative with the killing and the smoke bombs to even figure out who or where he is, and there are way too many guards to keep a low profile.  But if you're spotted, some of the captains run, and you have to "come back another day" to liberate that area.  It's proving to be the most exhausting and failure-prone part of Faffing About Creed.
The remainder of the mechanics of step-by-step city takeover are all going well.  The teleport spots (tunnel entrances) are all pre-unlocked, so you can go where you please.  Romanis replace courtesans in this game, serving the same function, though in fact, they are wearing less.  Renovating structures, strangely, puts you on the templars' radar, by about 25-30% 'awareness' per renovation, which I find a touch odd conceptually, but not in execution, because this means you can't exactly go willy-nilly renovating every thing in sight once you come into a little money.  At 100% awareness, the next provoking action you take will apparently result in one of your assassin dens coming under attack from the templars, and after the trouble I went to in order to free those areas, I'm certainly going to take time out to reduce my awareness levels between spending sprees.  It's just a matter of murdering an official or bribing a herald.  So I spent hours alternating between increasing and decreasing my templar awareness.  It's all for the good, you'll see - every structure renovated adds to my hourly income.  While I'm off doing storyline missions later, my coffers will be auto-filling at a disgusting rate.
Look, I'll play Faffing About Creed my way, we'll get to the rest momentarily.

AC:Rev, Day 1

Assassin's Creed: Revelations, for those of you who can't read abbreviation-speak.

Day one in this new game, and I certainly feel like AC thinks it's my first rodeo.  This is a painstaking amount of tutorial for running and climbing that is being spoonfed in my direction by a ghostly apparition of Atair, the Original Assassin.  I'm either not following the storyline closely enough, or they're not making it clear enough - for some reason, an extremely aged Ezio has traveled to Jerusalem and the stronghold fortress of the assassins from the very first game. After reviewing moving, running, climbing, and leaping, we go on to a brief review of basic combat and assassination.  Then, a refresher course on tailing a target, with a new twist on Eagle Sense, where you can either see a ghostly apparition of the target walking away, or at least make out a remnant of their path. Why we are in a Templar-infested Masayaf, I did not really figure out.
We skip ahead to Sequence 2, where Ezio is arriving in Istanbul and meets the local assassin branch representative, Yusuf.  As far as I can understand via Ezio's correspondence with his sister, Ezio discovered a secret door with tons of locks that was created by Altair, and both he and the Templars want to get to the chamber beyond.  This search has lead him (and the Templars) to Istanbul. For right now, of course, your ultimate mission is on delay as you make friendly with Yusuf and help him and every other person in the world with their problems, first.  Fortunately, the game now has "walk with me" mode, which means you just need to get near your buddy and Ezio automatically follows at a casual pace.
More tutorials.  Remember how to pickpocket?  Not that I will ever need it after I begin my massive renovation and financial takeover of this entire landscape.  Next, here's something new for you - the hookblade.  The assassins of Istabul have added a nice little hook to their hidden blades, and Yusuf takes some time making sure you grasp the concept.  With it, you can zipline along the many ropes strewn about the city (and zipline-assasinate), hook a person and hop over him ("Hook and Run"), reach higher when you climb, and change the hanging pot-turn maneuver into a long-jump maneuver.
Now here's something strange, Assassin Tower Defense?  A diversion from your regular game, where you defend an assassin den from attacking templars by assigning crossbow/rifle assassins to a rooftop and build barricades.  Yes, I will happily do more of these later.  Let's keep this extremely long tutorial section moving for now.
Next, Yusuf teaches me how to go on the attack for more territory - Eagle Sense has been changed a bit, you now go into Eagle Sense mode and hover over each person until you identify if they're the target you're looking for.  In a Templar-controlled territory, you need only to identify and kill the Captain, and then climb a tower and light a signal fire to regain the region (but it can be re-conquered by Templars later).  Naturally I did not notice the part where "full synchronization" was achieved by not being seen killing the Captain, and ran right in there and lost 50% synch!  I did that about 6 more times before I learned to pay more attention to the mission statement before blundering in.  For example, the next mission asked you to pickpocket a key from a guard, but I murdered him instead.  Whups.
Next tutorial is on assassin recruitment, and after that, assassin use in-game, and finally, assassin deployment to outlying districts.  I find it an enjoyable and rewarding part of the game, but I may be in the minority.  All of the guild missions are also unlocked, and I took a quick look at the lists.  It is a long and exhausting-looking set of conditions.  This is going to be a long game.
After that, the Istanbul assassins want to teach you about bombs.  AC:R has a ton of bomb options.  You actually have to gather materials and craft your own, so you can pretty much personalize your bombs to your playstyle - bouncy or sticky, big bang or small bang, filled with shrapnel, or filled with poison.  I was pretty much overwhelmed by the options.  Batman and Link may be seeing green at this point - three separate bomb pouches!  Two wheels worth of items - poison daggers, bombs, crossbows, tiny gun, hidden blade.  So many options! I just wanted to stab a dude, guys.  I have more instruments in my bag right now, (and a lot more blank slots to be filled later in the game!) than I did in Trauma Center, and I was playing a freaking surgeon.  Just.... crazy.  There's no less than 8 mini-missions inside the bomb-crafting store to teach you how to use your multitudes of bombs, and you have to pass each one before those bombs become unlocked for purchase.  This will take more than one day.