Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

Oh my god, I fell off the Assassin's Creed boat so hard three of them have come out since I last played. I couldn't keep myself away since I do genuinely love the franchise, despite the third iteration of the series being so bad it killed my desire to play an Assassin's Creed game for a few years.

In case you live under a rock, Assassin's Creed was developed and published by Ubisoft. You can find on pretty much play it on all the major consoles as well as the any Windows PC. This was actually the first Assassin's Creed game that I've played on the PC and I think I favored the console set up a bit more.

Diving right in, lets start with the game mechanics. On foot, the controls and combat are smooth, satisfying, visceral and nearly completely unchanged since the first ever Assassin's Creed game released. Pretty much all the weapons and dynamics in the game were actually all already present in previous games. Even the most hailed aspect of this game, the naval combat was already introduced during Assassin's Creed 3. What makes the combat feel different here though is that naval combat in a much, much larger component in the game given that we're pirates in the Caribbean so you get a nice breaking up of the action between naval and hand to hand combat compared to any of the previous games. I think my only point of objection would be that the game did not include a type of ammo of the ships called 'grape shot' which was a historic type of ammunition used to kill individuals instead of destroy the ship in naval and artillery combat. I got a bit side tracked there, let me rap up, despite there being nothing new, nothing was done badly and I really enjoyed the combat but that might be because its been so long since I actually played an Assassin's Creed game.

One of the more fun side activities in the game, spearing sharks and whale. :)

This game to be honest has to be the one that caused me to the most anger and pleasure due to its graphic and sound design of any of the Assassin's Creed games. Its obviously pretty, like any triple AAA game should be. However, due to the fact that the setting is the Caribbean the game for the most part is either massive green or blue landscapes or shanty towns. This was a massive disappointment for me given that previous games that me exploring really significant cities and monuments in all their glory like the Dome of the Rock or the Coliseum. However, this is the only game where the musical component even registered for me. I loved the shanties, I would actively go out of my way to grab every single of these pirate shanties just to here my crew sing them as we rolled across the sea from one raid to the next and they really stuck with me.

Assassin's Creed though is more than just its pretty engaging combat and pretty visuals, although without them there wouldn't be anything else, its pretty much always been a narrative driven game although it seems to me that the developers are doing their best for that to not be the case. The fact that this was actually set in a time period before the last one pissed me off, why are we going backwards. The fact the game is set in a throw away area of the world during a throw away period of history also fucking pissed me off. Now before you get all pissy because you like pirates, nothing that happened during the period the game takes place in was deliberately significant in the story of humanity. 

Don't worry guys, there are glitches in this one as well.

However, this game actually gave me my second and third favorite assassin's so far in the forms of Edward Kenway and Adewale respectively. Unlike the previously introduced assassin's who were respectively a idealized paragon, an Italian stereotype and an empty husk, these two are actual human beings with understandable if not relatable emotions and lines of thought. This game really demonstrated the fact that both sides in this Templar-Assassin conflict aren't entirely villainous one way or the other. Yes, both sides can have assholes but both sides also do have very legitimate points to make. The fact that Edward never really engaged with either side to powerfully and only actually making a choice out of pure spite and hate was great in my opinion and explained the later actions of his son and grand son nicely. But, the main issue for me though was the fact that the narrative felt like it had no weight whatsoever and that progress of the story within and outside the animus was minimal at best. There were no stakes at all that were up for grabs in the game and had I not had an interest in the game I would think it would have been an issue trying to get motivated to actually play and beat the game.

A little shockingly for me, I found the Freedom Cry DLC for the game really engrossing and it is beyond me why the game was actually not set during this period of time instead of the chosen one. The entire setting just has so much more weight when it comes to your moral sensibilities and it was incredibly easier to really get into the character and the setting and be motivated to actually do what you needed to do. This is just about the setting being one in a slave colony, this is the story becoming the first republic in the new world, an actually significant historical event that could have made from a great narrative to follow instead of getting so condensed in the DLC.

Just feel the emotion in this scene.

I had fun, yes I had some major gripes with the game in both its combat mechanics, its narrative and its setting. But, I still enjoyed myself and this definitely is not a bad game and it definitely is better than the last game in the series. If you're familiar with the series and like it or you're new to it then you should get it. If you don't like Assassin's Creed or are looking for something new in open world adventure games then you should give this a pass as the game is for the most part is recycled.