Here we have yet another entry in another annual franchise this release season. After the quite mediocre and poorly received Assassin's Creed III of last year, everyone was hoping this would lift the series back up to it's previous success. And it does. Kind of....
The base mechanics of the game remain pretty much the same as all the Creed games before it. Despite Ubisoft constantly saying they're redoing the engine from the ground up, your Assassin always seems to move and climb and run and stab in exactly the same way as all the others did. Maybe it's in the genes.... As usual there are some small improvements and tweaks and new things such as more gun-play, more weapons, using people as human shields and such. And thankfully, there is quite a lot of killing and planning assassinations and carrying out assassinations in this title much like the older ones. This felt sorely lacking in the 3rd game which felt like it was going to every possible extent imaginable to stop you actually doing any assassinating.
Many people (including myself) reacted quite strongly to the initial trailers for this game which focused heavily on the naval warfare aspects by assuming that they had taken the under-whelming naval warfare from Assassin's Creed III and made it into a full game. Thankfully, that was not the case. The naval warfare is a much bigger part of the game now but thankfully, it is a lot more fun and fulfilling than it was in the previous game. Your ship is your primary method of conveyance around the world, other than your feet which sadly cannot traverse large bodies of water, so you rely on it heavily to get you from one place to the next. And because this is Assassin's Creed, you also rely on it to kill others. So because you use your boat(s) a lot more now, you are more focused on upgrading their defensive and offensive abilities as naval battles are quite common-place now. You can install and upgrade a slew of weapons to blast opponents out of the water and their use it quite cleverly dependant on where your viewpoint is. I.e. if you are looking straight on, you will fire chain cannons, if you are looking to the side, you will fire larger broadside cannons, if you are looking through a telescope in the distance you will fire long range mortars, etc, etc. There is also a vast array of enemy ships to combat from small cargo ships to gigantic heavily armed Man'O'Wars which will blow you to pieces if you are unprepared. Once a ship is damaged enough, you either sink it totally and gather a small amount of resources from it or board it, kill the crew and get a much larger reward. This makes for many Hollywood-esque swashbuckling scenes of swinging onto deck guns blazing and swords swinging which are pretty awesome. I did enjoy the naval aspect much more this time round, but it does get quite hairy quite quickly before you really have the money required to upgrade your ship enough so you are either forced to grind for cash or go into battles sometimes massively outclassed.
I usually went in outclassed and eventually won through mostly by sheer hard-headedness, but if you don't mind a bit of grinding there are an enormous number of side quests to get cash from ranging from plundering ships to diving for treasure to taking on Assassination jobs given to you by the Assassin's Guild. And it is the fact that they are side jobs that brings me to my next point which was a bit of a gripe for me personally: In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, you are not actually an assassin. You are a pirate who within the first few minutes of the game kills an Assassin (albeit seemingly not a very good one), takes his clothes and wears them for the duration of the game while he goes about his merry way trying to make a better life for himself through general pirate-like antics. The Assassins and Templars do become a bit more involved in the story down the line but for the most part, they feel like things that are going on in the background and not really a huge concern of yours generally but just something you are doing to eventually achieve your own goals. To me, it felt like a pirate game that Ubisoft had inserted the Assassin's Creed game mechanics and a small part of the plot into. And this still makes it a very fun game. But...not...really an Assassin's Creed game.
Not wanting to dish out any huge spoilers, but the real world side of the story that takes place outside the Animus is now also reaching quite lofty levels of absurdity but you can find all that out for yourself.
Visually, the game is the prettiest of the series so far especially if you play a "next-gen" version as one would expect. The island scenery and vast oceans do look very colourful and vibrant and inviting and every area seems to have it's own unique charm. I played the PC version which is also very easy on the eyes. However, seeing as this is one of the very first games of the next console generation, and also had to be designed for current generation hardware, it is not a huge leap forward visually yet from what we have seen in previous games as it must cater to both old and new hardware. Think of early XBox 360 games that were not terribly graphically impressive because they also had previous gen versions such as Just Cause or Far Cry Instincts and you will get what I am referring to.
None of this detracts from the fun of the game though and it is still definitely worth playing if you are a fan of Assassins or Pirates or the Assassin's Creed series. Just expect quite a few WTF moments along the way.
Also, it had a few too many boring "Tail this guy" missions for my liking.
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