Second review today... I must be in an all day call. :) Assassins Creed IV - Black Flag OK, I am an unabashed fanboy of this series. I ordered a pre-release copy. Outside of the FF games this is probably my favorite recurring series and one of the few of the yearly refreshes that I consistently like. Unlike many reviewers though, I think that they really got it right in this iteration. That being said, it is a refinement of existing gameplay, not really a revolution or anything. If you dont like controlling a parkour using assassing running through various environments, finding chests and sea shanties, and killing the kings guards, there is nothing in the fourth version of AC that will convince you it is a good game. Except possibly the ship combat. I love it. However, again, it is a perfection and refinement of a mechanism we saw in AC3. It gets a front seat here, making up the majority of the game play in one way or another. You end up spending about half of your time on a ship doing pirate stuff and half on a island or city doing assassiny stuff. This gameplay ends up doing a great job reflecting the overall plot. Oh, the plot. Yea, they did away with most of the overly cumbersome portions of the plot. Most of the Abstergo missions are gratifyingly short, unlike AC3s long stretches of dead boring subject 17 mini-games. I love the deeper telling of the takes of the Kenways and this does a great job of feeding the storyline that takes place later in AC3. The integration of multi-player events into the single player world is a great invention. I just get giddy when I hear my crew shout about a white whale. However there are a few dark spots. The world trader mini-game just sucks, and this is coming from someone who loved the previous world control mini-games. There is no way around it. It is boring and cumbersome and is needed for certain mods to your ship. I am also sorely missing the extended dungeons of previous games for upgraded items. I loved the long maze-like climbs to get to a chest at the end that had an awesome piece of kit in it. Which brings me to my third gripe, with the exception of a couple of items you cant get until the very end of the game, you get the best sword and gun as soon as you can get enough reals together, which I had in the opening city. I am also upset that, up to this point, i have not been able to get the assassin pirate flag on the box on my ship. I really want that dammit. Almost all of the other new content is really appreciated by me. I love the treasure hunts. Sailing and pirating is just a joy. I am quite a bit removed from needing any more wealth in the game and still take ships that cross my path because it is fun. Multi-player is offering a lot of repeat gameplay as well. All in all this is a refinement of a series. From the storyline and due to this it should be called Assassins Creed 3: Black Flag. That being said it is a solid entry into the series that really needed it in my mind. If you dont like the AC series though you wont like this much. Id give it a solid 8.5 out of 10 pirate flags. ign/games/assassins-creed-black-flag/ps4-161638
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 15:53:27 +0000
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