Review: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is an action-adventure sandbox game for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Wii U. It was developed by Ubisoft Montreal.

Edward Kenway and his quartermaster on his ship the Jackdaw.

As usual with an Assassin’s Creed game there are two stories going on. You are an employee at Abstergo Entertainment, using a device called the Animus to relieve the life of pirate Edward Kenway. Edward Kenway is a 18^th century newlywed lout, who travels to the West Indies to start a new life as a pirate in an ill-conceived attempt to prove to his wife’s family and himself that he’s worth something. In the West Indies Kenway accidentally gets involved in the millennia long war between the Assassins and the Templars, who are searching for the Observatory, some place that will do something that will help whoever finds it in some way. Meanwhile in the present, you get dragged into the modern day Assassin/Templar fight.

There is always a lot of content to cover in an Assassin’s Creed game, so I want to start with the sword fighting, sneaking around and assassinating, and naval combat, all of which takes place in a large open world centered around Cuba.

Sword fighting is a simple button press and control stick aim towards your opponent, followed by mashing. You counter attacks by pressing the counter button when an icon appears of an enemy’s head for a second. I like the quick-thinking the attacking and countering requires, but sometimes I think the game has a hard time figuring out that I had countered in time.

Sneaking around and assassinating people has always been the core concept of Assassin’s Creed, and its basic concepts are still in this game, even if most of them are not used. The basic idea in past games is that you climb over buildings and hide in places, avoiding people’s line of sight until you can get close to your target and stab them. While hiding somewhere you can stealthily kill someone and hide their body without alerting other guards, and you have a handy whistle to lure guards to your hiding spot. It all works like it is supposed to, though the game clearly does not care about using much of its original ideas.  The only problem is that sometimes Kenway will grab onto the wrong ledge or run up the wrong building, and sometimes a guard will spot you in the bushes when they should not.

The West Indies are surprisingly climbable.

The naval combat, while originating from Assassin’s Creed III, is expanded on in this game. You sail around until you find a ship you want to attack. You pull up near the ship, orient your camera towards it, aim the cannons, and fire. When you wear down the ships health bar, you can either sink it for some loot, or board the ship and kill a certain number of people so you can take the ship and get more loot and other bonuses. Your only defense from the other ships cannon’s is telling everyone to duck when cannons are firing, which was never that effective to me. Your ship starts off with basic cannons, but it can be upgraded with newer and stronger weapons built from the materials you steal from other ships, and you change the look of some parts of your ship with materials too.

The ship combat is the best part of the game. It is easy to pick up, the map and variety of ships keeps it fresh, fights do not drag on, and it is fun and rewarding attack and loot ships. The only problem with the ship combat is that it is really easy; keep up with the story-required upgrades and do not venture into new waters before the story gets you there, and you can literally run rings around fleets of ships, which are all slow and stupid.

Occasionally you will run into bad weather, but nothing too difficult to deal with.

Black Flag progresses through story missions, usually three to five per chapter. Unfortunately these are the worst parts of Assassin’s Creed IV. I do not know if it was a lazy way to shoehorn exposition into each mission, or a desperate attempt to find a way to keep the old gameplay elements of Assassin’s Creed relevant, but a disproportionate number of missions involve tailing someone by walking above or behind them and hiding in the regular spots the series is known for, like piles of hay or in crowds. It is a very tedious part of the game, and so many missions have these segments. Not that following someone is the only type of story mission, there are also times where you have to sneak by guards and kill someone or sneak to a goal. And there are even a few sailing missions, though not enough, and almost none at the end. It is just that the tailing sections are the most common.

Also, while not required to complete the game, there are 100% synchronization requirements for each mission, where you have to do extra objectives or play the level in a certain way to really complete it. These just limit how you get to play the level, and really frustrating since a lot them can only be done once, and if you mess up you have to restart the checkpoint. Again, they are not required, but if you are playing an Assassin’s Creed game there is a good chance you enjoy collecting and completing every last thing.

The story that accompanies the missions is not any better. Kenway goes to the Caribbean to make something of himself, but spends most of his time dicking around. He becomes a wealthy pirate almost overnight, but never brings his wife over. He spends some time trying to help the struggling pirate town Nassau, but never puts his heart in it. Then he spends the rest of the game trying to find the Observatory before the Assassins and the Templars, but he does not make any progress until the end. Most of the pirates Kenway hangs out with are forgettable, as are most of the Templars he fights. The modern day story is more interesting, but only if you had played all the other games so you know what is going on.

Thankfully, as long as you do not stick to just the main story, there is plenty to do in Black Flag that is fun. Most of what you can do is rewarding too, as in you get money but not so much that you can buy everything immediately and make the rewarding pointless. It would take too long to cover everything, but a lot of the side activities are about going to new places on the map, or places you have already been before, and collecting all the treasure chests, pieces of art, animus fragments, and sea shanties. This gets you to use Kenway’s parkour abilities and lot more than the main game, and gives you a reason to sail your ship everywhere. While collecting stuff can be boring, the game keeps it fresh by having the locations you visit just different enough, and not having too many things to collect in one place, plus the fast travel helps.

Lots of things to collect.

You can also carry out assassination and naval assassination contracts, break into plantations and steal their stuff, hunt animals for upgrades, sack forts with your ship, and find buried treasure with discovered maps. All of it is pretty fun, not repetitive, does not take too long and uses the game mechanics well. You can also spend a lot of time hunting down ships for upgrade supplies, though that is not considered a mission.

If there is one downside to the all the side activities, it is that the things you can buy are not that rewarding. You only need to upgrade your weapons halfway to make it through the game, and the customization options for Kenway and his ship are limited.

Black Flag has a multiplayer mode, which does not use ship combat at all. Instead it plays out like a game of cat-and-mouse. You hunt down and assassinate another player assigned to you on a map filled with identical NPCs while trying to avoid other players assigned to assassinate you. It is in your best interest to walk around casually and not attract attention to yourself, because not only does that make you stick out to your pursuers, but you get more points if you kill someone while blending into a crowd. Whoever has the most points by the end of the round wins, and the better you do the more points you get to buy equipment.

There are several problems with the multiplayer that keep it from being enjoyable. When you are hunting someone there is almost no reason to try in blend in because you still act too human, and anything you do to get close to your target looks suspicious. You might as well run straight at your target and hope they do not turn the camera your way. You can defend yourself from assassins by pressing the right button at the right time, but there is no good reason why sometimes you can stun someone and other times they can still stab you but they get a point reduction, even when it is painfully obvious they are the one hunting you and you press the button before them. And God help you if you are against opponents who have unlocked all their weapons, because they will destroy you. I would say that the multiplayer aspect of Black Flag should be ignored.

Despite the problems with the main part of the game and the forgettable multiplayer, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is enjoyable, addictive experience, especially the sailing. It is a real turnaround from its predecessor.