Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

henke on 5/3/2013 at 10:37

[CENTER][video=youtube;mRTMEabx2Lk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mRTMEabx2Lk[/video][/CENTER]

Considering that naval warfare and teamwork were two of the unexpected delights of AC3, this sounds like a good direction to take the next game in.

Things of interest:

* "The year is 1715 and you play as pirate captain and Englishman Edward Kenway, the grandfather of the previous hero, who has been trained by the order of assassins."
* Open world! "You will be able to set sail on a freely available ocean and visit 50 locations around Cuba, Mexico and Florida. The franchise is going from confined ‘maps’ to one large connected world."
* Apparently you will also be able to dive and explore the bottom of the sea.
* You'll need to recruit crewmembers and keep them well-fed and content. "This process of keeping your crew at a healthy number is important to the ship-to-ship combat you’ll be seeing a lot more of. [...] The reason you want to keep your crew members plentiful is because if you decide to pull up alongside a target ship and board it, your entire crew will follow you. Crew will be lost in these tussles as well as in the cannon fire of naval battles."
* Hunting will be present in the form of whale-harpooning and shark-stabbing.

Quotes taken from the (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/04/assassins-creed-iv-black-flag-revealed-to-us-last-week/#more-144226) RPS preview.

Thirith on 5/3/2013 at 10:56

I haven't yet played Assassin's Creed 3, even though I bought it, and I suspect there are quite a few people like me who were completely put off by the reviews of the third game. In addition, what's always been the main selling point of these games for me is the world and especially the cities, and my impression is that they blew their wad on the Ezio games in that respect. Were the cities of Assassin's Creed 3 as great as Venice, Florence and Rome?

Anyway, without having played AC3, it doesn't sound like this instalment focuses on what I like best about the series.

faetal on 5/3/2013 at 10:59

Quote Posted by Thirith

I haven't yet played Assassin's Creed 3, even though I bought it, and I suspect there are quite a few people like me who were completely put off by the reviews of the third game.

Consider my hand raised. Pre-ordered it. It is probably the game that made me decide once and for all to stop pre-ordering games.

june gloom on 5/3/2013 at 11:07

I do not get the appeal of these fucking games. Especially when people make comparisons to them re: Dishonored or Thief. The day I become a nostalgia-whoring hoodie-wearing Thiefgenner is the day I shoot myself in the face with the bow upgrade, but god dammit Assassin's Creed is the Call of Duty* of stealth games and it really cheeses my balls when someone sees Dishonored and says "it's just a first-person Assassin's Creed with teleport!" and then I gotta educate a fool.

Seriously, someone explain these fucking games to me. As near as I can tell, it's an assassination game with derpy physics, draconian DRM (when they come to PC at all, anyway,) a million goddamn spinoff games and a plot so convoluted Kojima'd be scratching his head.

* I hate even using this phrase because I like CoD, but the mass-market thing does bother me a lot and that's what I'm referring to here

Thirith on 5/3/2013 at 11:12

Quote Posted by dethtoll

Seriously, someone explain these fucking games to me. As near as I can tell, it's an assassination game with derpy physics, draconian DRM (when they come to PC at all, anyway,) a million goddamn spinoff games and a plot so convoluted Kojima'd be scratching his head.

I actually like the story - I enjoy the crazy-ass mix of historical fiction and sci-fi conspiracy stuff, at least as a game universe - but for me the main appeal is really the sense of place, which is amazing. I wouldn't even call these games stealth games, though; there's simply no comparison to Thief, Dishonoured or even Metal Gear Solid. The gameplay is varied but also pretty basic, with very little challenge.

faetal on 5/3/2013 at 12:10

I like them. They are fun. Not sure I need to explain it past that. I enjoy the mechanics. I enjoy the ghosting, as it is very different to games like Thief, Dishonoured etc..

I'm stalled about half way through Brotherhood however, because I did the stupid thing of playing II directly after AC and then Brotherhood directly after that, and any game will burn you out that way.

I couldn't really get into Dishonoured either. Different strokes.

Jason Moyer on 5/3/2013 at 17:22

The first Assassin's Creed was great. 2 was still good, although it was also the point where it stopped being a game about Hashashin and turned into Faffing-about Creed, as Yahtzee would say. I keep trying to get into Brotherhood (I own all 5 games) and just keep getting annoyed with how it is, as Dethy put it, basically the Call of Duty of sandbox/stealth games. If Call of Duty is "press forward and hit a button to kill things while you're shovelled some shitty narrative" then Assassin's Creed is "press forward while hitting the parkour button while you're shovelled some shitty narrative, and occasionally do the counter/kill thing since it's not really a stealth game".

I should probably skip ahead and try III, if only to see if my failed attempts at plowing through Brotherhood/Revelations is related to Ubisoft inexplicably making 3 games about the most boring protaganist in videogame history. Even the crazy sci-fi Biblical conspiracy shit, which is squarely in my wheelhouse, isn't enough to make up for running around Rome as some annoying Italian dipshit who is apparently the descendant of a line of assassin's despite not being an Arab Muslim.

henke on 5/3/2013 at 18:06

Quote Posted by dethtoll

Seriously, someone explain these fucking games to me.

I'm not a huge fan of the series so I'm probably not the best defendant of it. AC1 was ok, AC2 I couldn't be bothered finishing, didn't play any of the AC2 spin-offs. Being at best luke-warm about the earlier entries I was wary of AC3, and only picked it up once the price had dropped. The frontier portion of the game's world is just lovely. BEST SNOW EVER! Seriously, when you are wading through waist-high snow in the middle of the forrest it is a thing of beauty. The character-animation, deformation-physics of the snow, and soundeffects work together in a way that really pulls you into the experience. You can almost feel your toes freezing and the harsh wind biting your cheek. AC3 manages to make it's world feel real in a way that only Red Dead Redemption and a few other third person games manage. I mention RDR because when I bought AC3 I was hoping more for another RDR than I was hoping for another Assassins Creed, and I haven't been disappointed. It feels much like what RDR might've been like if it'd been set ~140 years earlier in time.

As for the CoD-comparison, it's true in one regard. It feels big-budget. That's no bad thing. For instance when you're on your ship, battling it out with another frigate in the middle of a stormy night. The waves rising and sinking between your ships, intermittently obscuring your aim of your target. As cannonballfire hails over your starboard side, you shout at your men to take cover and as you duck down the view goes all blurry and cannonballs fly overhead, ripping through your mast and setting off a fire on your deck. Managing to get your cannons loaded you fire back, finally getting in a shot that sinks their ship for good. In the distance you see the last of their burning wreck sink into the ocean, and meanwhile your own men rush to put out the fires that have started on your own deck. From behind the wheel you look down at all the spectacle and think "Holy crap, this all looks expensive as shit!"

Look, I mostly play indie titles and smaller productions, but whenever I play a big AAA title like this I'm amazed at the scenes you can create if you just pump enough money into a game's development. And AC3's setpieces are worth every penny Ubisoft spent on them.

As for the stealth, it's mostly just used for getting into position and mapping out your plan of attack before springing into action. No, it's not Thief-y.

Quote Posted by Thirith

Were the cities of Assassin's Creed 3 as great as Venice, Florence and Rome?

Just one city really. Boston. It has a great atmosphere to it, especially down in the docks. I feel more at home in the wilderness or on the open seas though. I wasn't that enamored by the cities in AC1 or 2 so I'm not the best judge of Boston's greatness compared to them. I have this criticism of AC3's world though: too much copy-paste design! I'm not usually bothered by copy-paste design but in AC3 it's really noticeable.

But yeah, overall AC3 is my favourite part in the series yet.

catbarf on 5/3/2013 at 19:25

I played the first game and enjoyed it. I keep trying to get into the second but it has awful mouse acceleration that can't be disabled, and I don't really want to buy a controller for just one game especially since the first played fine on keyboard and mouse. It's the one thing that's really held me back from playing more of the series. Maybe AC4 will be a better port, who knows.

Jason Moyer on 5/3/2013 at 19:28

The first game was amazing. I don't know why they couldn't just remove the repetition by having more varied and unique intelligence gathering missions while keeping the focus on assassinating people instead of turning it into some shitty Barbie sandbox game.