Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
"Captains will curse our flag, and kings will fear it. As long as empires generate wealth and riches, we will be there to bleed them dry." — Edward Kenway
Protagonist(s): Edward Kenway Genre(s): Action-adventure Stealth Sandbox Platform(s): PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 Xbox 360 Xbox One Wii U Microsoft Windows Nintendo Switch Release Date: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360: WW: October 29, 2013 Wii U: NA: October 29, 2013 AU: November 21, 2013 EU: November 22, 2013 PlayStation 4: NA: November 15, 2013 EU: November 22, 2013 AU: November 29, 2013 Microsoft Windows: NA: November 19, 2013 AU: November 21, 2013 EU: November 22, 2013 Xbox One: WW: November 22, 2013 Nintendo Switch: WW: December 6, 2019 Developer(s): Ubisoft Montreal Publisher(s): Ubisoft Series: Assassin's Creed Predecessor: Assassin's Creed III Successor: Assassin's Creed Rogue

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is an action adventure, stealth, sandbox video game created by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 Versions were released on October 29, 2013 worldwide, and the eighth generation versions were released in mid to late November 2013.

Why It Rocks

1. The shift from a tale about assassins to increased emphasis on naval combat is considered by many to be a welcome change to the series.
2. A huge open world to explore, with tons of collectibles, activities, and side quests to partake in. The sheer scale of the world was met with praise.
3. Has stunning graphics and overall presentation, especially on current-gen hardware. The level of detail such as the rain, water, and the sea's behavior is incredible. The game looks great, even on previous-gen consoles.
4. Naval combat returns from Assassin's Creed III. This time though is a more integral part of the game. It allows for more freedom for the player to do as they please. The transition between sailing and sword fighting is completely seamless, too.
5. Just like in Assassin Creed III, you can upgrade your ship, Jackdaw, but you can can also customize your ship to your liking.
6. Stealth gameplay has greater flexibility than previous entries, thus giving players different ways to complete their objectives.
7. Great, engrossing story that isn't needlessly convoluted. The best part is it doesn't take itself too seriously, which is commendable.
8. Sailing through the world can be a relaxing experience. It's even better when you collect shanties, which your crew will sing.
9. Great characters. The story is able to highlight the human side of pirates, painting them in a sympathetic and relatable light.
   • Edward Kenway was well received for being more palatable and more lively than past protagonists.
10. Excellent soundtrack that does a great job of capturing the time period and pirate theme.  
11. Good voice acting.
12. You can now tag enemies with Eagle Vision.
13. You can now hunt various animals to sell to markets and to upgrade your equipment.
14. The Abstergo Entertainment HQ, when you're not in the Simulation, can be a neat place to relax from your mission.
15. Lots of collectibles that you can find.
    • On top of that, some collectibles can have some connection with the game's story or something that could give hints for something even bigger. An example is a collectible about a CtOS presentation, found on the Abstergo Entertainment HQ (when you're not in the simulation), which hints that the game could be taking place before or during the events of Ubisoft's Watch Dogs.

Bad Qualities

1. While the stealth can be fun, it can also be frustrating due to its clunky controls.
2. The Xbox One version runs at only 900p resolution, upscaled to 1080p.
3. Fully upgrading the Jackdaw and getting 100% synchronization requires doing the online-only Kenway's Fleet minigame. Making matters worse is that the servers are on their last legs as connection failures are now frequently common.
4. The sea shanties are very annoying to collect. They're basically the Almanac pages from III. Floating pages that fly away when you get near them, requiring you to run all over the city chasing them down. If you don't catch them in a certain amount of time they disappear, requiring you to go all the way back to the start and wait several minutes for them to respawn. It doesn't help that they're hard to locate on the map, easily blending into its surroundings so that you'd have to scour every inch of it to find them. Some can be caught by simply spawn-camping their respawn point for a minute after their disappearance, but it's still tedious and annoying.
5. The game can get buggy and glitchy at times. Audio issues are fairly common with certain characters lines becoming silent during conversations or storms becoming muffled while the lightning is fully audible during sailing. One notable bug is that you can rarely get launched high in the air while running on the Jackdaw and die from fall damage.
6. Some of the supporting characters lack the depth that the more major characters have. There also isn't a compelling antagonist of any kind, with Governor Torres being very forgettable in comparison to previous antagonists. The closest to a good antagonist was Julien Du Casse. A gun-slinging, Assassin Killer that's hyped up to be a sort of rival to Edward. BUT he doesn't put up too much of a fight and the most he contributes to the game is being a barrier to Edward's new Island Fortress and the Templar armor set.
7. Padding: Scraping together the final 2% of synchronization for 100% requires chasing down 46 chests, 30 animus fragments and 3 secrets in uncharted territory. This doesn't sound all that bad until you realize that it requires hours of sailing until you finally get to the marker. The sequence usually goes like this: open map, mark target, sail 1-3nm to target, bring the Jackdaw about, swim to tiny island, pick up stuff, swim back to the ship, rinse and repeat. Since neither the animus fragments nor the secrets serve any in-game purpose, and the money you get from looting 46 chests is chump change in the post-game, this adds several very boring hours to the game's play time for no meaningful reward whatsoever. That, and the long time at sea is bound to spawn numerous storms that prevent you from releasing the Jackdaw's wheel at will.
8. Ambergris Key is easily the worst Smuggler's Den to go through. The den itself is incredibly tight, small, and narrow, with little room for hiding. Enemies are grouped together, and since Kenway never brings his own swords in Smuggler Den takedowns, it's impossible to do dual assassinations. There's also many Brutes in the map, all too happy to smack you around with an axe and bomb you with grenades, and many of the smaller pirates have pistols.
9. The Wii U port runs with a very poor frame rate and suffers from massive input lag, which at best can make assassinations feel clunky and imprecise, and at worst renders the game borderline unplayable. Loading time is also much worse, the visuals are much duller even compared to the older 360 and PS3 ports due to missing some graphical effects, and this port didn't receive the DLC.

Reception

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag received mainly positive reviews, with critics praising the open-world gameplay, the character of Edward Kenway, side-quests, graphics, and naval combat. It is considered one of the seventh generation games. Ratings on Metacritic range from 83 to 88 out of 100.

The game received praise for rectifying the issues with the previous game. It was also praised for the scale of the world the game had to offer, providing the player numerous opportunities to explore by filling it with many side quests, activities, and collectibles to keep the player invested. Edge magazine considers Black Flag to have set "new benchmarks not only for Ubisoft's series but for open-world gaming."

Despite the acclaim, however, the clunky stealth controls, main story missions, and underdeveloped supporting characters drew criticism.

PETA Criticism

Ubisoft came under fire from PETA, who criticized Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag for the depiction of whaling. The organization said it was disgraceful that the video game industry doesn't condemn the addition. Ubisoft responded by saying that "Assassin's Creed is based on history and is a work of fiction which depicts real events during the Golden Era of Pirates". Ubisoft claimed they do not condone whaling, along with other features in the game. It should also be noted that whaling was a product of the time Black Flag was set in, and Ubisoft always shoots for historical accuracy when it comes to Assassin's Creed.

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