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"The Jet Gamer" Game Review: Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag
9 years ago
I’ve had this game for a while and have been meaning to get to it for some time. Finally I did.
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag
Yet another in the assassin’s creed series is here to be reviewed. This is the first one I will be doing in Jet Gamer as you just missed three getting done before I started this series. This isn’t my first time doing this series before though, so do expect me to have some prior knowledge to this series. But, how does this entry in the series hold up? Shall we take a closer look and see?
Gameplay
The gameplay for Assassin’s Creed 4 is a bit mixed, but still not that bad. It was at this point you could really begin to tell they were starting to crank this series out a bit faster than maybe they should have been. You start seeing some of the same elements and such taken from other games and simply ported over here to help make the games faster. Though, they did change it up enough to still make it interesting for the plays. The biggest thing is that now instead of large land masses to run around on, the bulk of your world map is now water. Yes, you are a pirate sailing around in the Caribbean, so there is a lot of water around to sail on. This game takes the boating features that were added in from AC3 and expands on them, but keeping most of it the same as well to keep things easy and familiar to players. This is good, as you are sort of thrown into the sailing aspect, and will be doing it for the bulk of the game. There are still big towns to roam around, but nowhere near as big as you are normally used to, and they are spread around quite a bit. You are mostly sailing and going from small location to location. You do the standard stuff you do in the other AC games pretty much as well, so they didn’t exactly go out on a limb to create too much new here. However, that doesn’t mean that’s bad either, as what they did use still works pretty well at the same time. You have main missions you do that progress the story, though the bulk of your time will be spent on doing all the side stuff and the collectibles, as they do make the main story that much easier when you do them all. Side missions normally involving finding objects, running errands and killing some people, all of it usually for money or other things like that. The bulk of the gameplay though is still just stalking, hiding, and killing as all AC games have been about. It works, and honestly that is what people have come to expect here. They know it works, so why change it that much. I know it may seem like I’m struggling somewhat to say some things about the gameplay here, but that is part of it as well. There isn’t as much to say as you may think as you likely have all seen it before. Stalking, Hiding, Killing and just being a sneaky person trying to kill someone are honestly what you do throughout this game. The sailing aspects are the big thing in this game and they do work, though it can get a bit tiring sailing from place to place all the time. Luckily after finding places once you can use fast travel which saves a ton of time. Still, on the ocean you are mainly sailing and fighting other ships. Though that in itself is a big new aspect to this game and one of the main reasons this game is called Black Flag. You are a pirate and you can attack other ships to not only sink them, but to rob them for the materials which can be either sold or eventually used to upgrade your ship to make it tougher and stronger. You will need to do this a lot though, as it takes a lot of money and material to make your ship stronger. You will need it as you go up against bigger and badder ships as you go deeper into the world. These ships are no joke, and you can sometimes be going over many at once from all sides. You will need the extra help. You even can attack forts held by the Spanish to gain control over them to be used as small bases in a way. When you take control over them, not only will the base attack other ships for you now, but it will also reveal any hidden items on any of the nearby islands in its sector. It is to your advantage to take these, especially since it does lower the hostile areas of the zone by a lot too. So yeah, the bulk of the game is the same as the other games, just with a lot of sailing aspects added in to go with the pirate theme of the game. If you have played other games and enjoyed them in this series, then the gameplay will be very familiar to you and easy to pick up and play, which is a good thing as you will be doing them a lot.
Story
The story actually isn’t that bad, but it does also take knowing most of the story to get the good out of it as well, as originally I wasn’t going to give this a great rating. The game is about Edward Kenway and his journey through the Caribbean as he tries to gain riches to take home to his wife to hopefully give her the good life. He tries several ways of doing this, but the main way he finds to work is by becoming a pirate and joining the area group of pirates as the raid the Spanish and English ships and islands in the locale. He doesn’t seem to mind doing this, but very quickly he comes across a rogue assassin and ends up causing all sorts of trouble for not only himself, but for the assassin’s in the Caribbean as a whole. Though out the game, you are joining Edward as he looks for a great treasure he hears about from the Templars called the Observatory. He figures he if finds it first, he can sell it off to whoever will pay him the most and he will finally get the fortune he has always wanted. Throughout the game you are watching as Edward pretty much is ignoring everyone else and constantly trying to get his treasure without caring what chaos he is causing in his wake. The assassin’s really don’t care for him, most of his other pirate friends don’t care for him at times, and really not many people at all seem to care about Edward. Even his crew is constantly asking if what they are doing is really worth it. So pretty much, the bulk of the game is about Edward trying to find his fortune, but being very selfish about it at the same time. So really, Edward is not really a very likable character to the player, and honestly you don’t even see that much of the assassin’s until the end of the game. You see the Templars a lot, but really, the assassin’s you are expecting to see play a minor role through most of the game, and you honestly wish he was a more likable character. Now, things do luckily change later to slowly start making Edward more of a likable character and bring the assassin’s into the game more, but you don’t get this until the last fourth of the game, so that’s why I gave the story a small hit here. It just takes so long for Edward to become likable and someone you want to see succeed. For the bulk of the game, you really don’t care about him that much. I’m glad there are some good things that happen in the end, that I won’t spoil, it just takes a very long time to get there. This whole time as well though, you can’t forget about the stuff happening in the real world, but this is a bit disappointing as well. Unlike the other games where you were controlling the same character all the time and building on him more and more, this time you are a faceless person that you never even get to see. You play through his own eyes as he walks around the office where the animus and other people are. Since the main real world character died in the last game, spoiler for three sorry, they had to do something here. You still see some of the other characters that were with the old main character in the game, but it is few and far between. The bulk of the game in the real world is you working for Abstergo who is supposedly making a movie off your memories and you are doing all this to help them get the memories of Edward to make a movie out of it. Of course this isn’t the full reason, but still, the real world segments are about walking around hacking computers and getting all sorts of information on the old main world character and information about AC Chronicles, while you work to help the current day Templars find the observatory as well. It’s not very exciting and you see it so rarely, that honestly, you will forget it is there sometimes. Don’t play this game expecting a good out of the animus segment this time. It isn’t there. The bulk of the story lies with Edward, but it takes such a long time to get the good stuff, that honestly, you just need to be ready to pace yourself for the good stuff. It will come, but just in time.
Graphics
Black Flag actually does quite the nice job when it comes to showing how the ocean can look when you are sailing around in it. All the characters look nice and well detailed, and all the locations look very well rendered as well. When it came to looks, everything looked fine, but also similar to how they used to look as well. As I mentioned before, this game is another game where you can see evidence of these games being cranked out quickly one after the other. Many things from the other games are reused here, and you can sort of tell that things have stuck in to make this game come out more quickly. That’s not really a bad thing though too much, as you know they were just trying to crank these games out quickly after all. Other than sameness of looking similar to other AC games, they still don’t look that bad. The big thing though that I gave a hit on the graphics for was the graphical glitches that occasionally pop up. They aren’t common, but they weren’t exactly uncommon either. I gave them somewhat of a pass because everything else looks pretty good, but every now and then, there were just some things that were a bit wonky. I more than once saw people walking in places they should be. For example, I saw one guy climb a ladder and just keep climbing into the sky forever. Also, I saw people die but just keep standing there. Also there were the flickers in the graphics and the many many clipping issues as well. I have a hard time pushing this game down much more in this department though as everything still looks pretty good. It is just there are some graphical glitches every now and then, just none that really break the game though. So really, the game does look alright to be honest.
Sound
The sound of this game is the same as the graphics. It is alright, but nothing too exciting as well. You have many sound effects and music tracks that are reused from the last game. You do have some nice scores of music in the game, but they are sort of something you don’t get to hear that often. You are hearing so many sneaking sound effects that you have heard from the other games or you hear the hustling and bustling of the cities and such as you usually have. Some of the main things sound wise that you are going to notice is that when you are sailing, you get to hear all sorts of old sailing songs sung by your crew. These are pretty good actually and a nice distraction from the boringness that could come from long sailing trips. These help a lot, and really are one of the main highlights as you are playing. The voice actors do a fine job at doing the stories as well. Honestly, I have no complaints about any of the voice actors. They all seem to fit their parts and really, that is what ultimately matters. So really, the sound does well at what it should do, but once again, nothing more really. Enjoy those sailor tunes though. They are good.
Control
Controlling Edward isn’t honestly that hard of a thing to do in this game. He controls pretty much like any other assassin’s creed character controls. I know some of this may sound like I’m repeating myself again, but that is a repeating thing in this game. Things really have this sameness quality to them. The controls are even no different. If you have played AC3, then you have played this one. They control almost exactly the same. I was able to jump right into the ship sailing as it is identical to the last game. That does make it easy though for those that have played the games before though. Still, it comes with some of the same problems though as the other games, which is that sometimes your character can go so fast that it is hard to get them to go on the right thing you want them to go onto and such. It just takes a little getting used to if you haven’t played these games before, but still it isn’t that hard. You won’t have much to fuss with on the controls over all. Even the sailing and fighting isn’t that hard. Sailing is just lining your ship up the right way and press the buttons to fire. Fighting has been made easier though, which I’m thankful for. With three, I had a hard time countering, but at least it felt easier here to do it than it did in three. Overall though, you shouldn’t have too much trouble here, but it still suffers from sameness.
Replay Value
Replay Value here isn’t that bad really. It still suffers from that sameness as always though, as you will be doing the same things over and over again. The main replay value from this game is that you have a lot of side quests you can do. There are several chests you can find and animus fragments you can find all over the world. There are also the assassin contracts from all the other games as well that you can perform. The thing is though, most of the side quests in the game, which do add a lot of content to the game, really just seem like time wasters at time. You are just getting money for these extra quests. Most of this money being used to upgrade your ship or your character overall though out the game. You will be doing some of these naturally as you play the game, which you will need to do if you want the extra money for these upgrades. Still, it will sometimes feel like you are just doing tasks just to do tasks. They did take the time to put a lot of extra in there, but as I said, it just seems like time wasters stuck in there to extend the life of the game. Some of them are fine, but many of the extras just seem like the same old thing. Once you have played the main game though, unless you can play online, then really, that is all that is left there in the game. This is another game that really you play it for the story or when you just want to kill time. The extras just tack on extra time to your game. Enjoy them if you can. If you can’t stand small tasks all the time, then you will not like any of these extras here, as they are the same as any other AC game anyway.
Overall, I would say Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag is an alright game, but as I said, it is just that. It is alright. The game isn’t bad by any means, but if you have played one assassin’s creed game then you have played this one. For fans of the other AC games, then you will likely enjoy this one as it has that same assassin’s creed feel. Otherwise, if you didn’t enjoy any of them, then you won’t find enjoyment here. Also, if you are expecting something completely new or different here, you will be disappointed here as well. This game just has a sameness issue that honestly I feel holds it back a bit, but not enough to where it makes it a bad game either. It is obviously here to appeal to those that enjoy the AC series. I enjoy the series and did get some fun out of this game, but I would like a little more at times. Overall, it’s not that bad, but could use some work for sure.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag a seven out of ten.
Gameplay: 7
Story: 7
Graphics: 7
Sound: 7
Control: 8
Replay Value: 7
Overall: 7
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag
Yet another in the assassin’s creed series is here to be reviewed. This is the first one I will be doing in Jet Gamer as you just missed three getting done before I started this series. This isn’t my first time doing this series before though, so do expect me to have some prior knowledge to this series. But, how does this entry in the series hold up? Shall we take a closer look and see?
Gameplay
The gameplay for Assassin’s Creed 4 is a bit mixed, but still not that bad. It was at this point you could really begin to tell they were starting to crank this series out a bit faster than maybe they should have been. You start seeing some of the same elements and such taken from other games and simply ported over here to help make the games faster. Though, they did change it up enough to still make it interesting for the plays. The biggest thing is that now instead of large land masses to run around on, the bulk of your world map is now water. Yes, you are a pirate sailing around in the Caribbean, so there is a lot of water around to sail on. This game takes the boating features that were added in from AC3 and expands on them, but keeping most of it the same as well to keep things easy and familiar to players. This is good, as you are sort of thrown into the sailing aspect, and will be doing it for the bulk of the game. There are still big towns to roam around, but nowhere near as big as you are normally used to, and they are spread around quite a bit. You are mostly sailing and going from small location to location. You do the standard stuff you do in the other AC games pretty much as well, so they didn’t exactly go out on a limb to create too much new here. However, that doesn’t mean that’s bad either, as what they did use still works pretty well at the same time. You have main missions you do that progress the story, though the bulk of your time will be spent on doing all the side stuff and the collectibles, as they do make the main story that much easier when you do them all. Side missions normally involving finding objects, running errands and killing some people, all of it usually for money or other things like that. The bulk of the gameplay though is still just stalking, hiding, and killing as all AC games have been about. It works, and honestly that is what people have come to expect here. They know it works, so why change it that much. I know it may seem like I’m struggling somewhat to say some things about the gameplay here, but that is part of it as well. There isn’t as much to say as you may think as you likely have all seen it before. Stalking, Hiding, Killing and just being a sneaky person trying to kill someone are honestly what you do throughout this game. The sailing aspects are the big thing in this game and they do work, though it can get a bit tiring sailing from place to place all the time. Luckily after finding places once you can use fast travel which saves a ton of time. Still, on the ocean you are mainly sailing and fighting other ships. Though that in itself is a big new aspect to this game and one of the main reasons this game is called Black Flag. You are a pirate and you can attack other ships to not only sink them, but to rob them for the materials which can be either sold or eventually used to upgrade your ship to make it tougher and stronger. You will need to do this a lot though, as it takes a lot of money and material to make your ship stronger. You will need it as you go up against bigger and badder ships as you go deeper into the world. These ships are no joke, and you can sometimes be going over many at once from all sides. You will need the extra help. You even can attack forts held by the Spanish to gain control over them to be used as small bases in a way. When you take control over them, not only will the base attack other ships for you now, but it will also reveal any hidden items on any of the nearby islands in its sector. It is to your advantage to take these, especially since it does lower the hostile areas of the zone by a lot too. So yeah, the bulk of the game is the same as the other games, just with a lot of sailing aspects added in to go with the pirate theme of the game. If you have played other games and enjoyed them in this series, then the gameplay will be very familiar to you and easy to pick up and play, which is a good thing as you will be doing them a lot.
Story
The story actually isn’t that bad, but it does also take knowing most of the story to get the good out of it as well, as originally I wasn’t going to give this a great rating. The game is about Edward Kenway and his journey through the Caribbean as he tries to gain riches to take home to his wife to hopefully give her the good life. He tries several ways of doing this, but the main way he finds to work is by becoming a pirate and joining the area group of pirates as the raid the Spanish and English ships and islands in the locale. He doesn’t seem to mind doing this, but very quickly he comes across a rogue assassin and ends up causing all sorts of trouble for not only himself, but for the assassin’s in the Caribbean as a whole. Though out the game, you are joining Edward as he looks for a great treasure he hears about from the Templars called the Observatory. He figures he if finds it first, he can sell it off to whoever will pay him the most and he will finally get the fortune he has always wanted. Throughout the game you are watching as Edward pretty much is ignoring everyone else and constantly trying to get his treasure without caring what chaos he is causing in his wake. The assassin’s really don’t care for him, most of his other pirate friends don’t care for him at times, and really not many people at all seem to care about Edward. Even his crew is constantly asking if what they are doing is really worth it. So pretty much, the bulk of the game is about Edward trying to find his fortune, but being very selfish about it at the same time. So really, Edward is not really a very likable character to the player, and honestly you don’t even see that much of the assassin’s until the end of the game. You see the Templars a lot, but really, the assassin’s you are expecting to see play a minor role through most of the game, and you honestly wish he was a more likable character. Now, things do luckily change later to slowly start making Edward more of a likable character and bring the assassin’s into the game more, but you don’t get this until the last fourth of the game, so that’s why I gave the story a small hit here. It just takes so long for Edward to become likable and someone you want to see succeed. For the bulk of the game, you really don’t care about him that much. I’m glad there are some good things that happen in the end, that I won’t spoil, it just takes a very long time to get there. This whole time as well though, you can’t forget about the stuff happening in the real world, but this is a bit disappointing as well. Unlike the other games where you were controlling the same character all the time and building on him more and more, this time you are a faceless person that you never even get to see. You play through his own eyes as he walks around the office where the animus and other people are. Since the main real world character died in the last game, spoiler for three sorry, they had to do something here. You still see some of the other characters that were with the old main character in the game, but it is few and far between. The bulk of the game in the real world is you working for Abstergo who is supposedly making a movie off your memories and you are doing all this to help them get the memories of Edward to make a movie out of it. Of course this isn’t the full reason, but still, the real world segments are about walking around hacking computers and getting all sorts of information on the old main world character and information about AC Chronicles, while you work to help the current day Templars find the observatory as well. It’s not very exciting and you see it so rarely, that honestly, you will forget it is there sometimes. Don’t play this game expecting a good out of the animus segment this time. It isn’t there. The bulk of the story lies with Edward, but it takes such a long time to get the good stuff, that honestly, you just need to be ready to pace yourself for the good stuff. It will come, but just in time.
Graphics
Black Flag actually does quite the nice job when it comes to showing how the ocean can look when you are sailing around in it. All the characters look nice and well detailed, and all the locations look very well rendered as well. When it came to looks, everything looked fine, but also similar to how they used to look as well. As I mentioned before, this game is another game where you can see evidence of these games being cranked out quickly one after the other. Many things from the other games are reused here, and you can sort of tell that things have stuck in to make this game come out more quickly. That’s not really a bad thing though too much, as you know they were just trying to crank these games out quickly after all. Other than sameness of looking similar to other AC games, they still don’t look that bad. The big thing though that I gave a hit on the graphics for was the graphical glitches that occasionally pop up. They aren’t common, but they weren’t exactly uncommon either. I gave them somewhat of a pass because everything else looks pretty good, but every now and then, there were just some things that were a bit wonky. I more than once saw people walking in places they should be. For example, I saw one guy climb a ladder and just keep climbing into the sky forever. Also, I saw people die but just keep standing there. Also there were the flickers in the graphics and the many many clipping issues as well. I have a hard time pushing this game down much more in this department though as everything still looks pretty good. It is just there are some graphical glitches every now and then, just none that really break the game though. So really, the game does look alright to be honest.
Sound
The sound of this game is the same as the graphics. It is alright, but nothing too exciting as well. You have many sound effects and music tracks that are reused from the last game. You do have some nice scores of music in the game, but they are sort of something you don’t get to hear that often. You are hearing so many sneaking sound effects that you have heard from the other games or you hear the hustling and bustling of the cities and such as you usually have. Some of the main things sound wise that you are going to notice is that when you are sailing, you get to hear all sorts of old sailing songs sung by your crew. These are pretty good actually and a nice distraction from the boringness that could come from long sailing trips. These help a lot, and really are one of the main highlights as you are playing. The voice actors do a fine job at doing the stories as well. Honestly, I have no complaints about any of the voice actors. They all seem to fit their parts and really, that is what ultimately matters. So really, the sound does well at what it should do, but once again, nothing more really. Enjoy those sailor tunes though. They are good.
Control
Controlling Edward isn’t honestly that hard of a thing to do in this game. He controls pretty much like any other assassin’s creed character controls. I know some of this may sound like I’m repeating myself again, but that is a repeating thing in this game. Things really have this sameness quality to them. The controls are even no different. If you have played AC3, then you have played this one. They control almost exactly the same. I was able to jump right into the ship sailing as it is identical to the last game. That does make it easy though for those that have played the games before though. Still, it comes with some of the same problems though as the other games, which is that sometimes your character can go so fast that it is hard to get them to go on the right thing you want them to go onto and such. It just takes a little getting used to if you haven’t played these games before, but still it isn’t that hard. You won’t have much to fuss with on the controls over all. Even the sailing and fighting isn’t that hard. Sailing is just lining your ship up the right way and press the buttons to fire. Fighting has been made easier though, which I’m thankful for. With three, I had a hard time countering, but at least it felt easier here to do it than it did in three. Overall though, you shouldn’t have too much trouble here, but it still suffers from sameness.
Replay Value
Replay Value here isn’t that bad really. It still suffers from that sameness as always though, as you will be doing the same things over and over again. The main replay value from this game is that you have a lot of side quests you can do. There are several chests you can find and animus fragments you can find all over the world. There are also the assassin contracts from all the other games as well that you can perform. The thing is though, most of the side quests in the game, which do add a lot of content to the game, really just seem like time wasters at time. You are just getting money for these extra quests. Most of this money being used to upgrade your ship or your character overall though out the game. You will be doing some of these naturally as you play the game, which you will need to do if you want the extra money for these upgrades. Still, it will sometimes feel like you are just doing tasks just to do tasks. They did take the time to put a lot of extra in there, but as I said, it just seems like time wasters stuck in there to extend the life of the game. Some of them are fine, but many of the extras just seem like the same old thing. Once you have played the main game though, unless you can play online, then really, that is all that is left there in the game. This is another game that really you play it for the story or when you just want to kill time. The extras just tack on extra time to your game. Enjoy them if you can. If you can’t stand small tasks all the time, then you will not like any of these extras here, as they are the same as any other AC game anyway.
Overall, I would say Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag is an alright game, but as I said, it is just that. It is alright. The game isn’t bad by any means, but if you have played one assassin’s creed game then you have played this one. For fans of the other AC games, then you will likely enjoy this one as it has that same assassin’s creed feel. Otherwise, if you didn’t enjoy any of them, then you won’t find enjoyment here. Also, if you are expecting something completely new or different here, you will be disappointed here as well. This game just has a sameness issue that honestly I feel holds it back a bit, but not enough to where it makes it a bad game either. It is obviously here to appeal to those that enjoy the AC series. I enjoy the series and did get some fun out of this game, but I would like a little more at times. Overall, it’s not that bad, but could use some work for sure.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag a seven out of ten.
Gameplay: 7
Story: 7
Graphics: 7
Sound: 7
Control: 8
Replay Value: 7
Overall: 7
