Lengthy and detailed single player storyline, lush visuals, great balance between stealth and combat sequences, you'll feel you're a pirate (ahoy!)
Present day story elements are weird, frustrating use of game checkpoints and roped-off parts of open-world areas during battles
It takes a lot for me to give up on a game. But Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag belongs to that elite group of releases that frustrated me to the point of abandoning it before completion.
Not because it's a bad game, but because its moments of overwhelming frustration are so profound, and so consistently vexing, a sense of fun was drowned under a torrent of tedious design decisions. (For transparency, I abandoned the game during the final portion of its very last story chapter.)
Despite this, there is a wealth of brilliance under AC4's hood, from stunning environments, a lengthy and gripping single player campaign, a cast of interesting and realistic characters and ample care given to the balance between stealth and combat. So we'll start with that, shall we?
The game, like its predecessors, is presented within something of a framed narrative -- the "pirates and sailing" storyline you'll be buying the game for are presented as a simulation being created in the present day. As such, you'll jog between sailing the seven seas one minute, hacking computer terminals in an office complex the next. Although it's a trope of AC games, it feels particularly unnecessary in this incarnation. The pirate storyline, set in the early 1700s and told through the eyes of Edward Kenway, is rich and engrossing. Being thrust back into the present day to break into a mainframe computer that produces a 3D hologram of a human face just feels like surplus anachronism.
Edward Kenway's voyages span many years, multiple countries and countless scenarios. Towns and villages are presented with startling realism -- townspeople appear alive and busy, bustling streets enhance the feeling that the plazas, squares and alleys are uniquely created and not just copy-pasted clones of each other.
Stealthily leaping through bushes and across roofs in pursuit of a target never gets dull.
Get caught out while in stealth and combat begins, unless you can run away fast enough. Mashing the square button (on PlayStation) is the only attack you'll regularly need most of the time, but alternating between parrying an attack, deflecting a foe from the rear or whipping out a pistol to shoot in an emergency require other buttons on the console's control pad. A lot of fun can be had with blowing darts into opponents, too -- the berserk dark causes an enemy to rampage against his allies for a few seconds before dying. Strategic use of these, along with sleep darts, smoke bombs and carefully timed pistol shots allow combat to remain fluid and challenging.
Frequently the game is unforgiving in its use of checkpoints, and this is the first major downfall of the title for me. There were several occasions where perhaps ten or fifteen minutes of careful stealthiness, moving and looting bodies, picking up extra blowpipe darts and general movement would be erased by getting killed. Yes, this wouldn't be an issue if one was able to avoid getting into a skirmish every time, but sometimes that's not possible. A foe might ring a bell, summoning a horde of backup buddies to pursue you. Escaping these, or fighting them off, is often just too overwhelming and the game will restart you at the beginning of the section -- all kills, loots, and progression through an area reset.
Whether or not this is a "bad thing" depends on your view on stealth. I can certainly understand why a lot of people would find this pressure conducive to a realistic and challenging gaming experience. For me, it felt like a repeatedly frustrating waste of time. I don't want a game that, like Call of Duty or Battlefield, lets you breeze through an area all-guns-blazing, soaking up attacks like they were made from dreams and kisses, nonchalantly cutting your way through to a destination. But there has to be a balance before it gets tedious, and I felt AC4 gets this balance wrong.
The same can be said for battles at sea. As Edward you're free to flee enemies, into bushes, across buildings and out of sight.
His health regenerates when you're not being seen. The opposite is true when you're trying to sink a ship from your own vessel, The Jackdaw. Ships are slow and initially tricky to pilot. During a shootout, your ship will not be repaired as Edward's body somehow manages to. And escaping to recuperate is an impossible dream when the game literally puts up walls in the sea -- "this area not available" messages are the last thing you want to see when desperately trying to escape a bombardment of mortar fire from a nearby warship. Why, in a game so beautifully created to feel open, explorable and vast, should a black curtain appear at sea telling me I can't flee through it during a tough spot?
It was this that contributed to my final explosive outburst at the television before turning off my console. I was being annihilated by a gigantic warship (several, actually) and a temporary wall had been erected in front of my would-be escape route. The game prompted me to consider upgrading my ship (I had already upgraded it considerably), which I did. This brought me right back to the beginning of the mission, prior to a large section of stealth before I even boarded my boat, and not at a point where it was even possible to upgrade my ship.
It's these sorts of moments in AC4 that taint it for me, because it feels like the game's design is working against you, rather than just the challenging enemies, which normally I'd love the threat of. But maybe you, the reader, would find that motivating. I'm not blind to the numerous reviews of this game that praise its sea-bound battles, so take my views here as an alternative viewpoint from the perspective of somebody who likes to be challenged, but not by repeating large chunks of gameplay because of questionable level design.
For this review I considered how I would feel about the game had those issues not been present, and there's no doubt I would consider it very positively indeed. In addition to the beautiful landscapes and detailed story, it's visually a champion. Weather shifts frequently, from blue skies and glistening wide-open seas, to storm-ridden waters with ship-rattling waves the size of buildings; you might dodge a tornado while being lashed with more rain than I've ever seen on-screen at one time in a game, and that rain will bounce visibly off surfaces and character's faces during cinematic sequences.
Detail on faces is profoundly impressive, and one scene in particular stood out where it was possible to see the dental hygiene of Blackbeard the pirate (it's pretty poor, if you're interested). Particular care has also been given to the clothing of the main characters -- textures of leather and stitching are visible, and realistic. You really get to appreciate pirate fashion more than I was expecting. A wide range of strong voice acting and recognisable regional British accents add to all this.
Conclusion
Together, from story and game world, to character design and vastness, Assassin's Creed 4 is a game rippling with brilliance, with some exciting next-gen presentation thrown in. Its single player storyline is long (I passed the 20-hour mark long before giving up on the final section, without doing many optional sidequests) and there's huge replay value for completionists and explorers.
But for me it left a sour taste in my mouth because of some of the choices made by the designers, which poorly affected the balance between challenge and flat-out frustration. There's a stunning game residing under the surface, and if you're willing to tolerate its occasional but significant frustrations, there's no doubt the franchise's stand-out title is ready for the plundering.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
