Assassins Creed: Black Flag Review

Let me start off with answering some of the questions of this game. The time placement of the game goes; when you are in the animus, it is the prequel to Assassins Creed 3. The character you play outside the Animus, it is right after Assassins Creed 3. SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED ASSASSINS CREED 3 SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH. So no, you are not Desmond, he is still dead.

You are an employee of Abstergo Entertainment, the child company that uses the data collected in the Animus and turn the exciting stories into movies and helps fund Abstergo's larger projects. The character you play in the Animus is Edward Kenway, a pirate out to make a better life for himself and his family out in the Caribbean. You might recognize the name Kenway, yes you are playing as Haytham's father, the character from Assassins Creed 3.

This game has made a lot of nice improvements since Assassins Creed 3. For instance, this is the most smooth and crisp graphics of any of the game series yet. I was really impressed with all of the great details in the characters and the sceneries. You also get to sail in the pirate ship Jackdaw and try to loot from other ships and either claim it for your own fleet or send it to Davy Jones Locker. Some side activities you can do in some free time, while out at sea, are hunting sharks or go whaling. Everyone in a while, you will get the chance to hunt the Great White Whale.
Hint: upgrade your boat, harpoon and max the number of harpoons you carry to give yourself a better chance of capturing it.

Call me Ishmael!  

When you are outside the Animus, you are out doing some errands for the computer engineer John, which involves you hacking into some of your fellow worker's computer. By doing so, you get to unlock stuff like audio from Desmond and more of what happened after he died, audio from subject zero, and just other facts on Abstergo.

Let's try the password: GUEST and see what happens....

You can also claim forts which help you uncover hidden areas on your map. As for the story, the plot line is pretty solid. I liked how they went with this game and was able to follow it pretty easily. The fighting mechanics are pretty much the same so don't expect too much from that but they did finally add free aiming to this one, so that was handy at times. 

This baby will soon be mine.

As for the multiplayer, there have been a lot of improvements to that was well. As usual, there are a whole list of new characters, from an Adventurer or Buccaneer to a Night Stalker or Puppeteer. You are able to customize a lot with your characters, from clothing, faces, and other accessories. There are a few new abilities but kept a lot of the favorites. To be honest, I didn't play the Multiplayer to Assassins Creed 3 so I'm not sure if this was added to 3 or not but 4 has a Co-Op mode called Wolfpack where you are able to work with three other players and try and complete some missions. You can now also create your own game mode using the Game Lab, being able to create your own matches, goals, and restrictions. This was a nice touch they added and can't wait to give it a shot.

Oh yes indeed.

The thing I didn't really like about the game was event though some of the side quests were fun, there was just so many of them. You can collect Animus fragments but there were so many of them, I just felt a bit overwhelming, grew tired of collecting them and just skipped it all together. You are able to collect songs for your crew to sing when you are traveling on the ship but collecting them is annoying. It is just like collecting the Ben Franklin pages in Assassins Creed 3, when you get close to it, it flies away and you have to chase it down before it vanishes and you have to wait for it to re-spawn, just annoying. I did experience a glitch in the game, I was taking over a fort and had to make it to the war room, to kill the guy inside, and right before I could open the door, some guy tackles me and I get phased through the door and was trapped. I was forced to fast travel to a near by location but thankfully I didn't have to start over again. So just a heed of caution when taking over the fort, don't get tackled when near the war room.

My rating for this game is 9/10.  

This game is definitely one to own if you are a fan of the series. Assassins Creed 4 is one of my favorite from the series, mainly because I really like looting from other ships. But seriously, it was so beautifully done and well worth it. I recommend though if you have not played any of these games to do them in order to get the full story of the fight between Assassins and Templars.