Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Xbox One)

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (Xbox One)

BY JEFFREY L. WILSON, MATTHEW D. SARREL
The year is 1715, and lawless pirates dominate the Caribbean Sea. Neither land nor sea is safe from these rapscallions, and the biggest hellraiser of them all is a young captain named Edward Kenway, who explores the waters during piracy's golden age. Using an expanded version of the sailing mechanic from Assassin's Creed III, Black Flag$41.69 at Amazon sees Edward journeying from Jamaica to Cuba to Spanish Florida to the Bahamas on his ship, the Jackdaw.
Conway, as he searches for treasure, also finds his place within the ancient, series-defining Assassin/Templar conflict. Meanwhile, in the game's overarching meta-story, players take on the role of a video game programmer at the Templar front company Abstergo and search the cloud for the uploaded genetic information on the Kenway family line. It's a game within a game. Gameception, if you will. And it's quite fun.

Raising the Black Flag
Black Flag's game world isn't as sprawling as Grand Theft Auto V's$39.99 at Amazon Los Santos, but the environments are highly unstructured and designed for vertical rooftop play. While there are always mission objectives, you can explore wherever you want and do whatever you want—and then go fulfill the mission. And you'll want to explore this beautiful lush world to the fullest. The move to Xbox One$499.00 at Amazon means that Black Flag is a visual treat that runs at a crisp 900p (the PlayStation 4£349.00 at Very version, it should be noted, will get a 1080p patch that also features new anti-aliasing techniques). I sometimes found myself climbing to rooftops simply to admire the gorgeous environments.

The opening level is a tutorial where you follow a pretty straightforward list of objectives; in fact, it's the weakest part of the game. Once you get through it, however, the world opens up—not completely, but pretty close. You can preempt missions to go off on side quests, explore, investigate and loot underwater shipwrecks, or even go hunting and fishing. In fact, simply following all mission objectives sells the game short because there is so much other good stuff in there. I feel like I barely scratched the game's surface after several hours of stealthy play.

Black Flag kept my interest by varying the mission objectives. The stealth, follow, kill, and sea-based missions prevented repetition from settling in. Kudos to developer Ubisoft for mixing up the tasks in this massive title.

Some Rough Waters
My only major Black Flag criticism is that sometimes it felt as though I didn't have full control over my character. Edward would jump down from a wall or climb up a wall when all I wanted to do was walk by the wall. This can be frustrating in the heat of battle. The control issue is absent during combat, but when you make the split second decision to flee because of your deteriorating health, you may scream in frustration as Edward stops to hide against a wall in plain sight instead of scaling it and gets shot to death.

I also found it somewhat tricky to quickly pick up items. You have to be in the perfect position to retrieve enemy weapon drops.

Missing Content, Mobile Apps
Gamers who purchase Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag for PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4 get additional exclusive missions featuring Aveline, Assassin's Creed III: Liberation's heroine. These three missions take place after the conclusion of Liberation, and are independent of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag's main campaign. If you want the "complete" Assassin's Creed IV experience, you should buy the PlayStation 4 version instead of the Xbox One version.

The Black Flag iPad and Android tablet companion apps demonstrate the potential of the entire companion app concept. It turned my iPad into almost a necessary accessory for the game. The map is far more detailed than the in-game map and let me to see my objectives and progress in real-time and set waypoints in-game. It was also very cool to find a treasure map in the game.

Sailing the High Seas
It's easy to dismiss Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag as just another entry in a string of "AssCreed" annual releases, but developer Ubisoft has worked diligently to expand and tweak Assassin's Creed III's features and gameplay into something that stealth-loving next-gen gamers should have in their libraries. If you've made the jump to Xbox One and desire a AAA adventure, consider Black Flag. It's a worthy pick up.