Assassin’s creed 4: Black flag (Xbox 360)
Assassin’s creed 4 is an open world pirate adventure game
with stealth and platforming elements. It also features small puzzle segments set
aside from the game’s open world. The open world becomes more available to
players as the game progresses; however the entirety of the map is unlocked
near the beginning of the game. The assassin’s creed franchise is one of the
biggest and most popular names among the gaming community and is becoming a
modern day staple of the action adventure videogame genre. The game’s use of a
boat as such a large part of gameplay is quite unconventional for its genre,
being more suited to the vehicular combat games that were very popular among
the older generation of consoles. At
various points throughout the game, there are big set piece moments, these are
very common in the genre, but it doesn’t however reduce the effect that these
have on the player. As far as open world games go, Black flag’s main difference
is the use of boats and pirate related content. The assassin’s creed franchise
is one of the leading names in the open world genre and a lot of the techniques
used in previous games returns to black flag: there are multiple side missions
and collectives to gather, you unlock more of these missions as the game
progresses, they also improved on the crafting aspect introduced in the
previous game, making it more easy to use and the benefits more obvious or
impactful.
The narrative of the game mostly follows Edward Kenway, a
young Welshman who embarks on a journey to the Caribbean to earn a fortune for
him and his wife to live on. Kenway then begins to engage in pirating
activities before becoming involved with the assassin’s creed. Throughout the story
we see an arc in his character: going from a selfish pirate to heroic rouge,
fighting for the assassin order. Throughout the entirety of the game Kenway is
a likable character and we can always see his motivations and how he does try
to do right by others. He is a great antihero characters, with his regular
drinking and arrogant actions entertaining gamers and providing comic relief to
some of the games darker moments. The
cast of characters weave in and out of the story at different points, with a
lot of them being famous historical figures who were real people. The game
portrays all of its characters as real people, with no one becoming an
archetype. This also allows for some entertaining bantering between characters
which helps to make each one of them feel more rounded and like they have a
place in this world, not just there to progress the narrative. There are
multiple twists and turns throughout the story, which does a good job of
keeping players engaged. This story is also very different to previous
assassin’s creed games, which often focussed more heavily on politics and
revenge, there are also elements of this in black flag, but the writers chose
to sideline them until later in the story, instead deciding to build upon the
world and develop characters more carefully so that the later events of the
game have a much more heightened impact. There are also some modern day
portions of the game that add to the overarching assassin’s creed story, though
these are few and far between. They do however offer much more of a show don’t
tell technique to storytelling, with gamers having to check emails and voice
recordings to get the best picture of the world Ubisoft has created and how all
of the characters fit into it.
Black flag was developed and published by Ubisoft, using the
AnvilNext game engine, the same engine that was used to build the previous
game: Assassin’s Creed 3. You can clearly see some recycled parts of the
previous game, including certain animations and enemy AI, however most of the
game feels fresh and like it was created exclusively for this new title. The
game doesn’t feature extremely realistic physics instead allowing for
suspension of disbelief to allow for increased fun for the players.
The gameplay is very similar to previous assassin’s creed
games (especially 3) except for the boating sections. The gameplay revolves
around a mixture of attacking and countering combat, platforming/free running,
stealth and occasional puzzle solving. These different elements are used in a
variety of ways to create missions throughout the game e.g. tailing an NPC,
assassinating a specific target, escaping an area.
The game will obviously appeal to fans of the assassin’s
creed series, however by introducing the pirating elements and using them to
change up gameplay Ubisoft will have hoped to attract a new audience. PEGI
rated the game an 18 (or M in America), however the game will more likely be
targeted at a younger audience due to its gameplay and more light-hearted and
less political story, that allows the series to have more fun with itself.
I played the game on Xbox 360, however it is also available
on playstation 3 and 4, Xbox one, WII U and PC. Though the game is available on
all of these platforms, it is developed more specifically for the Xbox and PlayStation
consoles as it would be more likely to sell a larger number of copies on these
platforms. PlayStation even got some exclusive content that would otherwise
have to been bought additionally as DLC.
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