Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag: Is This The Change of Pace the Series Needs?

Assassin's Creed seems like an odd science project; a passable game that partly exploded in its creators faces, but also gave birth to a widely successful series.  With flawed systems such as horrendously boring combat and repetitive mission structure, its quite the surprise that the game gained so much momentum.  But that time was a bit of a dry spell for gaming, and Ubisoft was at least being ambitious with its ideas in a desert of sequels and reiterations.  Free climbing, crowd based stealth, and hidden blade brutality set during the Third Crusade were promises everyone looked forward to, but finally seeing the fully rendered (mostly historically accurate) holy cities upon release was a memorable moment to be sure.  Though not short on glitches and rough story segments, Assassin's Creed shepherded waves of new fans and ascended Altaïr as one of this generation's top bad-asses.

Assassin's Creed II and its immediate sequels Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and Assassin's Creed Revelations followed the story of a new assassin, Ezio, during the gorgeous but dangerous Italian Renaissance.  Though these titles fixed a lot of the series' previous problems by varying up the missions and granting more combat options, glitches were still a noticeable blemish and the fighting system was a slow paced waiting game with little challenge outside of "press counter button now."  But, all three games were enormous in scope and packed its characters and setting with life.  The Ezio trilogy deserves a top 20 spot in my best gaming experiences of this generation, with the overarching story concerning Desmond Miles proposing many mind-bending questions players couldn't wait to have answered.

We thought that answer was going to be Assassin's Creed III.  It looked fantastic on paper; a new assassin, the story bringing us to newly founded America, ship combat, frontier exploration, hunting, and a slew of interesting characters derived from the Founding Fathers themselves.  It seemed fresh, and I thought we were going to get a completely changed game out of it.  Well, this title was different to be sure, but all of those changes really weren't as exciting as they could have been.  Free climbing around Boston was dreadful as the city's buildings stood too shallow to make for exciting platforming or a successful escape from armed guards.  Where Venice, Rome, and Florence all gave Ezio a tightly woven playground to go wild with, the colonial locations in Assassin's Creed III had dreary wide open spaces and plain, dull structures to get shot on.  It didn't help that Conner, our new assassin, was also a pretty insufferable character.  Brash, wild, and close-minded, he's about as far as you can get from a stealthy justice dealer.  His only redeeming quality is his bravery and even those moments lacked impact due to the B-grade voice acting.  Frontier exploration was a mediocre distraction, if anything; there was lots to do, but almost no reason to do it, and tree running was exhilarating, yet inaccurate and clumsy that often caused more grief than its worth.  The ship combat was the only exciting and memorable part about the game, to be honest, and even that needed quite a bit of work and was fairly limited to a handful of missions.

So is Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag finally the first step in a new stride?  Taking control of Conner's grandfather, Edward Kenway, we take on the seven-seas during the golden age of piracy where we can plunder and loot while singing a merry song.  What do you do when a series goes stale?  Well, you add pirates of course!  Gamers love pirates!

Sarcasm aside, all of the gameplay reveals of the open sea, ship combat, and island exploration look pretty astonishing.  Its certainly giving a well-loved series a fresh coat of paint, even if pirates have already run their pop-culture course.  And I'm more than happy to see the sailing and ship combat becoming a primary feature.  The great number of explorable islands scattered about the open sea gives me the impression of a world I'd be happy to get lost in.  Where the previous Assassin's Creed titles gave the option for exploration, Black Flag seems to place an emphasis on it.  The game's vision appears to be incredibly wide-set, giving your character gigantic ruins and caves to discover while placing the overworld on an even bigger open ocean.  A lack of loading screens is impressive, delivering a true sense of freedom as Edward seamlessly sails from port to port, stopping by harbors and islands without skipping a beat.

But is this enough?  No matter how shiny, a fresh paint job won't make vehicle run any smoother.  Though the visuals have gotten a next-gen console overhaul, the mechanics regarding stealth and combat look largely the same.  Free running along overgrown Mayan architecture looks incredible (and boat loads more exciting than what Assassin's Creed III's locations allowed), but little has changed regarding the tedious swordplay.  The addition of over-the-shoulder aiming for the firearms is actually a long-needed touch, though its hard to tell exactly how precise the shooting will be.  But perhaps its safer to wait until I have my hands on the controller; the combat could have very well been tightened up and feel much different to how it appears.

Overall, I'm hopeful.  Even if the combat and mission structure are still disappointing, I wouldn't mind spending all day just sailing, looting ships, plundering islands, hunting sharks, and swimming around underwater caverns.  Black Flag gives me the impression that I could lose hours upon hours of my day to it without a single notice, getting absorbed into the vast and lush world.  Though the Desmond story will need some immediate CPR (and perhaps I'll cover that as the release date draws closer), I'm ecstatic for what looks to be a sturdy next-gen launch title.