The Story:

The Assassin’s Creed series continues on from the final chapter of Desmond’s Story where it seems Juno has been ‘let loose’ upon the world. However we start of playing an unknown first person character that has been hired to work at Abstergo Industries (The Templars). It seems that samples were taken from Desmond Miles’ body in the moments after his death which enabled Abstergo Industries to continue to explore his genetic memories using the Animus’ new found cloud computing abilities (Don’t worry, I didn’t get that either).  Playing as this unknown muted character, he must sift through the memories of Edward Kenway (an eighteenth-century pirate and the grandfather of Ratonhnhaké:ton/Connor) in order to gather interesting material for an Animus-powered edited interactive feature film. In reality, The Templars are searching for ‘The Observatory’. As Kenway, the player must unravel a conspiracy between high-ranking Templars within the British, Spanish and French empires who, under the guise of cleaning up piracy in the Caribbean, have used their positions to find someone known as ‘The Sage’ who is the only man that can lead them the way which would be intended to spy on and blackmail world leaders. With no ambition or interest to join the fight between the Assassin’s and the Templars, Edward finds himself caught between the two orders in the race to find ‘The Observatory’. As the events thicken, so two does Edward’s involvement. Now personally this was a very dull, confusing, controversial and a slow story. Nothing is explained or expanded concerning Juno until the end but even then it is still very sketchy. ‘The Observatory’s’ ultimate designated purpose turns out not to be as impressive as we all thought it would be considering the massive effort all the Assassin’s and Templars seemed to go through for. Where the other games have ended with cliff hangers, the ending of this game just seems to stop with Edward becoming happy with his family. But there was so many more interesting events that were skipped for those who read the Assassin’s Creed book ‘Forsaken’ which told the life of Haythem Kenway (Edward’s Son/ Connor’s Father) in the form of a diary. Many stories and emotional events of Edward were told in the book. The whole game including both the unknown character and Edward’s stories just seems to feel like its all just been thrown together as a type of time killer like Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. However, compared to All other Assassin’s Creed games including Revelations, Black Flag has the worse story in the Assassin’s Creed series.

The Game Play:

Although there are new features that look very intriguing it all gets quite complicated and frustrating. First of all the ability to control Edward’s movements seems very erratic. I can’t tell you how many times I have struggled performing simple moves such as climbing finding the character not doing what he is supposed to do. As for selecting your equipment such as the hidden blade, swords, smoke bombs etc; choosing the item you want gets very frustrating. In previous games you could simply align which weapon slot you wanted and apply that to a button.

You could also pause the game without any slow interruptions in order to quickly equip what item you wanted and continue playing. This was very handy if you were in the middle of combating enemies.

However in this game you can not do any of that. The ONLY way you can choose an item is by individually scrolling up or down on the directional pad of the controller while trying to control the player. There have been many times where I have tried to change weapons in order to fight back tactically but can not do so because of the difficulty between both factors resulting in Edward dying and failing the mission. Everyone was exited about the new free-roaming feature on exploring the open seas. However, unless you have explored certain areas already it takes a long time to travel between locations which can be very frustrating if all you want to do is start the next mission in the story. There have been times where I would go make a cup of tea while waiting to continue the story. I could understand if this was planetary correct but it’s not which makes the whole thing seem more frustrating. The ONLY real compliment I can give for the game play is the multiplayer feature. I love playing online against other players. But to be honest you have to really question the reality of likeness if you find the alternative multiplayer game play more interesting than the main story.

The Graphics:

There is not much I can tell you about the graphics. I thought that the computing technology would be upgraded like all the other games are doing in the video gaming industry but this time the development seems to have halted. The only change that took effect were the detailed quality of the sea and the trailer that was produced for the game. When I saw the trailer I was astonished at the realistic quality that was shown. I thought that was how the whole game would look but I was completely wrong. Nothing even close to that quality was shown in the game. Though at least the graphics did not look like it had been back tracked to earlier styles in the gaming industry.

The Music:

Unfortunately this became a disappointment. Apart from the very first Assassin’s Creed, Black Flag does not seem to have an iconic theme. If it is supposed to be considered a theme, it was not very well conceived as it sounded more like average background mood music. Even though most of the instrumental pieces were fitted well in the game play fitting with the specific time era, there was not an instrumental that stood out to be an emotional piece. It is almost like they have gone right back to the basics with the first Assassin’s Creed game. No pure effort has been made to connect with the audience.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – Main Theme

So all in all I think you can guess that I was not very pleased with the game. It Seems every point in the game could not keep up with it’s previous reputation of being the most improving and inventive set of games the video gaming industry have seen. I now have more respect for the mess that was made with Revelations. There was so much potential in this game but unfortunately the creators of Assassin’s Creed could not deliver. If it was not the fact that I was eager to find out what was in store for future developments, I would have been completely put off. I only hope that the next game will redeem itself and restore the Assassin’s Creed reputation otherwise I will have to resort to just watching the game on YouTube. There is no point wasting money on something that is not value for money. That is why I have decided to give this game… 3/10