Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag - No Trace of Scurvy here.

I said I wasn't gonna do this. Said I wasn't gonna buy or play another Assassin's Creed game. After the slap dashed never ending disaster of the previous games, I was completely sick of it. The Desmond story that never seemed to end until its car crash like sudden closing. The Ezio pissing around for 2 games pointless fluff of story. Connor Mcdouchington's emo trip through US history. I was fed up. I said the only way I'd get a new one is if they made some sort of pirate themed game, because I liked that aspect for Assassin's Creed 3.

And those mother fuckers..... Ubisoft not only made the new one a pirate game, but a launch release for the shiny new consoles. So here we go, another fuckin bout of soft science stabbiness in....

ASSASSIN'S CREED IV: BLACK FLAG

So after the abrupt end of Desmond Miles after pushing the magic button of destiny, we take control of his great, great, great unrelated silent protagonist. He's working for Abstergo Entertainment to make fancy interactive movies, and thanks to the "donated" brain meats of Desmond thanks to Abstergo's retrieval team this new guy gets to live his memories instead.

His first project is to assume the memories of Edward Kenway, a welsh commoner who married way out of his league and took to a life of piracy to make his fortune to bring to his lady fair. After coming across a shipwrecked assassin, he pursues the man and kills him to loot a reward. Kenway assumes his clothing and identity in the hopes of claiming the reward the assassin was looking to get for giving a valuable artifact to the Templars.

Unable to hold his cover, Kenway becomes mixed up in the battle between the Assassin's and Templars in their race to find a place called the Observatory, which with a drop of blood allows anyone to spy through the eyes of the blood's owner. Kenway has no allegiance to either side though, as he wishes to claim the observatory for himself and sell its powers for a profit.

Maybe its a matter of preference, but I found it very easy to like Kenway.
Practically zero angst in comparison to Conner. 

So I can tell you, all of my anger and reservation from the previous was almost immediately crushed right out of the gate. The connection to the Desmond story seemed minimal at best, and right out of the gate you start the game as a guy with swagger (which is the correct use of the term, you yolo spouting fuckwits) without being arrogant like Altair or cocky like Ezio. He also establishes right out of the gate that he's not "a good guy" by basically trying to kill the guy who offered a reward to help him.  So pretty much right out the gate he connected with me as a player, because I wanna stab some shit, I wanna get rich, I wanna drink, and I want to sink ships on the high seas.

But what I found interesting with Edward as a character that despite dressing like an assassin and eventually getting his hidden blades, he remains generally neutral in this chapter of Assassin's Creed canon. Which I suppose is good since the story has drug on too long and become so convoluted I don't really care which side wins at this point. So while Kenway dresses like an assassin, and moves like an assassin, and becomes embroiled in their mess, he's not technically one. Works for me.

No, Edward Kenway makes it very clear right from the onset that he is a pirate, and naturally if he is a pirate you would expect to spend some time on a boat. Very early in the game Kenway plunders his own ship which he dubs the Jackdaw, and this is where you are going to spend a large portion of Assassin's Creed IV. If you remember, they introduced the ship mechanic back in Assassin's Creed 3 but really didn't know what to do with it other than to build money that serves no purpose.

The perfect form of the Assassin's dive must be genetic if its lasted this long in time.

The controls to the ship feel functionally the same from their previous incarnation, but there were a handful of tweaks to polish it up such as varied ways to attack (these might have been in AC3, but I couldn't tell you). Typically you get assets for your ship by sailing the seas and ransacking other ships. This was easily the most fun of the game. You can pull up aside them and start unloading cannon fire, you can fire mortars from a far, or if you are like me you will put a ram on that ship and T-bone fuckers in two. I love that last strategy because if it doesn't sink em the moment you turn you are at point blank and can unload heavy fire for massive damage, given you can take the return fire.

Once a ship is near defeated you have the option to ransack them. Suddenly the game switches back to Assassin's Creed. You rope swing across to the enemy ship and you can start hidden blading fools and dropping 2 or 3 before you even get into close combat, and if you fill enough requirements you then take control of the ship. You can strip them for parts you use to sell or upgrade your ship, add it to your fleet, or use it to lower your wanted level against hunter ships.

You build a fleet because like previous AC games you have that timed mission mechanic where you can send your fleet on trade runs. Its a good idea to get a decent blend of them because sometimes you need to clear our the danger before you send your fleet off on missions. They are done in this kind of JRPG autoplay kind of combat, and you can see your chance of victory going in so as long you bring 1 light and 2 heavy ships to the table, you basically can't lose.

In doing this you can build money, which unlike the pointless city building in the previous AC games, you need in mass quantities if you want to get your ship ready to tangle with the brigs or frigates sailing the high seas. You need to complete a lot of the side quests for the best upgrades though, which seem necessary for tangoing with the legendary ships. But much like the Weapons in FF7, that was too much of a hassle to see through for me.

But that isn't to say that AC4 has completely abandoned the land and sneaking. You will often find yourself on a number of islands throughout the game, and admittedly, a large portion of the missions here involve trying to tail a target. Or a number of times it simply a matter of trying to slide though a heavily guarded area unnoticed.  And of course, hunting down an assassination target.

Land controls are just what you'd expect: Completely Unchanged.

The thing is, while I've heard some complaints about having to do so many tailing missions, this installment of AC felt more like the older versions I used to love. Here is your target, go get em. There were a handful of these where I would dart from brush, to bush, to doorway and cover, hidden knifing guard after guard trying not to be noticed, closing in my target and actually getting an opportunity to make a STEALTHY KILL before getting locked into a cutscene.

This is a massive improvement in my opinion because AC3 and some parts of the Ezio trilogy basically makes you watch some extended cutscene where the target runs away and you get swooped by guards, which forces you to give up any pretense of stealth and pretty much makes you give chase else they will get away. Once you get the blow darts stealthing becomes that much more fun because you can start getting targets to fall asleep or kill each other without you ever needing to enter the fray. Who would have thought the guy who isn't an assassin would be the best one at the job?

I freak'n love the blowdart. You can get a targets own guard to kill them with berserk darts

Sticking to the weapons thing a bit, the number of ways to kill someone has been cut down from previous installments. AC4 would prefer you stick to swords or a hidden blade, Gun or Blowdart. No bombs or poisons or tower defense or various forms of hand weapons. Despite the massive cut down it seems, I actually kind of preferred this because it allowed me to focus on making my weapons better instead of giving me different ones to muddle around with, and with the pirate theme, a pair of swords seemed like the way to go anyways.

The combat basically hasn't changed since the first one, which is kind of annoying because I still think the combat in these games fucking blow. You can mash your attack button all you want, but  its better to just wait for one to attack, hit counter, then go on a streak of kills until you hit counter again. Predictable and boring. All the more reason to get the job done with the stealth kills first because I feel there is at least a degree of skill with that.

Tip: Use your ships minicannons to take out their crew first. It will make fighting them
on board that much easier since you'll have less to worry about. 

Like the previous installments of this game there are a butt-ton of collectibles and side missions to do. But at least this time around it feels like there is actually a purpose to a number of them. Hunting and Spearfishing give you goods to sell, but they also are used in crafting which you need for more health, better ammo capacity, and better armor (which I highly suggest doing). The collectible shanties are worth picking up because after a few trips to sea, you'll want them to have different things to sing to fill the travel gaps. (Anything to put more time between having to hear the Johnny Bulgar shanty again.)

I sort of went on about the story already, but I have to say I was pretty pleased with this one. Yeah the Desmond canon is still kinda hanging around, the rejected Scooby-squad are still poking their heads around, but for the most part its only mandatory to partake of a few times, If you want to learn more about it you can always drop out of the animus and hack other peoples terminals. It does an alright job in connecting the stories together, but ultimately you don't need it.

I really get the sense Abstergo is a gag on how Google is taking over the world. 

Actually, in all honestly, I kind of liked the idea that you were playing a character who was on the Abstergo side of things outside of the multiplayer. So while I really couldn't care less about what the hell else is happening in the Desmond story, I was interested in seeing what was happening with Melanie Lemay and how the Abstergo brass was pushing the Templar agenda without directly saying it.

Now that I am reflecting on it, this is probably the most interesting set of characters this franchise has ever had. Leonardo DiVinci making weapons to kill people is interesting in its own right, but the ensemble of James Kidd, Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, Adewale, and even Melanie I just found to be a billion times more interesting than any of the side characters or villains in the Ezio trilogy. Perhaps I just don't care about medieval Italy. I dunno.

Oh Anne Bonny...  *Swoon*

What I liked about the Edward Kenway story is there is a clear and defined beginning, middle, and fucking ending. I was absolutely shocked because I didn't think Ubisoft had any fucking clue how to end a story. Granted, it wasn't one of the best endings to a game I've ever seen, but at least for once we got to see a story come to a conclusion in a fashion that made sense. While its true there is probably going to be about 13 billion Assassin's Creed games, at least this time we got a little fucking closure.

Lastly the multiplayer is still fun. They haven't added any kind of multiplayable sea or ship games, so its the basic set of Assassin's Creed online games you've played before, but they have added a series of wolf pack missions to play co-op with other people instead of against people. Sadly, it hasn't stopped being from being complete fucking assholes to newer players, and after a spat I had with a level 30 fucking shithead, I haven't really gone back to it. Thanks for trying to ruin the game for me asshole, I guess you succeeded because I'm not playing it anymore. I hope you grow a tumor on your spinal column.

Not a whole lot of surprises to the multiplayer, but its still really fun. 

I have to say going into this game I had some pretty staunch animosity growing towards this franchise, its unchanging nature and mechanics, its seemingly endless story, dislikeable cast and so forth. And while some of the aftertaste of the previous installments looms in the background, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag kind of brought the series back for me. They really do need to stop with the once a year release schedule though, because without more radical changes to the gameplay, people are gonna get tired of the series. With out the heavy ship focus on this one, I probably wouldn't have gotten it.

That said, after I played the story through to completion and have taken a number of weeks to reflect upon it, I can say that from my personal standpoint: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is the hands down best installment of the series. Ubisoft clearly has no intention of ending this series, but in my opinion this is a great place to do it. On a high note.

I highly recommend this one. If you've never played an AC game, this is the one to play.