Meanwhile, Black Flag takes the naval action that was a sideline in AC3 and puts it centre-frame, and while you’ll still spend hours climbing up tall buildings, performing parkour runs across the rooftops and tackling guards and targets with pistol, hidden blades or sword, you’ll spend just as much time on the waves, wrecking ships with broadsides and looting their cargo. Our hero, Edward Kenway, eventual father to AC3’s Haytham Kenway and grandfather to Connor, doesn’t even start the game as an Assassin, but as a greedy privateer. Just as AC3 was all about taking the series out of the city and into the wild frontier, so AC4 takes the action to a new stage to the deep blue seas of the Spanish Main during the golden age of piracy. That’s not to say that it’s all same old, same old. Don’t get us wrong: when it’s good, Black Flag is absolutely brilliant, but there’s a lot that’s too familiar or simply, well, too much. Inevitably, then, it’s the victim of Assassin’s Creed fatigue, and of inheriting such a bloated mass of game features, mechanics, back-story and assorted nonsense. Yet where Assassin’s Creed 2 had only one game behind it, Black Flag has the misfortune to have five.
It’s a lighter, tighter, more palatable follow-up that transforms a near miss into a decent game. In a way, it bears the same relation to Assassin’s Creed 3 (which we’ve liked less as time’s gone on) that Assassin’s Creed 2 shared to the original game. Taken purely on its own merits it’s one of the best games in the series, stronger than Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed 3 even if it can’t quite match the standards set by Assassin’s Creed 2 or Brotherhood. I feel sorry for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag.
Available on Xbox 360 (tested), PS3 (PC, Wii U, Xbox One and PS4 to follow)