Brief discription

Intoduction

At last, Ubisoft has finally let us delve into the world of piracy. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is an incredible experience that has exceeded many expectations, while not straying far from its comfort zone. For a series that has made its name using terrain interaction and crowd mechanics, it has changed its focus away from busy cities and dense forests for the open seas in a risk that has paid off in pure gold.

On October 8, 2013, Ubisoft announced that a Season Pass will be available for purchase at the launch of the game on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC, and will include the Freedom Cry single-player missions, Kraken Ship pack featuring elements to personalize the Jackdaw, as well as additional single-player and multiplayer elements.

Edward Kenway's ship in Assassin's Creed IV is called the Jackdaw. The Jackdaw is a military clipper ship fully equipped for Naval Combat.
The Jackdaw can be upgraded with more cannons, stronger hulls, and new abilities and new weapons. In addition to upgrades, the Jackdaw can be repaired. It can also be customized -- it's being treated as a second "main character" of the game.

Characters

Story Line

The player encounters jungles, forts, ruins and small villages and the world is built to allow players much more freedom, such as allowing players to engage, board, and capture passing ships and swimming to nearby beaches. In addition, the hunting system has been retained from Assassin's Creed III, allowing the player to hunt on land, and harpoon in the water.

The number of things to do in Black Flag's world is simply astonishing, the number of optional objectives and random collectibles that can be found within the title can easily mount up to dozens of hours on top of the lengthy campaign. Sadly, the story missions are not always as varied as would be hoped, as it tasks you with having to continuously track random persons of interest for information, before you assassinate them.

In order to maintain your pirate lifestyle, it’s necessary to use the Jackdaw for more than just sailing around the place ogling at whales, storms and pretty island shorelines. Ship-to-ship plundering is a matter of making the best use of your selection of nautical weapons (from broadsides, to chain shot and mortars) or hanging around as the Spanish and British navies fight it out, then swooping in to pick up the pieces. Once you’ve got a ship burning away in the water, it’s time to kick some booty and take the ship from them.

Short Review

A major driving force for anyone to consider before picking Black Flag up is the naval portion of the game. This is a game with a pirate theme, after all. Thankfully, what is here is substantial. There are vast open seas with many areas to explore, both above and below the water, not to mention the countless islands and hidden locations to find.
There are plots in the story line that causes you to dive under the water to reach locations blacked by rocks with the added mention that this is a way to stealthly approach an enemy.

And what a vast set of actions there are on offer! For all its efforts to escape some of the series bloat, Black Flag is still an Assassin’s Creed title in terms of the plethora of side-activities spread throughout the world. There are more activity icons on the map than there are cops addicted to donuts!

Certain areas and activities remain gated by the story, but at the point where you pick up Edward’s ship, The Jackdaw you’re fairly free to roam around and engage in open world activities as you please.

Not all of these collection projects are worth pursuing, but Black Flag does manage to inject most of them with enough meaning to give them value. To give your pirate crew more sea shanties to belt out as you cruise across the wonderfully modeled ocean, of course. It’s also well worth seeing the ‘Templar Hunt’ quests through to see how many times Kenway rolls his eyes at the Assassin rubbish he’s having to put up with.

Features

More Info

Combat mechanics in the Assassin’s Creed series have never really evolved much beyond basic chaining of attacks and timing-based button presses to make the protagonist do something cool, and Black Flag does little to change that. But it’s difficult to stay too mad at a game that allows you to rope-swing across to a ship and hang the captain from his own rigging.

The number of missions on both sea and land where the objective is simply “follow 'name',” are rather less welcome and murdering people in the open is generally more effective than luring them into a bush with a whistle, but when the game enforces a stealthy approach it’s reassuring to know it’s actually supported this time. Having stealth as another option is useful, and it’s enjoyable to exploit the simplistic enemy AI with a few well-placed berserk darts and stroll off to rob a plantation warehouse while they fight one another.

Whilst at sea on your ship, you will often hear your crew singing a song they've sung a thousand times since you started the game play, however, during your time on land, you can collect music notes which are floating around over buildings and objects, to which you must scale and collect the music notes before they float away. This feature gives your crew more songs they could sing as you sail either to your next objection, or to the next ship you decide to attack.

Locations

Alongside Havana and Nassau. Kingston is a harsh mix of nature and industry. Much of the city coexists with the natural terrain, and in such, feels very different than any other city in the Assassin's Creed series.

Havana is a Spanish colony that exudes a European aura. Comparable to Venice from Assassin's Creed II in terms of its verticality and emphasis on rooftop navigation.

Nassau goes through an interesting transformation throughout the course of Black Flag. At the start, it's a pirate republic that acts as a friendly hub to Edward and his compatriots. But at a certain point, the British besiege the city, and Nassau becomes a much more threatening, hostile location.

Ubisoft has confirmed that there are almost 50 islands you can go out to and explore including Mayan ruins.

More info and the trailer can be found here.

System Requirements

1. Processor: Intel Core2Quad Q8400 @ 2.6 GHz or AMD Athlon II X4 620 @ 2.6 GHz
   Memory: 2 GB RAM
2. Graphics: Nvidia Geforce GTX 260 or AMD Radeon HD 4870 (512MB VRAM with shader Model 4.0 or higher)
3. Hard Drive: 30 GB available space
4. Sound Card: DirectX Compatible Sound Card with latest drivers

1. Processor: Intel Core i5 2400S @ 2.5 GHz or better or AMD Phenom II x4 940 @ 3.0 GHz
2. Memory: 4 GB RAM
3. Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 or AMD Radeon HD 5850 (1024MB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0) or better
4. Hard Drive: 30 GB available space
5. Sound Card: DirectX Compatible Sound Card with latest drivers