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Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag |OT| Not Based on a DisneyLand Ride
- Thread starter dangerbyrnes
- Start date
October 28th.
Markitron
Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
Like I said my memory is hazy, and as I loved the previous 2 games I certainly didnt just rush through it. As far as the 'breadth of a games system and design' goes: there was nothing to appreciate, the only new features the game added over its predecessors were the aforementioned bomb-making and tower defense which were pointless and irritating respectively. The best thing you can say about the games new features is that you dont have to bother with them.
Additionally Constantinople, while pretty, is tiny and featureless compared to Rome and Florence/Venice. The Altair subplot ended up being extended cutscenes which is certainly not what was promised. The Desmond stuff from this was also the worst in the series, seriously who thought those first person sections were a good idea? I know why AC3 is hated, I was disappointed too, but Revelations does not deserve the pass that it seems to be getting. It was conceived as a handheld title and as far as Im concerned it really shows, its a pity it didnt stay that way
So the OP says that the game releases for PS4 and PC on November 15th and for XB1 on the 21st, but the new launch trailer has them all set to release on the 22nd of November. I'm wondering which date is correct.
Thanks.
Thanks.
dangerbyrnes
Member
it was wrong, but according to amazon PS4 version comes out on the 12th. the xbox one version and PC come out on the 19th.
don't know where your seeing 15th? i just changed the Xbox one version to the right date.
EDIT: ah i see. trailer says pegi 18, its talking about EU release dates not NA. the EU dates in the op are correct.
Sorry, 15th, was a typo, I meant 12. Thanks for looking it up, I think I'll trust Amazon on this one.
I might have been looking at the EU trailer too, whoops
I'm enjoying the soundtrack (Here).
I still miss Kyd though- I do this every November. Get really excited, listen to all the soundtracks, play bits of each game- mental preparation!
I don't know, every game without Ezio feels amiss to me! Although Revelations- sheesh, I was glad to spend so much time in Constantinople, but it felt a bit uninspired. The ending made up for it!
iNvid's OT was that of legend. My goodness, it still is glorious- maybe more lasting than the game itself.
I still miss Kyd though- I do this every November. Get really excited, listen to all the soundtracks, play bits of each game- mental preparation!
I don't know, every game without Ezio feels amiss to me! Although Revelations- sheesh, I was glad to spend so much time in Constantinople, but it felt a bit uninspired. The ending made up for it!
iNvid's OT was that of legend. My goodness, it still is glorious- maybe more lasting than the game itself.
Kyd :'(
Matarese171
Member
Really like the look of this so pre-ordered this for the PS4.
Question though do you need to play the previous 3 versions of Assasins Creed to get this or could I just jump straight into Black Flag?
Question though do you need to play the previous 3 versions of Assasins Creed to get this or could I just jump straight into Black Flag?
Yeah that game was saved by the ending for me. So many loose ends tied up. I actually really enjoyed AC3 for what it was, but I played it on PC. It was good to see Desmond's story wrap up. I do wonder where they're going with the overarching story with AC4.
chickdigger802
Banned
Just jump right in. Googling the summaries would make you cancel your preorder anyways.
As someone who largely didn't bother with the naval battles in Assassin's Creed III, I'm not ecstatic for ACIV's emphasis on naval exploration, but having said that, seeing as it's a centralized feature in the game, and not optional content, I'm more than happy to play it. It's not that I disliked the ship battles in ACIII, but I honestly couldn't be bothered to do more than a handful of those side quests.
ACIV looks to be a wonderful game. Lush visuals, open world, (hopefully) improved battle mechanics. I mean, hey, I finished all the previous AC installments, (excluding AC Liberation) so I may as well play this.
Assassin's Creed III spoiler:
Playing as a random Abstergo employee sounds forced and lame.
ACIV looks to be a wonderful game. Lush visuals, open world, (hopefully) improved battle mechanics. I mean, hey, I finished all the previous AC installments, (excluding AC Liberation) so I may as well play this.
Assassin's Creed III spoiler:
While I didn't care for Desmond or his story, the fact that he's dead puts a damper on the overarching premise of the series.
Playing as a random Abstergo employee sounds forced and lame.
Hurricane43
Member
PS4 Day One with all the next gen wind, water, and fluff...
D
Deleted member 80556
Unconfirmed Member
I will be keeping my eye close on this one. Man, I was so hyped when I got AC3, but that ending, man, that bloody ending just soured me on everything AC related. I hope that the gameplay is better along with the story.
EDIT: I miss Kyd too, what's he doing now anyway?
Whoa. I know opinions and all, but this is just plain wrong.
EDIT: I miss Kyd too, what's he doing now anyway?
Whoa. I know opinions and all, but this is just plain wrong.
dancingphlower
Member
This game appears to be transplanting the mechanics of ACIII (free-running, sailing, combat, etc) and transplanting it into a new (better, imo) setting with a better weapon change menu, infinitely better crafting, incorporation of the much-loved sailing as a method of travel rather than for just short battles, and the promise of a shorter introduction have me excited. The only question is whether the mission design is going to be any good, especially after III's abysmal mission design. I'm also underwhelmed by Edward's design. He should be rocking an outfit like the one Connor wears in ACIII.
That wouldn't make sense. Edward isn't Native American, and as far as I know, hasn't been influenced by them.
ButchCat
Member
The first one yes, the story of Revelations was very weak.
MrTroubleMaker
Gold Member
My PC is going to like this!
chickdigger802
Banned
there is a contradiction here somewhere.
Anticitizen One
Banned
Just an FYI its spelled Disneyland not DisneyLand
Lack of Kyd will always sadden me. He had the perfect sense of the series music with the blend of tech along with whatever the country and time era's music.
I wish "Access the Animus" would've made more appearances. I very much consider it the series theme.
First one was pretty bad, there was no good characterization and it was just a bunch of philosophy which doesn't move the story forward.
dancingphlower
Member
NavyPharaoh
Member
Lmaoooooo I been lookin for him & all his music videos lmaooooo this is great
Lostconfused
Member
So I was at the Ubi "launch party" here in Toronto with some other gafers and got to play the game for a bit. I'll throw out some of my impressions here, they won't be thorough or accurate as I only got probably half an hour of time with the game and there are a lot of changes.
I do mean a lot. There are significant mechanical changes to the game. Primarily all the sailing stuff got a ton of depth added to it. The junk that was in AC3 is pretty much a proof of concept tech demo in comparison. You still have the same slow/fast speeds for the boat that you use in combat but there is an added extra step now called "travel speed" where the camera zooms a lot further out and you have very little direction control in terms of turning left or right so you pretty much use it to get from place to place. Combat is also entirely different, your ship now has the standard round shot on port and starboard as before but now the chain shot is relegated to the two cannons at the fore which fire in the direction in front of the ship. So you are no longer changing shot types but rather using the chain shot to slow down the ship your are chasing. The swivel guns are totally different in the sense that now a button prompt will pop up and as you hold it down the cross hairs will move to the weak point turn red and you fire by releasing that button.
There is "precision" aim now for all guns. You no longer get that white column extending from your ship telling you where you will fire and you no longer charge your shots. You hold down L2 to zoom in and get a firing arc for your cannons and then you hit R2 to shoot. You can just hit R2 any time to instantly fire a broadside with whatever auto aim applied to it. These generic shooter controls extend to how you can shoot guns, hold down L2 to get into free aim, line up a headshot and hit R2 to fire. You don't have to lock on and hit Y/Triangle or do any of that stupidity anymore.
The hand to hand combat remains largely the same but there have been a ton of tweaks made to it. All the face buttons function exactly as they used to, hit range buttons to throw/fire the weapon auto aimed at the highlighted target or trigger the takedown cutscene/animation. Enemies are far more aggressive now in terms of using special abilities. Guys up on the roof will shoot at you every few seconds, much faster than realistically possible, grenadiers will throw grenades way more often. The camera did not pan at all to warn you of the enemies shooting at you, there is now an on screen icon pointing towards the enemy with a meter filling up telling you when they are going to shoot. Another note about grenadiers is that it doesn't seem like I was able to disarm them anymore, counter only made me roll out of their way.
Oh the weapon selection bullshit is gone now, you use the d-pad to select weaons. Left and right for ranged up and down for melee, a hud pops out telling you what you picked. No shortcuts it seems but no waiting for several seconds for that menu to show up and go away either. You also get some new and old weapons now too: blow dart gun for silent non lethal take downs, throwing knives for quick silent kills at short range, you dual wield swords now and they can be used for dual take downs like assassin blades now.
Overall the game seems like it has way more going on than 3. It's hard to tell since I don't know exactly which build of the game this is but the island you got to visit was dense and full of activities to do. Small but lots of stuff to dick around in. You can leave the island and head to open see which is closer to the frontier where there are tiny portions of land with some collectibles on lying around and lots of enemy ships to fight and plunder sailing around. You seem to be able to attack pretty much any ship you want, if you damage them enough you can board them. Boarding is very simple, just sail up and hold O which will make the crew throw grappling hooks and whatever and then you can jump over from your ship on to the enemy's deck and start killing fools. If you capture or destroy a ship you can get resources/crew which plays into the fleet and money mechanics that I didn't look into too much. I managed to get to wanted level 3 which sent more serious bounty hunters after me I guess. I got destroyed in seconds when I ran into them as I got way to close to one of the ships and it fired 4 or 5 broadsides in a matter of a few seconds instantly destroying me.
This is probably going to be the more controversial part of my post, maybe. The game does not look good visually compared to 3 which I played at home on my PC. The environment is better, seems to have more stuff going on but the image quality is just not good. There is visible aliasing, jagged edges and the frame rate doesn't seem to go higher than 30. I was certainly having trouble counter enemy attacks on reaction.
That should cover most of what I got to do, if you have any questions I'll try to answer them anyway I can when I wake up. Overall this seems more like a game than AC3 was, so it should be fun to play even if the story is dumb and pointless like the previous games.
I do mean a lot. There are significant mechanical changes to the game. Primarily all the sailing stuff got a ton of depth added to it. The junk that was in AC3 is pretty much a proof of concept tech demo in comparison. You still have the same slow/fast speeds for the boat that you use in combat but there is an added extra step now called "travel speed" where the camera zooms a lot further out and you have very little direction control in terms of turning left or right so you pretty much use it to get from place to place. Combat is also entirely different, your ship now has the standard round shot on port and starboard as before but now the chain shot is relegated to the two cannons at the fore which fire in the direction in front of the ship. So you are no longer changing shot types but rather using the chain shot to slow down the ship your are chasing. The swivel guns are totally different in the sense that now a button prompt will pop up and as you hold it down the cross hairs will move to the weak point turn red and you fire by releasing that button.
There is "precision" aim now for all guns. You no longer get that white column extending from your ship telling you where you will fire and you no longer charge your shots. You hold down L2 to zoom in and get a firing arc for your cannons and then you hit R2 to shoot. You can just hit R2 any time to instantly fire a broadside with whatever auto aim applied to it. These generic shooter controls extend to how you can shoot guns, hold down L2 to get into free aim, line up a headshot and hit R2 to fire. You don't have to lock on and hit Y/Triangle or do any of that stupidity anymore.
The hand to hand combat remains largely the same but there have been a ton of tweaks made to it. All the face buttons function exactly as they used to, hit range buttons to throw/fire the weapon auto aimed at the highlighted target or trigger the takedown cutscene/animation. Enemies are far more aggressive now in terms of using special abilities. Guys up on the roof will shoot at you every few seconds, much faster than realistically possible, grenadiers will throw grenades way more often. The camera did not pan at all to warn you of the enemies shooting at you, there is now an on screen icon pointing towards the enemy with a meter filling up telling you when they are going to shoot. Another note about grenadiers is that it doesn't seem like I was able to disarm them anymore, counter only made me roll out of their way.
Oh the weapon selection bullshit is gone now, you use the d-pad to select weaons. Left and right for ranged up and down for melee, a hud pops out telling you what you picked. No shortcuts it seems but no waiting for several seconds for that menu to show up and go away either. You also get some new and old weapons now too: blow dart gun for silent non lethal take downs, throwing knives for quick silent kills at short range, you dual wield swords now and they can be used for dual take downs like assassin blades now.
Overall the game seems like it has way more going on than 3. It's hard to tell since I don't know exactly which build of the game this is but the island you got to visit was dense and full of activities to do. Small but lots of stuff to dick around in. You can leave the island and head to open see which is closer to the frontier where there are tiny portions of land with some collectibles on lying around and lots of enemy ships to fight and plunder sailing around. You seem to be able to attack pretty much any ship you want, if you damage them enough you can board them. Boarding is very simple, just sail up and hold O which will make the crew throw grappling hooks and whatever and then you can jump over from your ship on to the enemy's deck and start killing fools. If you capture or destroy a ship you can get resources/crew which plays into the fleet and money mechanics that I didn't look into too much. I managed to get to wanted level 3 which sent more serious bounty hunters after me I guess. I got destroyed in seconds when I ran into them as I got way to close to one of the ships and it fired 4 or 5 broadsides in a matter of a few seconds instantly destroying me.
This is probably going to be the more controversial part of my post, maybe. The game does not look good visually compared to 3 which I played at home on my PC. The environment is better, seems to have more stuff going on but the image quality is just not good. There is visible aliasing, jagged edges and the frame rate doesn't seem to go higher than 30. I was certainly having trouble counter enemy attacks on reaction.
That should cover most of what I got to do, if you have any questions I'll try to answer them anyway I can when I wake up. Overall this seems more like a game than AC3 was, so it should be fun to play even if the story is dumb and pointless like the previous games.
BigJonsson
Member
I also went to the Toronto event for 15 minutes or so
I just goofed off sailing around and shooting at random ships......and they shot back heh
The DS4 was great
I just goofed off sailing around and shooting at random ships......and they shot back heh
The DS4 was great
Interesting read, good impressions post.
The last bit has me a bit worried however.
Great impressions!
That first part had me giddy- that fiddly weapon wheel just got more obtuse with every iteration.
But that second part- shit, I played ACIII on the PC too! I figured I'd get it on the PS4 at launch to see if it was comparable as far as image fidelity. I was playing on a 680, with a variable frame rate somewhere between 40-50fps. Coming back down to 30ish reminds me of getting excited for ACIII and buying it early on the PS3. Holy bejeebus, that was dipping into the teens I think- with draw distance severely compromised.
This next generation will be interesting.
I agree that it was filler, but it was coherent. As in, the people didn't act out of character, there was a coherent beginning, middle and end, and the story made sense. It may not have been very interesting, sure, but it made sense. Can't say the same for AC3. I guess it all depends how much you prize ambition in storytelling
nelsonroyale
Member
Pretty unimpressive that the game has AA problems and doesn't even look as good as AC3, but not really surprising. AC3 was a console up port that needed to be brut forced on PC. AC4 is a console up port as well. Hopefully, they will create an engine suitable for next gen systems, because Ubi seems to be struggling in the visual stakes.
Lostconfused
Member
If you have a 680 then I don't see why you would even consider getting it on consoles.
I am being somewhat unfair. I honestly have no idea how 3 looked on the 360 and PS3 so I am comparing directly to my experience with the PC version.
I got used to the game looking kind of like this. Oh but I do have to say that I like the brighter colour pallet of the Caribbean. This screenshot looks really drab and dull in comparison.
High
chickdigger802
Banned
Was this ps3 or ps4?
Lostconfused
Member
It was the PS4. It was a good chance to try the DS4, which felt a bit odd but overall seems like a solid controller. It certainly looked like it was running at 1080p resolutions, or at least very close to it. I am not a pixel counter by any means.
bengraven
Member
Damn, I'm barely locked out by those minimum requirements. First game this has happened to (except Watch Dogs, but I'm not interested in that).
I think I may still try and get it to work later on, but damn, I hope I can get it to run. I haven't had issues with any other game recently.
I think I may still try and get it to work later on, but damn, I hope I can get it to run. I haven't had issues with any other game recently.
All this Jesper Kyd talk makes me want to play AC Brotherhood again... Anyway, I should be getting my review copy tomorrow (though since I've been home with a nasty case of flu for the last 4 days I don't if I'll be able to pick it up), but it will on PS3. Playing through Beyond Two Souls a few weeks ago reminded me of how much I love having a game playing entirely from the internal hard drive of the 360, and not through an archaic and noisy optical drive 
