Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag Video Game Review

By Steven Iglesias-Hearst

Manufacturer: Ubisoft Entertainment
Product Name: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (PC)
ASIN: B00BMFIXZG
Price As Tested: $49.99 (Amazon – multiple platforms)

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by NVIDIA.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is powered by a wide range of NVIDIA technologies that allow it to deliver striking graphics and an exhilarating gaming experience. In addition to using long-standing NVIDIA technologies like FXAA and TXAA to improve image quality, it also leverages newer technologies like NVIDIA HBAO+, God Rays, and Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS) to enhance the game’s overall atmosphere. Combined with rich object detail and being the first game to ever launch with 4K textures, Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag takes advantage of the best graphics technologies and architectural features available in GeForce GTX 700-series graphics cards.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag carries on the legacy of previous Assassin’s Creed titles; in that players are projected into the world of the assassin via the Abstergo Animus system. Black Flag takes the series in a new direction but stays true to what made the series popular among avid gamers. Vast open worlds with beautiful vistas captivate the player and provide seemingly endless and challenging gameplay.

Assassins Creed IV features three game modes: Singleplayer, Multiplayer, and Co-op – and a Game Lab mode that allows you to create your own shareable content. The singleplayer campaign is the main bulk of the game but the multiplayer and co-op modes offer players an alternative approach to the more tailored Assassins Creed style of gameplay.

Singleplayer

Become Edward Kenway, a charismatic yet brutal pirate captain, trained by Assassins. Edward can effortlessly switch between the Hidden Blade of the Assassin’s Order and all new weaponry including four flintlock pistols and dual cutlass swords. Discover the largest and most diverse Assassin’s Creed world ever created. From Kingston to Nassau, explore over 75 unique locations where you can live the life of a pirate including: loot underwater shipwrecks, assassinate Templars in blossoming cities, hunt for rare animals in untamed jungles, search for treasure in lost ruins, and escape to hidden coves. Command your ship, the Jackdaw, and strike fear in all who see her. Plunder and pillage to upgrade the Jackdaw with ammunition and equipment needed to fight off enemy ships. The ship’s improvements are critical to Edward’s progression through the game. Attack and seamlessly board massive galleons, recruit sailors to join your crew and embark on an epic and infamous adventure.

Crafting items and upgrading your ship keep the gameplay interesting as will the side quests that increase your scores. Players can also exit the pirate simulation and wander the offices and corridors of the Absetrgo Entertainment offices in a non combat role. Finding notes, eavesdropping conversations and hacking systems will build a picture of exactly who and what Abstergo is, and what secrets they have to hide.

Multiplayer

Put your assassination skills to test and embark on an online journey throughout the Caribbean. Discover a brand new set of pirate characters, and explore exotic and colourful locations. Additionally, create your own game experience with the new Game Lab feature – craft your own multiplayer mode by choosing abilities, rules and bonuses. Play and share your newly created mode with your friends and the Assassins Creed community.

Co-op

Fight against or cooperate with your friends in the ruthless and acclaimed multiplayer experience. Choose from an eclectic cast of characters and fight to the death in exotic themed maps. Discovery is a story based mini campaign that teaches players the ropes of co-op. It’s available for up to four players.Once players acclimate to that, there’s Unleashed mode, which tasks players with working together to guard chests, eliminate disguised foes, pull off synchronised kills, and kill “infected” enemies that can only be harmed once you’ve retrieved a package.

I’m a real stickler for detail when it comes to video game graphics, especially considering the high price tag we pay for top titles. Although you can still easily differentiate between the real world and in game, I have to say that Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is by far the most detailed video game I have played to date.

The physics effects of the weather and foliage, and the way the environment reacts to the player and vice versa really helps to add realism to the detail. Even at low settings the detail looks impressive, and the only thing that lets it down at these lower settings is the lack of anti-aliasing.

In the image above the graphics settings are set to low, and anti-aliasing and ambient occlusion settings are disabled. The game of course is still very playable, and unless you absolutely can’t stand to see aliasing on edges (like me), you will still be impressed by the level of detail.

Bumping the selectable settings to normal, and enabling low level MSAA and SSAO, really improves the overall picture. Shadows start to take on a little definition and the aliasing is very difficult to pick up on. This is fantastic news for players with lower level hardware as you will certainly still get a desirable level of detail.

High settings are harder to differentiate, but the keen eyed among us will spot the differences all the same. The textures are much sharper and the shadows, while still blotchy, are less like gradients than with normal quality settings. Although not seen here so much, you will start to notice more defined weather effects as the sky begins to cloud over or as the sun sets.

Okay, now we have bumped the settings to very high and the finer details are really getting hard to notice. The shadows are more defined but have blurred edges to make them appear soft. In the real world not all shadows are equal and this will take more computational power to set right in the game. Under these settings I noticed that water really started to look better, which is something we will look at later.

Ultra settings see us maxing out and enabling all of the advanced settings. Once again we see this mostly defined in the variation of the shadows. Some shadows have defined edges and are darker than others with smoother edges. The shading helps to give facial features and certain textures much more depth and detail.

It is hard to capture all of the features of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag in a set of images like I have shown above. Because of this I will dedicate the next section to discussing the advanced features that really bring this title to life and increase the overall immersion, and ultimately keep you playing for hours on end.

When you play a video game you know in your mind that it is not real. The more immersive a title is the more likely you are to ignore or even forget this fact. Some video games try to win you over with gameplay and some try to win you over with visuals. In Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, visuals very well catered for and the gameplay is very good too, but there is still a little room for improvement. I would like to use this section to talk up the good points and I will detail some of my pet hates in the final thoughts page.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is powered by a wide range of NVIDIA technologies that deliver striking graphics and an exhilarating gaming experience. In addition to using long-standing NVIDIA technologies like FXAA and TXAA to improve image quality, it also leverages newer technologies like NVIDIA HBAO+, God Rays, and Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS) to enhance the game’s overall atmosphere. No matter what brand or model video card you have your experience with Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag is sure to be a pleasurable one, although it is tuned to take advantage of the best graphics technologies and architectural features available in NVIDIA GeForce GTX 700-series graphics cards.

God Rays are the newest enhancement for Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag. They add a new layer of realism to the world, on top of the traditional lens flare effect. Lens flare has always been something that I don’t like in games. I find that lens flare detracts from reality because it is something that is not picked up with the human eye; we only see it through the lens of a camera, hence the name.

God rays on the other hand, are naturally occurring (depending on the weather or environment). Ubisoft may have gone a little OTT with their implementation of god rays in Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag, and used them in ways that they might not naturally occur, but it is nice to see a more natural effect implemented all the same.

The environment in Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag is very detailed and lifelike. Realistic textures are further enhanced by realistic shadows. Not all shadows are equal in the real world and this is also the case within game. Hard edge and undefined ‘blob’ shadows of games gone by are thankfully a thing of the past. Of all the new technologies that have enhanced the visual quality, reality and depth of Assassins Creed IV Black Flag; it has to be the implementation of self detail shadows, soft edge particle shadows, and percentage closer soft shadows that has made the biggest impact.

Draw distance is very impressive in Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag. The NPC’s go about their business as you would expect, but when you look into the background you will see that even those that are far away are still rendered and animated along with detailed shadows too!

Since you will be spending a great portion of time on the sea and in your trusty ship it is nice to see that equal attention has been paid to their detail too. As you proceed through the game the galleons get bigger and have much more detail. The sea and the surrounding environment will react differently dependant on weather conditions thanks to apex physics. The waves, wind and rainfall are very convincing but the water spouts caused by the tornadoes can seem a little too super-imposed.

Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag has a full night and day sequence coupled with an enhanced dynamic weather system. The night scenes lend themselves really well to the stealth aspects of the gameplay, and the predominantly sunny weather really helps with the fast paced free-running gameplay. It’s really hard to capture all of the weather effects into a handful of images as they are so dynamic that I would be here all day trying to relay them over to you. There is also so much happening in the environment such as realistic moving foliage, free roaming humans and animals and and interactable AI. When all of these aspects are combined you get a really immersive experience.

Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag has an amazing amount of detail, along with realistic shadows and weather effects, but it is not without it’s flaws. There are only a few flaws however, and these could be easily missed or ignored. The gameplay really gets you involved, and you barely have time to think as new challenges and side quests get thrown in your direction.

Video game graphics have yet to reach their pinnacle. While the above image does indeed look good, I feel that it still needs more work. Hair is the most noticeable feature that lets Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag down, and the skin textures are more like orange peel than skin. All of the characters have extremely rigid and jagged hair styles which don’t move or do a whole lot. I think this is really disappointing and should have been addressed early on in the development.

No matter how realistic you make the environment and real estate, it all counts for nothing if the NPC’s look bad. Most of my grumbles with this game relate to silly things that most of you will not notice or care about. Additionally, the non-animus offline gameplay aspects are where I noticed that detail was lacking.

The above screen shot was captured under Ultra-Settings. While these small details are not so important to the main portion of the gameplay, it strips back layers of realism that we have seen throughout this review. I just don’t understand why the artists or developers would let poor quality details like these into the final cut.

Enough grumbling and nit-picking for one day, here’s a couple of videos that will hopefully give you a brief insight into the world of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Firstly we have a land based gameplay video (above) and below we have a sea based gameplay video. The videos are very short but they will give you a better idea of graphic quality and the game mechanics than you would get from looking at still images.

RATING DISCLAIMER: Although the rating and final score mentioned in this conclusion are made to be as objective as possible, be advised that every author perceives these factors differently. While we each do our best to ensure that all aspects of the product are considered, there are often times unforeseen market conditions and manufacturer revisions that occur after publication which could render our rating obsolete. Please do not base any purchase solely on this conclusion, as it represents our rating specifically for the product tested which may differ from future versions. Benchmark Reviews begins our conclusion with a short summary for each of the areas that we rate.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag provides hours and hours of high quality entertainment. It has the odd moments where the gameplay gets a bit repetitive but thankfully these moments are rare. You can play the game at your own pace but there is a lot to learn to truly master it. Various aspects of the game such as crafting, sailing and fighting are learnt on the fly as you progress through the game. Learning this way is great as it also keeps you interested and develops your skills at a steady rate rather than going straight in at the deep end.

You play predominantly as a free running pirate come assassin and you find yourself travelling between ports and towns on your good ship the Jackdaw. The free running mechanics are excellent and the transitions between the ground, buildings and other climbable objects are seamless. The sea faring portion of the game provides a healthy challenge which requires quick thinking and dexterity.

In this review I played Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770. I was able to max out all of the settings and still get good frame rates at 1920×1080 resolution. The only part of the gameplay that felt choppy was in the Abstergo offices. For some reason the game would lag slightly which made moving around the open plan offices quite undesirable. The textures and models in the office environment seemed to be lower quality than those in the main game which also didn’t help sell it to me.

The multiplayer portion of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is very in depth. Casual players like myself are treated to a quick match button that skips all of the customization and configuration and throws you straight into a random game and mode. For those of you that have more time to dedicate to online gaming or simply want a more tailored experience, you will find a vast wealth of options and a sturdy upgrade and unlock system. As you advance through the ranks you will learn new tricks and unlock items to aid you in your personal quest for domination.

Multiplayer has team and solo game modes and requires a very different approach compared to traditional FPS shooters that I am more accustomed to. A certain amount of cunning and critical thinking is required if you really wish to progress through the ranks. Matchmaking seems very fair and I always found myself playing with players within a couple ranks of my own. I found that multiplayer took quite a bit of getting used to, and Co-op didn’t really appeal the way I though it might. Co-op was repetitive and monotonous and got boring quite quick.

For me, the singleplayer campaign is much more enticing in terms of gameplay and keeping your attention than the multiplayer mode. While the multiplayer mode is rich in detail, customizable and in depth in its own right, it simply feels bolted on. It would have also been interesting if there were some sort of naval warfare on the high sea’s incorporated into the multiplayer mode as there aren’t any games like that available as far as I know.

The almost impeccable attention to detail is let down a little by a few poorly rendered models in the offices and the characters hair models. I can ignore the stuff in the offices as you have to go out of your way to see them and can be easily avoided but the hair is constantly noticeable. In a game where most everything has stunning detail it seems such a real shame to ignore such an important factor.

If you like what you’ve read, pick up Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag for $49.99 (Amazon – multiple platforms).

+ Captivating singleplayer campaign
+ Excellent scenery and beautiful vista’s
+ Graphics quality is amazing
+ Environment and physics are very immersive
+ Sea physics and sailing are very convincing and provide a nice challenge
+ Free running mechanics are very convincing and transitions are seamless
+ Highly customizable multiplayer experience
+ Crafting and upgrade system keep the game interesting
+ Side quests and challenges extend the length of the game and provide great rewards

– Co-op can get too repetitive
– Abstergo office models needs more work
– Hair is very unrealistic
– Multiplayer takes quite a bit of getting used to
– Naval warfare not included

• Performance: 9.00
• Appearance: 9.25
• Development: 8.50
• Gameplay: 8.75
• Value: 8.75