Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag Final Thoughts

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.