EB Expo: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag hands on

This past weekend, EB Expo rocked Sydney and our team was there to play it all. Well as much as we could with the amount of people there. It was packed!

Assassin’s Creed IV was there and while it wasn’t playable on the Wii U – we thought it would be worth a play to see how the game is shaping up overall.

Josh and Troy’s impressions are below. If you went hands on with the game at the EB Expo, let us know your thoughts.

Josh’s Impressions

Let me just say that you guys are very lucky we’re writing up short impressions on these games so you may be spared an extensive rant on my part regarding this game. Ubisoft lost a lot of good faith in my eyes after the turd that was Assassin’s Creed III. It was an unfocused, unpolished mess that hammered the last nail in the coffin of the series for me, and it appears that ACIV is going to be no different, as I’d predicted.

The base gameplay is the exact same as ACIII – countering attacks is the best way to go as you can kill everyone with one effortless attack. Failing that, just fire all your pistol bullets at enemies, and they’ll stand around doing nothing while you reload. The mission I played had no opportunity for stealth, and was instead a naval section joined into a scripted set piece where I chased an enemy through a burning fort and ‘assassinated’ them.

The naval section made up the majority of the demo, and seems to be where the focus (if any) of the game has gone. Unfortunately it’s filled with disconnected chaff just like ACIII was. As a massive firefight was going down between my ship, an enemy fleet, and the cannons on the fort I was attacking, I was prompted to board a ship I’d come close to. This started a separate minigame in which I had to board the enemy ship and kill its crew. Sounds great, right? Well it actually pauses all the outside action for no real reason. The enemy fleet had disappeared and the fort decided it didn’t want to fire upon me for some reason.

I took out the enemy crew, took the remainder prisoner, and used parts from the enemy ship to repair my own. All the while being removed from the conflict because reasons. As soon as the repair cutscene was over, BAM the conflict resumed where it left off (I take it Edward Kenway has some sort of time distortion powers in order for this to make sense?). It’s a shame that despite ACIV no doubt being a total mess it will continue the series’ rave reviews and massive sales as it’s doubtful the series will return to the reasons we liked it in the first place.

Troy’s Impressions

The first booth I went to was Ubisoft, with Assassin’s Creed IV being the first game up and running for show. The game was showing on PS4 consoles, but I’m told the gameplay is mostly the same for the Wii U, other than some cool GamePad usage. The demo had me firing cannons from ship to ship, with the main target being two forts on the shore to destroy, and then board. From there, it was classic Assassin’s Creed gameplay, with a bit more focus on pistols and swashbuckling sword fights.

I asked about Wii U GamePad features, which involve sending your crew members on quests to increase their stats, without interrupting gameplay. The other main feature is using the GamePad for maps and navigation, nothing too fancy, but convenient nonetheless.