Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is a 2013 action-adventure game, and the sixth main installment in the Assassin's Creedseries. A sequel to 2012's Assassin's Creed III, the game will see the player take on the role of an Abstergo Industries research analyst as they explore the story of Edward Kenway – father toHaytham Kenway, grandfather to Ratonhnhaké:ton and an ancestor of Desmond Miles.

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag will be set primarily on and around the islands in the Caribbean Sea during the Golden Age of Piracy in the early 18th century, with the three major cities consisting of Havana, Nassau and Kingston.

Black Flag's combat has been upgraded to include free aiming. While previous installments relied on the game's built-in auto aim, in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, players will be able to just aim and fire, similar to third-person shooters.^[12]

Black Flag also shows that Ubisoft has listened to some of the complaints about Assassin’s Creed  While Edward might not have the charm of AC2’s Ezio, he’s still a more engaging protagonist than AC3’s grumpy Connor and has a more interesting story arc. This year’s game isn’t as slow to get started as last year’s either, and the pacing is less ponderous and more robust. It’s not that Black Flag is devoid of talky cut-scenes, tedious shadowing and eavesdropping missions and the odd sequence with TUTORIAL written all over it, but it feels much more like a ripping yarn, and one that pulls figures from history without getting bogged down by the details. It also finds a new approach to the modern day Abstergo framework which is both vaguely refreshing and much less intrusive than the old Desmond Miles interludes.

There are messages written on the ground that can be read by parsing the letters into words, starting with the bottom right letter and moving up, then to the next line left. The message close to the door that Vidic leaves by warns of "artifacts in the skies" and tells Desmond not to help Abstergo. On the opposite side is a shorter message containing "they drained my soul" and "now I drain my body," presumably meaning subject 16 wrote these messages in blood. Further investigation after the credits reveals an email sent to Vidic by Lucy, stating that the drawings come from a mysterious "subject sixteen" who went insane due to what they describe as a "bleeding effect" (essentially, genetic memory assimilation comes to a point where the subject can no longer distinguish between their life and their ancestors' memories). 

In the end, Black Flag has some strong ideas, a decent story and more than its share of great Assassin's Creed moments. The more you get into it, the more intriguing it becomes. Yet it still can’t quite convince us that this series isn’t running out of steam. Maybe it's time Assassin’s Creed stopped throwing in new features and focused on a more thorough revamp. Maybe it's time to think about a fresher, more flexible approach. Either way Black Flag is good enough to keep the series shipshape, but it’s going to need more to keep it sailing ever onwards.