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Naval action review ign1/21/2024 Parkour can be sticky and fiddly, scraps can break down into farce very easily and controls can generally feel quite unwieldy at times. As good as Black Flag is, it suffers from some of the same problems as many of the series' other outings. But there's also a ton of side quests, assassin's contracts, naval contracts, ship and weapon upgrades, crafting, hunting, harpooning, rescuing your pirate brethren and treasure maps hunts to get completely lost in as well – and all of it is here on Switch, looking and performing as good as we could ever really have hoped. Battling it out with a particularly large enemy ship during a huge storm as the violent dark seas swell around your craft is worth the price of admission alone, to be quite honest. Of course, there's the amazing naval combat, the feather in Black Flag's cap, taken from Assassin's Creed III and turned to pure gold here it just never gets old and still feels and looks amazing. Besides the beefy main campaign here, starring one of the series' most charismatic and straight-up fun protagonists, you've got an absolute wealth of fun side activities to partake in as you breeze around the Caribbean. So too the seemingly endless islands dotted around the map to discover, each one with a check-list of treasure chests, viewpoints, hostages and other activities that are just perfect for jumping in and cleaning up in a quick portable session.Įxperiencing this adventure again, it's easy to see why Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag became such a fan favourite over the years. Missions tend to be pretty short with a handful of fun additional objectives to give them replayability and you can polish most of them off in twenty minutes or so, give or take the odd long exposition-heavy chapter. With its absolutely enormous world map stuffed to the brim with secrets and treasures, it becomes apparent that this is a game that's actually perfectly suited to dipping in and out of in handheld. Playing through Black Flag in portable mode is actually something of a revelation. This is Black Flag how you remember it – OK, perhaps not graphically on a par with the PS4/Xbox One versions of the game but it's close – and we also get lovely Switch exclusive motion-controlled aiming for guns, pistols and ship weapons, as well as HD Rumble and all of the DLC that's been released for the game thus far, including Aveline and the properly excellent Freedom Cry. Of course, as is to be expected, there have had to be some graphical sacrifices made on Switch and they're really most noticeable in docked mode – the odd blurred texture here or lack of detail there – but all of the atmospheric volumetric effects, lighting and gloriously evocative open seas have been miraculously kept intact. Locked at 720p in handheld and 1080p when docked, we didn't notice a significant stutter or wobble from its 30fps target whatsoever during our time with the game even during the busiest of flamboyant chase sequences or thunderous sea-based battles, this port delivers the goods and looks great whilst doing so. Indeed, it's the headline act here – 2014's excellent Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag – that's the star of the show in every way. However, any concerns we may have had have been roundly dismissed in short order as this is a mostly fantastic port – especially in the case of Black Flag – that manages to squeeze an absolutely massive amount of rum-soaked high-seas hijinks onto Nintendo's portable console in an impressively smooth fashion and with nary a bug in sight. We may be forgiven then, perhaps, for having not been overly optimistic about this pirate-flavoured Rebel Collection which brings together Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag – arguably the very pinnacle of the "classic" Assassin's Creed games pre- Origins and Odyssey – and Assassin's Creed Rogue, the PS3/Xbox 360 title which is pretty much Black Flag 2 in all but name. It's been patched since – and plays a considerably better game for it – but upon release, it was pretty much a buggy, blurry shambles with a stuttering framerate and a pretty big disappointment for Assassin's Creed fans. Back in May this year, we reviewed Assassin's Creed III Remastered for Switch and didn't have a great deal good to say about it.
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