Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag is built on two fundamental assumptions. The first is that you can build a game on all the basic structure of its predecessors while making it feel completely different, and the second is that pirates are awesome. The simplicity of the second bolsters the riskiness of the first. Black Flag does not feel like other Assassin’s Creed games. This is a pirate simulator more than it is an Assassin’s Creed game, and as such we spend the majority of our time pillaging on the high seas, searching for buried treasure and roaming the sumptuous open world of the early-18th century Caribbean. We control a charming, if weird-looking, pirate more concerned with chasing after a good payday than whatever ponderous nonsense the rest of our protagonists were always concerned with. It works, mechanically, which may be a first in the seven game history of the series. It’s a triumph, and while I have a soft spot for Ezio, this is the most fun I’ve had in an Assassin’s Creed game yet. This series has never struggled with style, so this pirate game has as much flair as we could expect. The waters are a brilliant turquoise, the cities are bustling, ramshackle and sumptuous, and the characters are all wearing the sort of thing we all wish we could get away with in 2013. That quintessential Assassin’s Creed moment — finding a moment of peace on a high structure as you gaze out at a mysterious world below — remains thankfully and exquisitely intact. I haven’t seen this on next-gen, but it is a visual feast even on current-gen hardware. Read more http://www.forbes.com/sites/games/2013/10/29/assassins-creed-4-black-flag-review-avast-assassins/
