The Assassin’s Creed name has lived on for years in the gaming industry for one very simple reason. Everyone, EVERYONE, loves to feel like a badass. Simple as that. This is something The Assassin’s Creed series always did well, particularly starting with AC2, yet somehow in the latter half of Revelations and certainly all of AC3 they lost it. I didn’t feel like a badass anymore. Worse still, they had just introduced a setting that wasn’t conducive to the most exciting parts of the gameplay and a character that was quite honestly boring, annoying, and kind of a punk.

So here comes Assassin’s Creed IV, with yet another setting change and yet another character change. Pirates? Hah! We’re all sick of Pirates in and/or of the Caribbean. This time it appeared they took exciting traversal of buildings right out of the picture by placing the character in the middle of the freaking ocean. Speaking of the character, their marketing of him consisted mostly of “Well, Blackbeard thinks he’s cool and at least he’s not Connor”.

That’s why I was surprised to find that Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was thoroughly entertaining from top to bottom. I’m a big fan of Assassin’s Creed 2 and I would say this game is certainly in competition with it for best of the series. It is an excellent mix of carrying over and improving upon the things that have worked in the past, and learning from the mistakes of recent memory.

Ubisoft cut right to the chase with this one and got you swashbuckling as soon as they possibly could. Outside of the animus they dropped all pretense and have turned Abstergo into a straight-up video game company. You work for the video game company making games, you’re researching past memories for game ideas, here’s your VR goggles. Go Nuts!

In the game, it doesn’t get much heavier. You’re a pirate who wants money *gasp!* and you end up killing an Assassin. His clothes look comfy and there’s a note vaguely hinting at the possibility of future money in his pocket so you snap that up and are on your merry identity-thieving way. Boom! That’s how to do a no-nonsense story set up.

All your typical mission types are here, and they’ve managed to fix them from the completely screwed up state they somehow managed to pull off in AC3. they also included a rating system at the end of each mission so you could express your enjoyment of that mission. I was reallytorn on this. On one hand I feel like Ubisoft is farming out some of their work weeding out bad missions to their paying customers. On the other hand if it helps build better missions, then great, and I sure did love giving one star to every freaking eavesdropping or chase mission.

The new element that really sets this game apart is the sailing and naval combat. Yes, they had some naval combat in Ac3. In fact, it was one of the few parts of that game I somewhat enjoyed. This, however, reaches a whole new level. Sailing around the high seas taking down vessels, boarding and fighting, or simply exploring is so much fun. Storms come rolling in and can pose a real threat at times, and learning when and how to engage in a fight is exciting and tactical. You can even grab collectibles in town that teach your crew new sea shanties. The shanties, by the way, are amazing!

The game has problems as well, to be sure. First, they give you ample collectibles to go after and do an amazing job giving you a list of the collectibles in each area so you know when you’re finished. Some of these collectibles are tied to rewards, such as a new set of armor. Only after I had gone around the map and collected 14 of 16 collectibles did I find out the last two are on an island only accessible in one of the final missions of the game. Don’t do that. I hate that. I just invested a bunch of time gathering these collectibles in the hopes I’d be rewarded with nice armor to wear for the rest of the game. You can buy upgrades for your ship, which help immensely and are very important. You can also buy new weapons in the shops in town, which as far as I can tell isn’t important in the least, so the incentive to do so just isn’t there.

A final word, and this word is dedicated to the visuals. This game looks really REALLY good. The characters look totally fine although not exceptional. The towns look quite nice, and the ocean looks unbelievable. Seriously, to whoever had anything to do with creating the water and water lighting effects in this game, you’re worth your weight in gold, because it looks incredible.

So welcome back Assassin’s Creed. You’re relevant and even interesting again. I don’t mean to put it in such negative terms, but don’t screw it up this time.