Soo...How about ACIV there duders?

I had been finding the AC games more and more boring as time went on. By the time I hit that staid, grey game that was ACIII I was ready to just power through the story. Then I realized I didn't care at all about the story and just stopped playing completely.

My experience in ACIV is completely different.

I'm running around every chance I get though I'm still super early in the game, and just exploring, finding chests and running after shanties. I find I'm much more brazen then before, more willing to jump into combat then in the past. It's great feeling free to go from stealth to balls out action and the game doesn't punish you with endless waves of guards when you start fighting.

TL, DR: Other than the fact that I'm dying to get a costume without a hood, I've never had so much fun running around and finding stuff and just climbing then I am now. What about you? Are you having more fun than Ass usual? What's the magic Black Flag sauce?

PS. Being in Travel Speed on the ship is one of the best experiences in gaming I've had in years. Just loooove sailing old ships, listening to pirate songs.

If the gameplay is there I will collect anything, for any reason, anytime, anywhere - for much, much longer than I should.

I burnt out on AC doing just that but in AC's defense it took four long, grueling games to get there. All this AC4 discussion not only has me excited to play it but it also has me thinking that I should give AC3 a whirl as I've always been more into the mundane ("irritating" if you must) aspects of Assassin's Creed.

...or I could skip straight to ships and shanties.

Yeah... I dunno duder. I'm struggling with what to tell you.

The setting for ACIII is conceptually very cool, and the season changes are pretty neat. But there's also something about the setting that is very drab and unexciting. In a way ACIII is just too serious to be fun. It definitely invites roleplaying (being a serious, stealthy assassin) but all the actual mechanics and mission structure frustrate that to hell and back.

The naval stuff, while a neat side project in ACIII is vastly expanded in IV.

I'd recommend skipping ACIII for now. It'll just dry you out before you even get to IV. I would say that one day, for the right price, you should pick up ACIII just for the very different setting.

I'll probably end up going that direction. Luckily when it comes to the narrative I don't think the order is gonna matter much.

@geraltitude: Oh yeah, I had a great time with it (finished it two days ago). I also collected nearly everything, which is my usual manic habit in Assassins Creed games. There are two cool outfits, the Templar and Mayan suit. They are both hoodless, but the Mayan outfit unlocks late. The Templar outfit is pretty cool though.

Tomorrow...

@geraltitude: Went for a non-assassiny outfit as soon as I could too. No pirate hats to unlock is total bullshit though.

I've only played AC2 and Brotherhood but I've always found the only interesting thing to do is explore the setting, even though I dislike the way the traversal plays itself. As a result, collecting shit is the only thing I like to do in those games.

Al always end up on a collectable binge in these games, as soon as I had a ship I more or less did everything accessible. I only unlocked the diving bell last night and am now 2 dives away from getting everything on the map... I have 42 hours played.

You can get 3 for $6 right now (Uplay) with this coupon

http://www.dealzon.com/deals/assassins-creed-3-best-price#assassins-creed-3-pc-download

I'd call that the right price for AC3.

@mosespippy: Yeah, not sure if this is what you mean, but, sometimes I hate that climbing up a tower is just holding up on the stick and watching him climb. Some of the chases can be more involving I guess. I would like a more active traversal style. Not sure how that would work though. I think the brightness of the environments is a big reason I enjoy running around more (though the original AC was a blast to discover).

@jimbo: Complete and utter bullshit my friend. Do you remember at all if I can get a non-hood outfit early at all? God that hood is stupid. I feel like maybe ubi is aware of this now so hopefully ACV is hoodless. Some outfits have pirate hats, no?

@fetchfox: I saw a blurry pic of that mayan outfit - definitely looks cool. I wonder if the DLC outfits are cool at all, not that I've paid for videogame outfit or really want to though.

lol yup. Me too. That's about the right price for just about anything.

Dollar too much for grilled cheese though.

@geraltitude: That's one of my issues with the traversal for sure. The other is that sometimes when you try to get from point A to B it'll assume you want to go to grab onto some other terrain off to the side and it'll send you in that direction instead. I have the same issue with infamous. I know they'd have to design the cities differently but I wish it had the fidelity of Mirror's Edge. When you hit your line perfectly it's so satisfying, and when you stumble it's because you messed up your timing. You actually have to think about how you move through the space and how the geometry interacts with your set of moves.

I'm hooked on that, too. I don't know what it is, perhaps the seamlessness of it all, including the size of the open world and the fact that the viewpoint system isn't jacked like in AC3.

It's one of the things I enjoy about Assassin's Creed every year and I feel so dirty about it. :P

@geraltitude: Not sure about the earliest non-hood outfit but I remember changing to the templar outfit pretty early. I think all the templar missions can be accessed from the beginning it's just a matter of sailing to the places. The annoying thing with the non-hood outfits though is that during cutscenes Edward still loves to leave each scene while pulling up his hood...a hood that's no longer there...

For the first 20 hours I did collect all the animus shards but then realised to get all of them and chests to get all the Abstergo challenges, that's when I stopped and it made it a lot better. I got 80% of the challenges but no undead crew for me - not that I ever used any of the cheats anyway.

I'm against pointless collectables in games because they're just padding fueled by achievements and achievements are the worst thing to happen to gaming pre microtransactions.

@mosespippy: Yeah that's a great comparison, and you're right, that misdirection shit happens all the time in AC. I feel part of the issue is that the Player Character doesn't have actual 360 degree movement when you're climbing/running at high speed. What I mean by that is that when you jump off of objects or run fast, the PC forces many jumps to be at certain generous angles rather then where you feel the analog stick is pointing. You know what I mean at all? By contrast in Mirrors Edge you seem to have pixel by pixel angle control.

@caska: Perfect, so the first thing I'll do next I play is hunt down some templar missions. Those aren't the assassination missions are they? (skull logo on map)

the Templar keys and Mayan stuff for sure

all the weird little chests, bottles and fragments? nope. Songs though a little bit...

Yeah fair enough. It's the fact that he just kicks the chests open that makes me want to find more chests.

"ah man another fucking shining gold chest?" - whack

It's even funnier when you think about the dozen armed guards who died protecting 50 pieces of gold or whatever.

@geraltitude: They're not the assassination missions, but different ones. Actually looking at a walkthrough the templar missions open at sequence 4, which is still fairly early in the game but you might not have reached it yet. You'll definitely know if you do since it'll show you a map of where the four missions are located (you might want to take a screenshot of the map/take a photo with your phone or something otherwise it's a pain to look for them on the actual map since it has soooo many blips everywhere!)

collecting stuff? fuuuuuuuuuuuck no, sir. I mean, if it's in my way, maybe, but probably not.

This is my first assassins creed game so I'm probably playing it wrong. Mostly what I do is hold right trigger and sip beer as I watch the dude tractor over buildings like a spider monkey. It's tricky because I have to work the left stick but I put my mind to it and worked out a system. Maybe I'll jump down and knife a dude just to be a dick. Run to the mission, knife more dudes, watch cut scene.

Seems pretty decent production values so far. The main character is fun to watch. Ships are pretty cool, arcade-y controls, but in a good way mostly.

In every Assassin's Creed game, I'll spend probably the first half (maybe even two-thirds) of my time with the game collecting everything I can as often as I can. Then I'll get tired of that and mainline the story until the end.

Creed IV was no different in this way. But I very much enjoyed my time with it.

@geraltitude: Best looking outfits are the whaler one and the similar looking one to that, so get whaling. Still looks incredible when he pulls up his hood in a cutscene and doesn't actually have one. Hunter is pretty alright too.

99% explored, have the platinum etc. Still want to play more. Wolfpack is great.

I've only tried it for 3 hours or so since I haven't went out and bought it yet. But I really like how the collectibles are all tied into the game in some fun ways. They seem to be doing it right this time around.

Though I have had to untrain all the collectible compulsion over the years. Long gone are the days of 100% completion. So I basically currently don't give a shit about collectibles in AC games and don't really want to start down the path of relapse.

I find the shanties a bit annoying, some just move too fast to grab honestly. I end up just finding out where the shanty ends and am usually able to outrun it to the location by just running on the ground instead of following across the rooftops. Kinda feels like cheating though...

As for outfits, my favorite so far is the feline leopard print one. If there's anything more absurd than a pirate ninja, it's a pirate ninja tarzan. =)

I'm at 60 percent now and I've found the collecting strangely addicting. Would have definitely appreciated there being some sort of use for the Animus fragments, though. Maybe make them tied to some sort of upgrades like clusters in Saints Row IV? Iunno.

I haven't made story progress in days. I just... I fuckin need the stuff inside of those ships, man. I NEED WHAT'S INSIDE YOUR SHIP. Almost fully upgraded at around 38% story progress or something. Also this game fucking owns. I generally collect chests that are in my way. Fuck the fragments though, they don't even do anything!

The game benefits from being built similarly to Far Cry 3 in terms of the open world. I guess that's why these side activities are more fun this time round.

I collect whatever comes in my way though, I don't usually go out of my way just to open chests etc. Haven't followed any of the treasure maps either, they don't even tell what city those maps are pointing to.

@armaan8014: They give you coordinates on the bottom right of the map. I highly recommend going after them as almost all of the best ship upgrades require you to find those chests. The ones that don't have any plans in them seem to always contain 4000 gold

Very few games inspire me to spend enough time in them to collect everything. But this is one of those games. I might not -- I finished the story at around 70% completion, but god, how I love sailing and ship combat and shanties. This game feels like a next gen Assassin's Creed to me, for as asinine as it sounds to say especially playing on PS3. The world is large and full of wonder in a way none of the other games, barring II, felt to me. I skipped out on the latter two episodes of the Ezio trilogy, but I played III and liked it. Never did anything other than the campaign, though. Here, I want to do everything. If not my game of the year, certainly a contender.

I'm disturbed how much I enjoy whaling.

I got ship upgrade fever really early and not being able to get that super hull and mortars was driving me mad - I need them to take down those legendary ships. Shanty fever also as well as the stones for the suit. The thing is I thought I couldn't find one by the time I'd finished it but already had them all... bwahhhhh!

I got everything at Abstergo and decided to read it all at the end... how long could it take? Five and a half hours is how long. Just one of the sets of audio logs is over 40 minutes.

It didn't have the brilliant screaming crazy hokum of 2 and Brotherhood but I did love it lots. Kenway is amazing and the ending:

is so touching when your daughter is talking to you on the ship. You know your woman is going to die, that's obvious, but the genuinely nice way Kenway talks to the girl is superb. The song that piratey woman starts to sing starts it off so melancholically.

That Paddy Doyle song got on my wick after a while.

Um, what? How are achievements bad in anyway? You don't have to pay for achievements, and they are essentially bragging rights. If you're a competitive person, they offer a way to stretch the life of a game out.

A game should never need stretching out. It should be good enough not to need stretching out.

The Shanty grab is the same system as the Almanac pages from 3, although I must say I had a lot more luck chasing the Shanties as those Almanac pages were a fucker a lot of the time in 3.

I usually go nuts for collecting in games that I dig. In the Assassin's Creed games I have typically done half hearted collections, inline with how I feel about the series. Traditionally I have picked the games up a year or so after a game's release around the new entry's marketing phase. I rushed through ACIII's story and did very little collection a couple months ago.

ACIV is the first game in the series I've picked up near release and I'm more committed to doing all the side missions and finding all the collectable then I ever have in an AC game. I like to queue up some podcasts while I'm off searching for chests and boarding vessels to upgrade my ship. As of now I've completely upgraded my ship, done all the fleet missions, and at 70% for the rest.

ACIV offers a bunch of new, fun things to do like underwater ship wrecks to explore, animals to harpoon, and ships to board. I never liked the ship stuff much in ACIII, but it can be incredibly fun in this game. This game reminds me a lot of Wind Waker, a game recently replayed as a completionist.

I've been 100% ing every area that opens up. Like usual really.

But fuck the stuff on tiny unnamed islands, I seriously can't be arsed to stop a boat every time, get off, swim there, open 1 chest, swim back, get back to the wheel and start going again. For 200R or something too :/

@groundbeef: lol... what? That's a real costume? Sign me up.

@steadyingmeat: oh really - there's no use for the Animus Fragments at all? Not even some lame Abstergo thing?

@fredchuckdave: yes! I saw that whaler outfit and have planned a busy night of whale murder for myself tonight. What's Wolfpak? Online mode?

This is so, so presumptuous though. You must be a game developer right? Who are you to say which part is the "real game" and what's stretched? Is Skyrim stretched out because it has lots of sidequests and collectibles too? Is the main quest the real quest of that game?Achievements can be complete shit or can inspire you to try new things. Been using trophies to do new Resogun runs now that I've beat the normal game, and it's just a fun to-do list basically. Is achievement/trophy culture lame? Sure. What does that have to do with collectibles though? If you like the songs the pirates sing - why not go collect more of them? Especially if you enjoy the running/jumping/climbing you need to do to get them.

Achievements have got nothing on micro transactions. Micro transactions throw the idea of fun out the window and turn games into dollar churning software. 1. Achievements are optional. 2. They might fool some people to play games longer than they might usually, worst case scenario; best case they reveal new gameplay ideas. 3. What the hell do achievements have to do with collectibles anyways? Were you born in 2000? Never collected a coin or star before in Mario?

Basically, duder...

YOU'RE SO WRONG IT'S HILAAAARIOUS

When I'm given a bowl of shit I don't ask for a spoon. You brought your own spoon.

I'm collecting anything I can see. Although, in the first area I had no luck capturing the first shanty...so now I don't even try. The one thing I HATE about AC games is racing across roof tops and hoping around trying to catch something or someone...it raised my hackles. I prefer to sneak into or places to open a chests, things that stand-still make me happy. I suppose I will have to try to get a few sea shanties, since I'd like to hear them...but I really do hate chasing things.

I only hunt down shanties and treasure maps and those mayan steeles. Anything else is purely a matter of convenience.

@monkeyking1969: yeah fair enough duder - though I do think the shanties are way easier to catch then the almanacs were AC3. Sometimes you need to chase em twice to just learn the route. And I did get one or two that I just "surprised" by jumping on top of them from really high up. The shanties themselves are pretty great, especially in Travel Mode.

I don't like thing, so even though I can simply ignore it, I would much rather they get rid of thing altogether despite the fact that countless people who are not me derive a great deal of enjoyment out of thing.

@korwin: Never actually played an AC game before, just seems unnecessary to make you have to learn a route just to grab a collectible. That the shanty doesn't respawn right away is also quite irritating.

Yes this is something that annoys me too. Some sort of fast travel to shore would have helped alot. Why can't I get one of my crew to just row me to shore or something, I'm the fuckin captain lol...

@steadyingmeat: Yeah I've been putting it off but I plan to go after them eventually :P