AusGamers attended a small pre-E3 event hosted by Ubisoft and had a chance to get up close and personal with a demo of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag.
From their preview:
"
As pirates, you and your crew obviously aren’t aligned to anyone but your own desire for all the phat lewts, but the game does offer up factions by way of the warring Spanish and British, both of whom you can engage as you see fit, but you can also just leave them alone to sort out their own issues. This allows you to simply come in and pick off the limping winner, or enjoy the leftover spoils of battle -- either way, being a somewhat neutral party in the series does present itself with exciting opportunities. For example, you can engage in taking over island forts, manned by either of the aforementioned factions.
These are basically mini-games, or “meta-games”, which have become a staple distraction in the series in the past few entries. And, like another recently-released Ubisoft title, taking over these strongholds will reward with bonuses to your growing armada, where you can even attempt to lure the enemy into each fort’s comfort zone so they attack on your behalf. In fact, there’s a seminal third faction working against you and others in the game, by way of treacherous weather, which you can also use to your advantage and lure the enemy into..."
BY JASON MONROE: The very best pirate-themed video games that you should play instead of the disappointment that is Skull and Bones.
PoE: Deadfire, Unless you have a or PS5 or an SSD don't bother, loading times are insane. A minute and a half to go into a room to investigate a desk in an inn and then an additional 1 1/2 minutes to leave the room and then load to leave the inn???
And they never fixed it.
Ubisoft has just released Skull and Bones on PC and consoles. And, from the looks of it, the game wasn’t received well by some gamers. Not only that but it appears that Skull and Bones can be worse than Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, a game that came out a decade ago.
I wanted a Black Flag sequel so bad. It's still my favorite AC entry. The fact that they ignored everything that we loved about that game in this "spiritual successor" is making me enjoy watching this game crash and burn quite a bit. Either do it right or don't do it at all. (I understand the legal binding they got themselves into with the Singapore government to release this game at all costs)
/grabs popcorn
11 years of development. Multiple restarts. All the while people have been saying they don't want some pirate game where you can't even get off your ship. 11 years of people telling Ubisoft all they want is a pirate game that's basically Black Flag without any of the assassin or animus stuff. Yet they still served up this trash that no one wanted, charged $70 for it, and had the balls to call it AAAA.
The Guillemot family honestly needs to be forced out of Ubisoft. They've doubled down on everything players don't like about their games, they want AI to create "rough drafts" of their stories rather than letting their writers do their jobs, and they literally do not give a shit what their playerbase actually wants. 5-6 years ago their stock was worth more than 4x what it's currently worth. The company is dying.
What has happened to developers? How can you possible make a worse looking game 11 years later? It’s honestly mind boggling.
Enough has been said about this game already. The gaming world shrugged when it was announced so many years ago, and instead of listening to all the criticisms from the community back then, Ubi just sailed on and kept making a game nobody really wanted. What a waste of money and effort.
Skull and Bones borrows more than naval combat from Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, but Ubisoft's live-service adventure doesn't compare.
Black Flag was the Pinnacle of pirate games for me. Wild that it’s been 11 years, played it after coming home from college classes every day
Watching Skull and Bones gameplay really shows how important all the AC elements like land exploration and fighting really were in making it such a great game. To go back to just sailing with those basic ass controls a decade later is just sad.
I'm I the only one who not hype by ac4?
Well i ha...ve to sa...y that the ga...me rea...ly lo...oked go..od but the...re was a bit o...f la...g so...me time but nothing that could be seen clearly! for su...re the game will be grea...te!
Joke apart: i'm lokking foward for AC, and the problems in E3 are minor things, the game is in beta, some lag is acceptable, even in middle of a presentation, give some faith to the guys of ubisoft!
same sh** different toilet