Black Flag – a good name that spills its setting while sounding like a two-syllable door slam – is similarly laden, but where the third game felt unfocused and unbridled, here, on the high seas, every action has an appropriate reaction, and all tasks pull in the same direction.Īssassin's Creed IV: Black Flag: having a whale of a time

The crafting, the trapping, the recruitment of supporters to your cause: all manner of things to do in and around the thick smoke of the American revolution. Last year's third entry sagged with the weight of the trinkets ready to retrieve from the scalps of tall buildings and bellies of dusty vaults. Released in greedily annual instalments, Ubisoft's time-travel-cum-parkour series has become bloated in recent times with all its extracurricular activities. The last thing that Assassin's Creed needed was another gimmick.

Ten minutes later, the sea a wash of crimson foam, the whale is grimly hoisted into your ship, its ripe blubber ready to fashion into a new tool or to sell back at port for a princely sum. The rope twangs taut, the vessel bites frothily into the water and rips after the fleeing monster.

A shadow grows beneath the water's surface. We're a long way from Moby Dick here – the middle of the Caribbean, for one thing scores of nautical miles from an allegory, for another – but Assassin's Creed IV recreates the stiff fight/flight thrill of hunting a white whale like never before in a video game. Topless, his tattoos crackling in the mutinous sun, Edward Kenway crouches in the bow of a paddle boat and glares at the waves.

Assassins creed black flag ship