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Additionally, players can now throw some in-game coins at dancing ladies or dreadful pirates to woo or attack obnoxious guards, respectively.

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The bigger problem is that so many of the missions fail thanks to a pretty disgusting cocktail of weak AI and awful mission pacing. The game's foes and guards are painfully stupid, quick to forget about the assassin who just ran in front of their face. They're also awful at signaling each other when their peers—often only five feet away— suddenly disappear from their awkward posts of staring straight ahead at the edge of a cliff.

If the missions were built in ways that encouraged sneaky paths, that issue might not be so glaring. Instead, the brute-force tactic of running madly through an ACIV mission tends to work just fine, even on missions that require you to remain undetected. Once, I racked up a chasing gang of about 30 guards—that's three-zero—who simply stopped chasing me once I reached a certain boundary on the map and jumped into a bush in front of their eyes.

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Worse, if players ever get caught, swordplay poses little challenge even before upgrading swords and other gear in the game's shops. Deflect a sword strike with one button, stab with the other. Run to dodge the occasional bomb. Repeat. The deflect maneuver is such a gimme, there's little reason to bother with new gadgets like smoke bombs and sleeping darts.

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Gaming diehards will likely compare this part favorably to the sea-obsessed entry in the Legend of Zelda series, The Wind Waker, which also featured a lot of island-hopping by way of pirate ship. Ubisoft has engaged in petty theft here—the pirates' life for them, I suppose, and it's fine by me.

Ubisoft goes one further than Zelda ever did by equipping its ships with guns and flaming barrels on all sides of the boat. At first blush, ACIV's open-seas combat is incredibly satisfying. You'll turn and flank to get the best of your foes; your guns bang and pop with a great ruckus, while your crew shouts merrily throughout your battles. The simultaneous act of steering and shooting works pretty smoothly.

However, such dramatic open-seas battles also turn tepid over time, since the best tactic is simple and easy to repeat. Aim your side cannons at a certain point, fire, then hold down an “auto-aim” button for a stronger, follow-up shot that hits automatically. The only challenge comes from facing overpowered foes and outposts who can quickly tear your ship apart in a battle of statistics. You'll win that one not by careful steering and aiming, but by hitting up the shop for armor and bullet upgrades.

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At the very least, the open-sea approach affords ACIV a real sense of enormity. Its individual islands already feel massive, made all the more daunting by the journey required to reach them. (The game's fast-travel option shrinks repeat visits, thankfully.) But ACIV's quest repetition is only intensified by the feeling that the game's islands, well, all pretty much look the same. Same tropical trees, same rotted buildings on the coastline, same architecture filling out their interior cities—and worst of all, same gorgeous, rolling hills in the distance that you don't really traverse, since this game doesn't come with a horse like ACIII did.

Psycho Werekitsune

Oct 29 2013, 06:42 PM

The setting, narrative, and atmosphere was really cool; taking an active role in key points in history had a lot of appeal, especially to me. That aside, the gameplay was nice, as we don't tend to get many stealth based games and the ones we do aren't really as fast paced and...I guess involved as AC has been.

Psycho Werekitsune

Nov 1 2013, 12:35 AM

Still not seeing anything on fixing the Wii U version.

Luffy Foxtrot

Nov 1 2013, 06:08 AM

Online Pass, Enzan, not the Season Pass, unfortunately.