Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag - Review - SPOILERS

When I heard about a new Assassin's Creed game, I was a little apprehensive. Originally supposed to be 3 stories all following from one to the other and Connors story was to be the end of it all. After smashing the game out over a few days, I'm glad to say that it was worth it and if you take the time to dig about, you can really understand the connection between everything in the world and past stories. If you haven't noticed, Edward Kenway is Connor's grandfather.

Following on from the death of Desmond Miles in the 3rd instalment, you are now an employee at Abstergo Entertainment who create movies from the stories collected in the Animus. This obviously is a front from the Templars who are using it for research and another source of income to fuel their operations. This unknown character is played in first person and can be rather annoying in the present day missions to actually move about and look about when you you have toiled away in 3rd person missions within the Animus. Otherwise, when you are actually playing the game, you are Edward Kenway, a relentless pirate sailing the oceans and driven to make his fortune and dropped right into it knowing very little.

In terms of story, it was really enjoyable, searching for the observatory with a bunch of pirates and a multitude of others was good fun. As ever, it is the same sort of tale from the rest. The search for an artefact that Templars want so they can control the world while the Assassins will stop at nothing to prevent this. The mix of characters and players during the game was a nice mix. You didn't feel like you had to repeat something so many times that it became meaningless and repetitive. With a load of twists and turns, you are thrown through hoops, even if you aren't engaged with Edward as a character, you still feel for him when friends die or chaos ensues around him. As a character, Edward is fairly packed with a load of crap weighing him down. When he gets the sea, he is extremely cocky and arrogant which makes him really difficult to like but the badass attitude to life and the mannerisms really fit the wicked pirate design. However, he does feel a far better character than his grandson, Connor.

SPOILERS - If you have finished the game, you may have noticed that the Abstergo server room at the end is full of little cubes up the wall. I believe these to be the viles of blood used in the observatory, thus meaning that the memory mining Animus IS the observatory in a new form. The alien figure at the end also means that we are most likely to see another instalment at some point next year.

The gameplay is still plagued by the problematic free running controls. Being chased by 8 heavily armed men?, running through this open door? NOT TODAY!, as you run up the side of the door or stop all together as you have to release all the controls, wait and then move around. This isn't something you want to be faced with on a fairly regular basis. It's much the same with the camera angles when climbing through an obstacle course. You catch try to move on the trigger for the new camera angle, you will find yourself having an epileptic fit. You also won't have a clue about what level your ship is and why any ships have levels. When you are on your own and you are vastly outnumbered, consider yourself dead and get the hell out of there. If you are fortunate enough to defeat several Man O' Wars and then board them, be sure to send them to Kenway's Fleet as this mini game will get you a load of money and a few little extras. These are just a few of my gripes with the gameplay but if you grind through this, you will enjoy the rest. Sailing the ocean is incredibly relaxing and can change at a moments notice, especially if you decide to piss on any countries parade by killing them all and then getting chased by pirate hunters. Fighting in general hasn't changed one bit. You simply have to mash X and B as soon as you see a big red dot coming at you. Not much has changed in the way of gameplay from the rest of the games. It is fairly fast action but minimalism to much smaller spaces, like the deck of a ship and that can make it hard to actually move about. It's also awesome to see that you wanted levels in towns and cities have disappeared. You can disappear

in moments rather than bribing your way through every place you visit, simple because you decided to start a fight with every human soul walking past you at the time.

As ever, there is a lot for you to do in the world, but now we have the addition of fishing. Yes, you heard it right. The fishing is probably a bit controversial as you hunt white whales, humpback whales and many other endangered marine species. You can also play checkers with other pirates. However, playing with them guarantees an unfair game.When they have no move, they simply move the king back and forward, screwing with you and denying you any chance that you could get. If you have any decency when it comes to checkers, stay away from this.

The last few bits is the visuals and sound. Up close and personal, everything can look a bit blurry and uncomfortable to look at, shading can be erratic and too much at points, making it look like characters are grids rather than forms. Yet, when you look at a distance, it is gorgeous. Bright with colour and great with lighting. It makes everything seem real and very lifelike, until you come up close. The colours of the Caribbean ocean are wonderful and really bring back memories of holidays I went on as a kid. Sound is my big problem. I found myself turning the volume up and down on my TV so I could hear with without it knocking down any walls. It was never equalised and made it quite painful when using a headset. The actual music for the game is alright. It reminds me of Pirates of the Caribbean, as it should for the era and style, but it seems way to similar. Continually having to shut up humming POTC while I mortar people and run the decks, stabbing the army in the face. It's pretty damn fun. Then we have the voice acting. At points, Kenway does down like Chris Hemsworth, but it's not! A lot of the voices fit the characters perfectly, apart from Jack Kidd...who always felt like it needed a bit of work.

With everything considered, it has to be one of the most fun Assassins Creed games and the addition of all the extras and the awesome sailing missions, I think the game deserves an 8/10 for it's change of scenery and it's involvement from an overly complicated story, to a truly fun pirate adventure.

Captain Phillips - REVIEW- SPOILERS

Captain Phillips is a shining example of film-making that will stand with some of the all-time greats in years to come. Standing as one of the best movies this year, Captain Phillips is sure to get some awards. The story details the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in almost 200 years, done so by Somali pirates on the horn of Africa. The true element to this story really engrosses you into the thick of it. Genuine fear will send your heart racing too sinking deep into your chest in a matter of seconds, then an incredibly powerful ending that tugs the heart strings. The ending is also completely improvised and made the Navy medic cry in the first take.

A movie with such a good script and storyline obviously needs a powerful cast behind it to really portray the characters effectively. Fortunately enough, Greengrass has selected quite the collection. In general, Tom Hanks is a top line actor who can fill seats but also give a top class performance, without compromising everyone else on screen. A group of people who look creep up from time to time in the movie world were very silent throughout, but the lines they were given made life difficult when they never met the pirates until the scene which really instilled a sense of fear into the whole of the boat crew. Then we have the Somali pirates who are dropped in at the deep end for their first
IMDB credit and I can see them doing fairly well for themselves in the future. A calm and collected Muse (Barkhad Abdi) bounces off of Captain Phillips on a regular basis and the confrontation is electric. Muse speaks the logic of Somalia of achieving something, and living happily while Phillips tries to reason with him and save everyone’s lives. This could be a connotation for what America should stand for and what they actually do but that’s just digging. A big name cast is very hard to work out to some decent standard, a mass of A-listers can end up looking like they are fighting for dominance on screen but utilizing a varied cast can always pose a better acted movie experience even when big actors draw people in, it shows an intention to make it about the story and not money.

"They're not here to fish"

All I can do is credit this film. I’ve been on large cruise ships and small vessels over the years and I understand how much room you have. Filming at sea on a giant cargo vessel is really difficult as you have to consider many variables. Keeping the footage relatively smooth is probably one of the harder parts but it utilizes this to look like a documentary and the second hardest is using space effectively. You’re at sea, it’s not easy to get expansive landscape shots when you’re drifting out in the ocean. To compensate and keep shots moving, helicopters are used fairly often to track the ships as they sail. From expansive padding too story footage - When hidden in the engine room, you almost feel like you’re hiding with the crew just by how it is all framed. A shot that grinds on me a little is the initial sighting of the pirates. The cliché shot is when the perspective shot of looking through a scope with a
slightly grainy effect added really doesn’t look that good. I would have preferred to have seen a fast paced collection of close ups to build up some more excitement.

The sound for the whole of the movie was good. The rumble of the engines and the ting from assault rifle rounds hitting the ship and pinging around are crystal clear. When the navy jump in the sound is very clear but in comparison to the pirates when they boarded the ship, it was really difficult to keep pace with what was being said, fortunately there are subtitles but these don’t always help when you have everyone shouting. Not much could be said about the soundtrack for the movie, the only thing really is that it wasn’t very striking, it didn’t ring in my mind repeatedly which was a shame but easily forgiven.
So finally we have my opinion on the film. An incredible movie which stands as one of the best this year. Rivalling Rush is hard to do but this movie is put together perfectly and with Tom Hanks final scene, it’s extremely moving. Overall, a 9/10 to equal Rush. A bit more focus on the soundtrack and a few little camera angles would have pushed it forward for me.

Sorry that it has been a while. With everything that is going on, I’ve lost a lot of motivation for anything regarding work or reviews. I just need to get back into the flow of things. I hope you enjoyed the post, if so, like it, Comment, subscribe to the Youtube channel or tweet me on twitter!

Assassins Creed 4 TRAILER!

 As you could probably notice, there is a trailer for the new Assassins creed. Following from the release over the cover art which I covered yesterday, I am now even more worked up...PIRATES AND ASSASSINS! I have already pre-ordered it as it looks like it could be huge amounts of fun.

I have also now lost complete interest in what happened to Desmond as now I'm more concerned with having fun and killing a lot of baddies. In assassins creed 3, many of you may remember the little side quests that were all ship based and I really hope they continue this as they were one of my favourite additions to the games I have seen.

I don't plan to talk about this too much at the moment, but once it is revealed I will be all over it just for you, the readers!

Assasins Creed 4! Cover revealed!

Due for release on 29th October 2013, the unbelievable release of another assassins creed is hard to digest. Being quite sure that AC3 would be the final one, I was distraught to have completed it so rapidly.

Anyway, all I can tell from the cover is that we will be meeting some of the legends of the pirate era like Black beard. I will have this on pre-order, no doubt about that one as I buy into the craze. So you can expect news about it as I hear it and the a review on it when I inevitably complete it within a few days when I really should be doing coursework.

The only problem with it is that we cannot be sure when they are truly going to end this. The money is to great for them to just drop it and with the killing of Desmond at the end of the last one makes it even harder to understand where they can go on!

It is up for pre-order on amazon and most other sources. Like I said, keep your eyes out for any news or tune in here where I will try and keep you updated on such news