I'd decided this was my favourite of the Assassin's Creed games after only a couple of hours playing it. Mainly because it's about pirates and you can sail a big pirate ship. I judged too quickly, I feel. Expectation was too high and caused unnecessary disappointment. That's probably way too harsh; I did really enjoy this game but when you come in to it with all the excitement of pirates sailing the Caribbean sea, it's hard to handle it when, like all AC games I've played, it gets boring and repetitive.You see, I'm now someone that likes to complete everything to do with the games I play. I'd never gotten too involved in "achievements" on the Xbox, I didn't understand, nor did I care what they were. The problem now is the promise of a "trophy" on the PS4 when I do something it wants me to do - sometimes it's part of the game anyway when you play through the story, but usually there's a load of other stuff you have to do that the game itself does not require of you to get through it, such as travelling a certain amount of miles or assassinating your target via a swinging rope.
(Just a quick interruption to let you know that my cat, Patsy, stood on my keyboard whilst trying to sit on my lap and has managed to play a song that I can't find where it's coming from. I don't know what song it is. It's not on my iTunes or Spotify...I've had to close every page and application to get it to stop playing and then open this all up again to continue writing. So there you go, a small glimpse into my "crazy cat lady" life. I mean, I live on my own with two cats and write blogs... My other cat, Saffy, is curled up amongst her cuddly toys she's gathered around her on the floor)
Anyway; there's a lot of "side activities" in this game but there's too many of each sort and it's just dull. I didn't complete them because I found myself dragging around all the spots I'd already been to so many times throughout the game, trying to collect all the treasure chests and maps and capture other ships so I could upgrade my own and it was time consuming. Playing video games is important to me by means of escapism. When things in life haven't been so great, I've used gaming to get me out of my own life for a while and adventure in someone else's, be it saving the world, beating up a few baddies or simply making a soup factory (Nom Nom Galaxy - I will get to this in another post!). So when it gets to a point where I'm checking the time every half hour and seeing how much time I've spent doing these tasks, or chores as they end up feeling like, and see how slowly that time has passed I know it's probably time I stopped. And so I did, I traded it in and immediately went on the Playstation when I got home and checked the trophies I now wouldn't get and do you know what? I was quite pleased with myself. Because I'd got rid of the game itself, I couldn't now go back on it and continue trawling around, wasting time for a trophy that doesn't really get me anywhere anyway. When I was well on my way to becoming an obsessive trophy hunter, I had to remind myself to just play games that I'm having fun playing; not ruin the ones you like because you have to spend hours longer playing than you want to just to collect bits that aren't even part of the story.
However, after all this, the storyline is my favourite so far. It felt like I was watching a film at times, as the dramatic sequences unfolded. One part in particular towards the end was really quite powerful; where Edward Kenway (our main man) is carrying a dying woman from the prison she has been held in and clearly more awful things have happened to her - they don't tell us, but we get the hint. The player is given the control back after we've found her and even though it's the easiest thing to do - just walking, with her in his arms, pushing the stick forward on the controller and nothing else - you find yourself in this world, willing her to survive while she tells Edward to leave her. I realised I was pressing my controller way too hard and leaning towards the television as if it was going to change what I knew was going to happen.
The very end, the last sequence to watch when the story was finished was a nice little throwback to a previous game, which I didn't quite get at first until I gave it a bit of thought and was more open minded about the games having some sort of link. This is quite a nice thing to do to reward loyalty to the games, I'd love them and other franchises to do this on a bigger scale (maybe some sort of secrets to unlock if you know what happened previously etc).
What I'd like to see in the future is more of the fantastic storylines and voice acting talent that I've been so impressed with during this game. More beautiful locations on this sort of scale, because seriously, I found myself whispering the word "woah" several times as the camera panned around each new Caribbean island.
Something new does need to happen in these Assassin's Creed games though, to make this open world collecting thing a bit more enjoyable, especially after you've finished the main quest storyline. Maybe some sort of business running where you have your own guild of assassins and can hire others to be a part of your team to eventually run your location from the underground, overruling the government so no one ever really knows who's in charge. Sounds like something I could get obsessed with, anyway!
I think that's probably way more than enough from me. As I said before, I won't do reviews...I'll tell you a bit about my experience playing it and it probably won't be that in-depth about one certain game as I find some things relate to gaming in general.
I could do with a better title but "What I've been playing" is what I mean because it's very unlikely I'll talk about very new games. I don't tend to buy games when they first come out as they're just too darn expensive. There's also no way I could talk about them with any real thoughts for quite a while after I buy them too - I need to have gotten at least half way through the storyline to have had enough time playing.
Again, if you've got suggestions and thoughts - lemme know. I know you do, so please share them!
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Cheers!
Falv
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