Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag’s unexpected disappearance from the Steam store is down to nothing more exciting than a tech bug - and definitely isn’t a sign of an upcoming remake for the pirate entry in the stealth-action franchise.
]]>At what point do games enter the old, or retro, or classic camp? Or better yet, at what point does a game need a remake? Apparently 10 years is the answer, since a remake of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag (aka the best one) is reportedly in the early stages of development at Ubisoft, at least a0ccording to a report from Kotaku. If true, this means it's joining The Last Of Us Part 1 as 2013’s other maybe-too-soon remake.
]]>If the thought of Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Viking rugby tackles and recruitable cats for your long boat has you frothing for more of Ubisoft's time-travelling murder series, then why not take a stealthy glance at Fanatical's new Build Your Own Assassin's Creed bundle? There are ten games to pick from in total, all dating back toward the earlier end of the Assassin's Creed series, and you can either pick up three for £8.59 / $10 or five of them for £12.49 / $15. Here's what's on offer.
]]>Are you looking forward to the Assassin's Creed Valhalla soundtrack just as much as the actual game? If so, then you should check out our latest music quiz, which focuses on all things Assassin's Creed.
Because the masses have been eating up online quizzes during lockdown, RPS' video wing has been testing the waters to see if you, the video game playing public, also enjoy them. And it turns out you do. And that's lovely.
]]>Ahoy there, you salty sea dog! If you're looking for the best pirate games on PC, then you're in the right place. Below, we've listed our favourite pirate game adventures, where you'll need to master the sword, the art of thievery, and the quest for treasure. Aye, even being a pirate in space counts; swashbucklin' ain't reserved for just the seven seas.
]]>Another month, another big video game publisher puts a great big dollop of video game music online for zero pennies. This time, it's Bandai Namco, who have just uploaded every single Tekken soundtrack onto Spotify because, well, apparently everyone loves Tekken. I've never partaken in a Tekken, but with track names like "Massive Stunner" and "Lonesome City Jazz Party 1st", I'm already 100% convinced the music must be great.
However, given my rather lacking expertise in all things Tekken-related, I thought that instead of doing a big Tekken musical breakdown like I did for Capcom and all the Final Fantasy games, I'd take this opportunity to celebrate some of the other great gaming soundtracks you can currently listen to for free right now, because boy howdy are there loads of 'em. So bang on those headphones and turn up the volume, folks. It's head-banging time.
]]>Cyber Monday is, of course, a pure and honest celebration of all things cyber. We hack the planet as one, united against corporations, capitalism and the class divide. Then we all burn our 4K televisions and go off to have a massive rave-orgy in an abandoned sewer. Such is the way of the Cyber Monday Warrior.
But it's not all talking in C++ and overthrowing distant tyranny. Cyber Monday is also a time to remember the sacrifices made in the name of the hacking. None of these are quite so tragic as otherwise great games laid low by poorly-judged hacking minigames, forcibly inserted by executive pressure to pad out the running time. Today, let us honour the fallen.
]]>Ah, the non-player character. Stoic endurer of all our sadistic whims. It’s time the monsters on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, made tribute to these humble little robots, whether they’re annoying companions, side characters, or disembodied human heads. Let’s talk about some of our favourites.
]]>Yesterday, the very fabric of society was threatened when some people disputed, with terminally dangerous inaccuracy, my 100% objectively and factually correct assertion that the currently-free Assassin's Creed 4 is the bestest best Assassin's Creed game of all time. Some of these anarchistic perverts argued that this year's Egypt-set Origins was the better man-stabber, despite its complete absence of ghost pirate ships and Welsh accents, and rest assured they will suffer for this blasphemy.
But I am a merciful dictator of gaming opinion, so before they are all rounded up and fired into the sun, I shall first allow them to enjoy the bountiful contents of Asscreed Origins Update 6. Also known as patch 1.1.0, this 1.2GB bundle o'fixes includes significant graphical improvements and the aforementioned new difficulty mode. Enjoy it while you still draw breath, heretics.
]]>I like the boat-centric Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag so much that I just went and added it to Uplay even though I already own it Steam. That's right: an Asscreed I dig enough to voluntarily load up Uplay. Last week, Ubisoft were giving away the tragically de-Steamed RTS World in Conflict, and, as we promised then, here's your nudge about this week's Festivus freebie.
]]>DID YOU KNOW: one of the first-ever posts on this here website was about Massive Entertainment's alt-Cold War real-time strategy game World in Conflict, and for years we even had a screenshot of one of its very impressive explosions on our About/mission statement page. It was a game we liked so much that we even ran photographs of TV's famous Kieron Gillen wearing a delightful promotional WiC hat. As such, it's been a minor tragedy that WiC was removed from Steam a while back (though it is on GOG).
Its excellent tanks and incompetent captains are not entirely lost to us, however - Ubisoft are giving it away for free until Monday.
]]>Previously in this column, somehow not taken up by the industry as of yet, I suggested that the word 'quest' was being somewhat damaged of late by the fact that it can be anything from 'Kill the Great Red Dragon' to 'bring me some orange juice.' I advocated a system where instead, tasks were split between two basic categories - what used to justifiably be called 'quests', and the more prosaic 'shit to do'. I realise now though that I missed an important third category, World Quests, named because scattering mostly pointless crap everywhere is much easier than actually filling an open world.
]]>The pirate’s life is a good one. Rum, sea shanties, being trapped in your sinking vessel as it falls victim to a gargantuan sea kraken. Ah, yes, a marvelous misadventure. There’s definitely some appeal to taking to the seven seas and plundering all the gold from unsuspecting merchant vessels, and this is what Tempest [official site], a low-fantasy on the waves, has in mind. But is it a glorious galleon, or a sloppy schooner? Let’s see wot Brendan thinks.
]]>We already chose 13 of our favourite games in the current Summer Steam sale, but more games have been discounted since. So, based on the entirely correct hypothesis that you all have completed every single one of our first round games and are now thirsting for more, here are 18 more to throw your spare change at. Everyone on the RPS team has picked three stone-cold personal favourites, making for a grand old set of excellent PC games: here's what we chose and why.
]]>Assassin's Creed Landahn is out! But not on PC, as we have to wait till next month before we can leap across all of Victoriana like an acrobatic chimney sweep. Far Cry Primal, the caveman sequel, will also arrive on PC the month after its February appearance on the console box. While this sort of situation isn't quite as common as it used to be, it is one which refuses to go away - with Assassin's Creed in particular a repeat offender, despite occasional promises to the contrary.
Is this - and the late arrival of other games on PC - cause for alarm? Alec, Alice, Pip and Graham gathered to discuss.
]]>I first noticed the feeling when I stopped at an inn. They had a roaring fire, plenty of food and wine, and there was a dog lying at my feet. Skyrim had never felt more welcoming. I was replaying the game with some mods installed. One mod took away all the dragonborn stuff and left me starting as a simple bandit schmuck. Another mod made the world of Skyrim cold and harsh to survive in, so I had to light fires to keep myself warm and make sure I didn’t fall into any water lest I catch my literal hypothermic death. But one of these mods had a side option, which was to turn fast travel off. On a whim, I did. It was only days later, in the warm glow of this inn that the feeling began to come over me. And I realised something. Something that all my gaming life I’d never even thought about.
I HATE fast travel. Let me tell you why.
]]>What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 9 of the sale.
]]>I'm afraid this is going to be a long one, because the debate around Assassin's Creed Unity not inculding any female avatar options in its co-op mode didn't half snowball overnight. Ubisoft are now backtracking on their initial defence that this was a workload issue, and instead claim it's a deliberate narrative-based decision - however, this only opens up more questions.
In the meantime, a former Assassin's Creed animation lead has called foul on the original claims that animating a female character results in an unbearable workload increase, while elsewhere at E3, a Far Cry 4 dev claimed that excessive animation needs are why there are no playable women in that game. Who to believe, eh?
]]>When you look at the Assassin's Creed series from a standpoint of raw numbers, things gets a little preposterous. I don't mean sales, either. It's well-documented that Hoods and Handspikes is basically this generation's Shoots and Ladders. No, I'm referring to less publicized stuff, like the number of people who work on these ceaselessly cascading historical murder romps. Assassin's Creed IV had all of its ships crammed into a single bottle by 900 some-odd people, the series' latest main entry, Assassin's Creed Unity, is apparently being put together by ten studios working in conjunction. Unity indeed.
It'll be out this fall alongside another, still-unnamed series entry aimed at the previous "gen" of consoles. I wouldn't be shocked if that ended up on PC as well, though.
]]>Assasssin's Creed IV released itself a significant DLC add-on called Freedom Cry, back in November. Naturally the PC version suffered a last-minute (almost literally this time) delay, but it did eventually emerge at £8/£10. Here's a strange thing. Later this month the slave-themed separate storyline is getting re-released, this time as a standalone purchase. It's a chance to say the best word in gaming! EXPANDALONE! Ooh, that felt good.
]]>Huh. Well, this is a bit embarrassing. I seem to have - and you're never going to believe this when I tell you; hoo boy, what are the odds? - misplaced Assassin's Creed IV's Freedom Cry DLC. I don't even know how this happened. I've retraced my steps and everything. I just cannot find it anywhere. Wait a minute, Ubisoft, why are you sitting conspicuously in that corner over there, glancing back and forth like you've got something to hide? OK, spit it out. Go on now. Ahhh, there's the culprit: a delay.
]]>The bulk of Assassin's Creed III's story DLC was rather silly (though disappointingly self-serious about it), but Assassin's Creed IV has its eyepatched sights set on much grimmer subject matter. There's still plenty of pirating to be done, but this time the backdrop is a St. Domingue (Haiti nowadays) ruled by savage slavery. As a former slave himself, new player character and former Black Flag sidekick Adéwale naturally gets involved - though not without some initial reluctance. Given that gaming's often wont to gloss over this sordid truth of our world, I am hopeful that Assassin's Creed IV: Freedom Cry will tell a worthwhile tale. The fact that Assassin's Creed: Liberation scribe Jill Murray is involved doesn't hurt, either.
]]>This doesn't happen to me too much, given the siren call of the virtual stack of videogames that wobbles atop my mental to-do list each day (oh woe is me, etc), but I keep finding myself drawn back to Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. In a 'secretly looting Spanish frigates when I'm supposed to be working on something else' sort of way. For several days I have attempted to keep this hidden from my colleagues for fear of getting an earful, but it's time to come clean (and at the same time at least vaguely justify my clandestine nautical habit): I have a piracy problem.
]]>(The ugly portmanteau in the title is because damnable Uplay's damnable cloud saves system destroyed and rewound over three hours of my progress, which has kept me from getting quite as far into Black Flag as I'd hoped. It also meant I lost a bunch of sea shanties, which was what upset me the most. Is this is Wot I Think? Is it mere Impressions? It's both and neither. Isn't that helpful? PS: in the name of all that's holy, turn off cloud saves in Uplay before you start playing AC4).
It's the best Assassin's Creed yet! Which is 90% because Black Flag, a a third-person action adventure about pirates in the Caribbean, isn't really an Assassin's Creed game in the traditional sense, and 10% because the lead character is from Swansea.
]]>As you all know (and probably expected for months on end), Ubisoft decided to delay Assassin's Creed IV's PC release into November's deepest waters. But why? How could this possibly make any sense? Well, I posit the following: it was an act of god. Wait, sorry, no. Godrays. AC IV has them, you see, but only on PC. And also only if you use Nvidia tech, because blah blah blah proprietary nonsense blah blah blah graphics. That does mean a subtly nicer-looking experience, though. And while I doubt Ubisoft gave our version a last-second shove so it could tighten up the graphics on level three, it's at least something.
]]>Despite the pointed mockery of John's Assassy Creed trailer post, Ubisoft haven't let up in their desire to tell expose every little detail about the fourth (but not really fourth) Assassin's Creed game in trailers. There have been three this week. They are shameless. I was going to do a post with them all again, but the weight of that many Flash instances on one page breaks my browser, so I am instead posting the latest one. It handily manages to distill everything we know about the game into a scant 9 minutes. Think about that, Ubisoft: you have one trailer doing the job of more than thirty.
]]>Well, it's finally confirmed, and yup, it turns out that Ubisoft's promises of avoiding delaying the PC build of their games haven't exactly proven, well, true. The PC version of Assassin's Creed IV, as speculated after a developer accidentally blurted the truth, will be released three weeks after the current-gen console versions. It's now getting the same release date as the PS4/Xbox One versions. So it's because it's a vastly superior version and they can't blow thei... no, because the Wii-U version comes out that day too. Oh, and three days later in Europe, too!
]]>Ubisoft released another live action trailer for Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag this week, about six months since the first trailer the game received. So I thought it would be an opportune time to take a look at the trails for the game so far.
]]>No, this trailer doesn't actually contain 4000 minutes of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag footage. That would comprise the entire game, which Ubisoft has already handily hacked up into several thousand other trailers. But still, ten minutes is a pretty healthy helping even by Ubisoft trailer-every-14-seconds-to-the-point-where-I-have-yet-to-write-a-sentence-that-doesn't-contain-the-word-trailer standards. And you know what? It actually looks kind of great. I still worry that all this icing only serves to hide a fundamentally stale cake, but time will tell. For now, HARPOONS.
]]>Don't ever let it be said I am not a lover of juvenile humour. To allow its actual name to take the stage for a moment, time for another Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag trailer. I've just gone and counted and this is the twentieth one that has been made available, not counting extra versions, additional languages or live streamed events. I have to pray that that is some sort of record, because any more would surely cause deadly games-burnout. There's some merit in this latest effort though - Game Director Ashraf Ismail narrates the attack of main character Pirate McPirateson on an opposing fort. Despite my snark, it's actually pretty cool. Sail on to check it out.
]]>It's a day of the week, and you know what that means! An Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag trailer! To fill in those dark nanoseconds between Splinter Cell trailers.
]]>Would you like to see 14 minutes of Assassin's Creed 4 footage? Well tough, because you have to. It's PS4 footage, which means there's a good chance it'll match PC on release. Should it actually get released at the same time, of course. Oddly enough, Ubisoft hasn't found time to get back to us regarding that.
]]>Actually, it's only four mins long. Boom boom. There have been so many posts about Black Flag, the fancy dress party of Assassin's Creed games, that I nearly didn't post this trailer. You know the deal. It is shippy, watery, and anything that starts with a sea shanty is now legally obliged to have a slow and portentous refrain at the end. But I want to reclaim the RPS piracy tag, and my previous attempt at that didn't end very well. There's no chance that Black Flag will sink on the PC, so here we all are. And I'm curious about Black Flag, even if my enthusiasm for Assy Creedy has waned thanks to 3's ploddery.
]]>This is reporter Nathan Grayson, on the scene for the SHOCKING NEWS TIMES. You might be disturbed and even somewhat aroused to hear that Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag has boats by the boatload, but I can exclusively confirm it via a non-exclusive video. In it, you'll witness scandalous scalawag Edward Kenway steering a ship, upgrading said ship, shooting other ships, leaping between ships, and even disembarking once or twice because he doesn't play by your dumb rules. Go on, watch. Be shocked and infuriated, because that is the purpose of news.
]]>Ubisoft's been kinda sorta a little better about treating PC gamers like humans (or at least wallets with people attached) lately - what with the partial decapitation of its draconian DRM and shoring up of arbitrarily spaced out release dates - but some things never change. Mystifyingly, the Assassin's Creed series has continued to bound right over PC on day one, preferring instead to fall off a roof and use our spines as cushions weeks later. For Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, that trend will not be changing - nor will the one where Ubisoft neglects to explain precisely why it keeps doing this in the first place.
]]>Ah, that joke is so old now. Anyway: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is all piratey! That means boats and leaping about on tropical islands, which you can see happening the first gameplay footage from E3, below. I'm sure I'd be at least 70% more upbeat about this if I wasn't having to suppress my general cynicism towards this series of games.
]]>I say "conspicuously" because the latest Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag trailer contains all other pirate things. Boats, poofy beards, vast seas, tropical settings, gruff voices chattering, cannons, SHAAAAAAAAAAAARK, dead men floating, black flags, a different SHAAAAAAAAARK, and magnificent hats. No sea shanties, though. That is the crying-est of shames. Oh, hm. No shoulder parrots either. And hey, where are all the eyepatches and peg legs? Jeez, this doesn't look like a realistic pirate game at all. So much for historical accuracy, game series about cyber memory men who survive physics-defying leaps into hay bales and murder pretty much everyone who died between the years 1189 and right now. What a sham.
]]>Below you will find the first in-game footage of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. I haven't watched it yet because it's being released onto the internet at 5pm and the downloadable copy I have is settling onto my hard drive so slowly that it won't be ready for viewing until 4:59. I'll add some thoughts below the line after I've watched it but, for now, here are three things that I hope to see:
1) A shark attack. 2) A shark running up the side of a building. 3) An assassin who has replaced his hidden blades with sharks that pop out of his sleeves.
I reckon that last one is a certainty. Let's find out!
]]>When Man In Suit came on stage and said that Ubisoft were the best possible company to tackle piracy, I roared with laughter. But the other two billion journalists sitting in the ornate hall stayed deadly quiet. I didn’t understand. Then six black flags (six black plastic posters) were dramatically unravelled over the balconies to either side of us and Man In Suit announced the making of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. ‘Ohh,’ I said loudly to my neighbour. ‘He means the THEME of piracy.’ I nodded knowledgably and took some notes for you.
]]>Assassin's Creed IV has pirates, a subtitle, a release date and a trailer. The pirates caught me unawares when the internet accidentally started yo-ho-hoing about them last week and the subtitle was unexpected too, but the release date of October 29th should surprise nobody. The adventures of Desmond and his ancestral chums arrive every autumn as predictably as a new FIFA. As for the trailer, it is below and it made me extremely happy for the minute or so that I managed to pretend it was a game about a pirate who doesn't also happen to be part of a conspiratorial, century-spanning clandestine organisation.
]]>The ship that sprung a leak has now sailed into harbour, its Jolly Roger flying high. Well, to be honest, it's sort of sitting just outside the harbour waving from the decks. Ubi have sent a press release announcing that they will be fully announcing Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag on Monday. For now, we have confirmation of the game's title and a picture of the box-art, which shows a chap standing on the deck of a pirate ship wearing the familiar hooded garb of the assassin, with a cutlass in one hand and a stonking great gun in the other. I've heard good things about the naval combat in The Third and this is a far more interesting proposition to me than Assassin's Creed III: Revolutionary Revelations would have been. More on Monday.
]]>Because - haha - there are pirates in it. Hahah. But you thought - haha - that I was saying the next Assassin's Creed game had leaked to Bittorrent. Haha. Hah. Heh. Huh.
I am neither funny or clever. You know it, I know it, the tiny baby Jesus knows it.
Let's just talk about the leaked reveal of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag instead. It's nothing to do with Henry Rollins, I'm afraid.
]]>
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