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Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag Preview

After my adventure on the high seas I stopped off
at the previously marked port, which turned out to
be a rough pirate haven. The locals didn’t take too
kindly to my presence and I ended up in fisticuffs
with a couple of rowdy drunks. Again, the brawling
plays out almost identically to the previous games
so there is little to report here.
The port itself was suitably salty in style, with roughlooking locals, wooden shanty-like structures, and
makeshift furniture. It definitely captured the
‘pirate’ theme and is a positive sign that the art
direction is suitably themed.
There were also a number of side-missions
available in this area, and I headed straight to the
closest assassination mission. This pointed me
back to sea, so back I went to the ship and headed
back into the blue briney.
The target was quickly located, aboard his vessel
and protected by a number of friendly ships.
Conscious of the remaining time and wanting to
see more of the game, I was in no mood to mess

Assassin’s Creed Special Edition 2013

around and decided excessive force was the way to
go, violently sinking each and every enemy vessel,
including that on which my target was based.
Although this meant the sacrifice of valuable loot
and prizes, it did save time and give me further
opportunity to explore.
My next stop was a sea-based side mission, and on
the way there I picked up some stranded seamen
who joined my crew and found a few floating cargo
crates to add to my booty. This was all just on the
way to the main event, which was a spot of ecofriendly whaling.
It wasn’t a whale I ended up catching though, but
rather a big-ass, ferocious shark. The ‘whaling’
consisted of Edward standing on a boat, throwing
roped-javelins at the shark to wear it down.
It’s worth noting at this stage that although I had
finally put the majority of my control issues to rest,
the menus were locked down so that no fine tuning
could take place. Given that I usually invert my Y
axis and the demo was defaulted to ‘normal’, the

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