Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag PC game & performance review

ABT received a preview copy of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag as part of Nvidia’s 3-game Holiday Bundle which also includes Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Batman: Arkham Origins. This editor spent a good part of ten days playing the main story from start to finish, and here are our impressions of it, including a full performance and IQ evaluation using three Nvidia and three AMD cards.  In a first for ABT, two editors will give their comments on the single player and Mario Vasquez, ABT’s Mobile Editor will cover the multiplayer.

Once we started playing Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, we were drawn immediately into the game and played longer sessions than normal.  The very best part of Black Flag centers on playing as a pirate in a manner that hasn’t really been possible in any video game since Sid Meier’s Pirates!

Mario commented:  Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is is the sixth title in a storied franchise containing epic adventures and stories that are often marred with unfocused narrative and disjointed experiences. Assassin’s Creed IV is an addition to the pirate genre we first fell in love with during Sid Meir’s Pirates!

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is an ambitious title that treats the player to a open huge and sprawling 18th century Pirate World. Within a relatively short amount of time, you are set loose to command your own ship and crew on the Caribbean.

The Story

Many fans and even reviewers are somewhat divided on the rest of the game.  Without playing the earlier games in the series, Black Flag is a difficult story to follow without understanding at least a little of the Assassin’s Creed back story of the Templar versus the Assassins, which also involves a “First Civilization”.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag presents two concurrent timelines involving the player.  One timeline is set in the present involving an unnamed researcher who is experiencing in real time the life and memories of an early 18th Century pirate captain as he becomes an assassin.

The story is experienced by accessing and living a sequence of memories.  It is very easy to miss the connection to what is happening in the early 18th Century with what is happening in the “now”, and some players may dismiss the modern story completely and race through it to get back into the pirate action.

 Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag allows the player to become Edward Kenway, a pirate captain eventually trained by the Assassins.  In the story, he is the ancestor of Desmond from the  previous installment, Assassin Creed III.  This editor was previously no fan of the Assassin’s Creed series.   Starting to play some earlier games held little appeal because of their long and boring tutorials, the convoluted ancestral memories coupled with the Assassin versus Templar backstory, plus the clunky combat, irritating checkpoint save system, and repetitive sneaking.

Similarly, Mario commented: Black Flag ditches the dull Templar and Assassin story line as you play a neutral Pirate looking for power. While the two factions are evident throughout the game, you are a unique character who wants the power only a Pirate’s life can add – and it is exhilarating.

In this game, Edward does not start out as an assassin and he can effortlessly switch between the Hidden Blade of the Assassin’s Order and all new weaponry including four flintlock pistols and dual cutlass swords. In other words, he kicks ass and it is a lot of fun to take on a well-armed mob, although they are much smaller than in the previous games of the series.  Combat is slightly refined over the earlier games, but it still involves the basics of striking, blocking, countering and throws, and combinations.

The enemy AI is still weak and it is easy to exploit.  Of course, the emphasis is on stealth, and it is mandatory in some missions not to be discovered, and optional in others to use non-lethal methods.  Here the player is afforded “stalking zones” where he can hide in a hay cart or in the bushes, and whistle to attract and dispatch unsuspecting solitary guards, or use a blowgun to deliver sleeping or bizerk darts from a distance to get past the enemy guards.

Mario expanded on this to say, you can be fighting an enemy NPC with three others standing by just waiting for their turn to die, it gets a little too easy at times. Especially when all you have to do is wait for the indicator to show when to counter their attacks.

Of course, the emphasis is on stealth, and it is mandatory in some missions not to be discovered, and optional in others to use non-lethal methods.  Most of the fat was trimmed from past AC titles in Black Flag, yet the developers kept the stalking missions in. The pace of the game is ruined when you must walk behind yet another corrupt politician or target to hear their often forgettable dialogue before you can strike.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is a lot of fun, and it gets one’s heart pounding when the edge of the entire mini-map lights up in red.  It will show nearby enemies closing in on your assassin’s position and you must fight your way out of a desperate situation, or run for your life with the goal of “becoming Anonymous”.

You can even pay prostitutes to distract the enemies as you walk right past them instead of sneaking or fighting which can work well for tailing or eavesdropping missions.  You can also hire pirates as bodyguards that will fight for you in the town missions.

Unlike with previous Assassin’s Creed games, button-mashing works well until the player discovers more depth by using the combinations. And this time, the tutorial is not only mercifully short compared to Assassin’s Creed III – but interesting, immediately exciting, and fun to play. Who doesn’t want to start a game by piloting a ship with a full compliment of cannons in the middle of a large battle?

The Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag world is big. From Kingston to Nassau, there are more than 75 unique locations where you can loot underwater shipwrecks, assassinate Templars in 18th Century Caribbean locations, fish, harpoon great sharks and whales in an exciting mini-game, as well as hunt for now rare animals in the tropical jungles while searching for an ultimate treasure.  Hunting is quite important as the player can craft larger or extra ammo and weapons pouches, and even extend his health by using the animal hides.

Mario agreed adding, this is where Black Flag shines the most. We had the most fun getting away from the main story and exploring the large and lush world of the Caribbean.

The player gets to live the life of a pirate alongside legendary names such as Blackbeard, Calico Jack Rackham, and Benjamin Hornigold.  The player gets to witness historical events such as the King’s Pardon to the Pirates, as well as witnessing Blackbeard manically light fuses under his hat to terrify his enemies.  The character of each pirate captain becomes very clear from the story and it is interesting to see the possible motivation of the historical Steade Bonnet, wealthy landowner and merchant turned pirate and ally of Blackbeard, and ultimately hanged for piracy despite his pleas for clemency to the Governor.

There is an excellent mix of historical characters and events that are interwoven into the storyline.  As the married Captain Edward, the player gets to meet and interact with the two infamous women pirates of the day, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, “fierce hellcats” who established their own reputation along with that of Captain Calico Jack.

As Edward, the player may work to establish and build a Pirate Republic on New Providence while exploring the mostly historical events that defined what was called, the Golden Age of Piracy.  The problem is that few of these events are properly developed and liberty is taken with historical events to make them fit the story.

There are a lot of surprise moments and plot twists that need to be experienced without spoilers although this gamer saw most of them coming from a nautical mile away.  Finally, there is the subject of responsibility and redemption which is not handled particularly well although there are poignant moments that bring strong emotion.

The story generally progresses nicely, but not all of the writing has the same quality and it lags in places, and ultimately it feels too long.  Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag has a very long single player game which can easily stretch to forty or more hours if the player explores, engages in naval battles to upgrade the Jackdaw, and completes the side quests.

The game is repetitive.  After a time, all of the jungles, naval battles, cities and towns begin to look alike, and the missions tend to repeat the same formula of escort, pursuit, find, follow, eavesdrop, infiltrate, assassinate, fight, and run.  These are occasionally broken up with missions of exploration, plunder, and rescue.  Each memory mission has optional objectives which add to the memory synchronization.

For variety, there are puzzles and mini-games, and towards the end, the game turns into a platformer which requires the player to execute precise moves and jumps.  Mercifully, there are few QTEs (quick time events).

Blackbeard (a.k.a. Edward Teach) plays a major role in Edward’s story as does Captain Benjamin Hornigold. Charles Vane plays a role as a historically cruel pirate who disregarded their code, as well as Woodes Rogers, a privateer famous for suppressing the pirates of the Caribbean.  These all fit well into the story and bring the early 18th Century to life as well as continuing the backstory of the Assassins versus the Templars right into the modern day.

The Jackdaw

As Edward, you command your pirate ship, the Jackdaw. You can upgrade the Jackdaw with ammunition and equipment needed to fight off enemy ships. The ship’s improvements are critical to your progression through the game. You can ultimately attack and board massive legendary galleons, plunder treasure, recruit sailors and manage your crew.  You get to harpoon whales and even great white sharks which make for exciting sidequest adventures.

Early in the game, you will purchase a diving bell which opens up exploring shipwrecks for sunken treasure.  Pirating on the sea is by far, the most fun part of the game and it takes some time to get the strategy right to eventually take on an entire enemy fleet successfully.

Ever-changing weather and water effects are excellent and the overall feeling of sailing for high adventure is well-captured by the game.  Another couple of high points are that the music and the voice acting are excellent.  If you get tired of the same shanties that your crew is singing, next time you are in town, hunt down new ones for them to sing!

Although sailing, fighting, boarding and taking ships is a lot of fun, the game does not make any pretense of being an accurate simulation.  The Jackdaw acts almost independently of the wind and can stop and even turn on a dime on its slowest speed.  There appear to be 3 more speeds, the fastest of which moves the ship into a beautiful third person view, but steering becomes more difficult.  You also have to deal with rogue waves by directing your ship to head on directly into them, and waterspouts which are best avoided.

Naval Battles

The battles are a lot of fun.   In the beginning, the stock Jackdaw can barely take on Level 4 gunboats, whereas by the end of the game, a fully-upgraded Jackdaw has no problems with ManO’War ships and even legendary ships.  As you successfully board and sink ships, the Jackdaw’s “wanted” level increases and soon you will have to deal with red sail-equipped Hunter ships if you don’t bribe officials or use other options to reduce your level.

The basic naval battle strategy is to move behind your target ship and blast away at the rigging with the forward cannons which “stun” the enemy crew and slow it down as the mast collapses onto the deck.  Then you move the Jackdaw alongside the enemy ship and let them have it with main battery of cannons.  You even have options to use mortars from a distance to soften up the defenses and there are combinations available to the captain during the battle for extra damage.

At the point that a major explosion occurs on the enemy ship, you can move the Jackdaw alongside and soften them up with 5 shots from the deck guns – smaller ships require you to kill 5 crew members before they automatically surrender, and then you have a choice to repair the Jackdaw, lower your wanted level, or send the ship to your fleet, before returning to battling other ships.

Larger ships have more difficult requirements which may require you to kill the officers, or eliminate snipers in the rigging – all the while you are losing your crewmen in the battle on the deck until the objects are achieved or until you are desynchronized and have to start over.

The Modern Story

As a researcher exploring the memories of Captain Edward Kenway, ostensibly for a movie, you are presented with a parallel adventure.  Instead of fighting, you get to hack computers and there is intrigue as the Assassin versus Templar story is continued in the modern day.  These modern sequences are far less exciting although they work to continue the story and tie it up somewhat regarding the earlier games in the series.

If the player is unfamiliar with the earlier games, they will miss the modern connection with the early 18th Century, and the references to the First Civilization will probably be meaningless.  It might be a good idea to read a wiki of the Assassin’s Creed series to familiarize oneself with the backstory before playing Black Flag.

Multiplayer

There are a brand new set of pirate characters that feature additional exotic and colorful locations. You may craft your own game experience with the new Game Lab feature by choosing abilities, rules and bonuses to play and share with on-line friends.  Unfortunately, multiplayer is confined to the land and there are no naval battles.  Mario, ABT’s Mobile Editor, wasn’t impressed with it as multiplayer appeared to be tacked on.  The single player pirate adventure is alone worth the price of admission.

The following comments are by Mario:

Multiplayer:

Bugs

The game is remarkably stable with only one crash to desktop experienced in over 35 hours of play using a GTX 780 Ti.  On the other hand, the three Radeons that we benchmarked occasionally locked up the PC.  God Rays can be set to High in the menu, but after accessing Eagle Vision, it will reset itself to Low.

Occasionally, “Become Anonymous” may appear during a naval battle, or on rare occasions, the controls may suddenly refuse work exactly right (smoke bombs may refuse to deploy, or as you are running for your life, for example, an option to use the darts will suddenly appear which will slow you down).  Fortunately, these issues are very rare, although coupled with the checkpoint save system, may be very frustrating to the player.

Checkpoint Saves and difficulty

This gamer hated the checkpoint system.  There may be a lot of time wasted because the checkpoints are set rather arbitrarily far apart for some sequences.  This makes the game unnecessarily difficult and tedious to just keep on repeating the same sequence over-and-over to reach a checkpoint.  Particularly irritating were repeating the tailing and eavesdropping missions, mostly from the beginning.

The Graphics

The excellent graphics support the game and immerse the player right into it.  Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is powered by a wide range of technologies that allow it to deliver excellent graphics and an immersive gaming experience. In addition to using technologies like FXAA and TXAA to improve image quality, it also uses newer technologies like HBAO+, God Rays, and Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS) to enhance the game’s graphics. An upcoming patch will implement APEX Turbulence effects, self-shadowed particles, and soft particle shadows, and the patch will also make the God Rays and PCSS effects become more pronounced.

Performance

We played Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag at 2560×1600 at maximum details with a stock GTX 780 Ti, Core i7-3770K at 4.5GHz, EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard, and 16GB of Kingston HyperX RAM at 2133MHz. All of the settings were maxed completely out with 4 variables – 4xMSAA (38fps), 2xTXAA which takes less of a hit (42fps), SMAA (47fps) and FXAA (49fps).

On the next page, we will give performance results for the GTX 770 and the GTX 760, as well as for the R9 290X, 280X and 270X, and we shall also compare the IQ of these four settings using these 3 Nvidia and 3 AMD cards.  We will also cover 3D Vision performance.

Image Quality

Generally, 2x TXAA provides the best image and it is an improvement over TXAA implementations in other games, including for Assassin’s Creed III.  2x TXAA provides very good anti-aliasing approximating 4xMSAA, while the performance hit is less.  The very slight blur is about the same as with FXAA, but unlike with FXAA, SMAA and MSAA, the texture crawling and shimmering is nearly gone.  If one desires an even sharper image, SweetFX can be used together with TXAA.  4xMSAA is cleaner than SMAA which in turn is an improvement over FXAA.

Let’s look at some of the settings individually.

TXAA

TXAA is a cinematic-style anti-aliasing technique designed specifically to reduce temporal aliasing (crawling and flickering in motion). TXAA is a mix of hardware AA, custom CG film style AA resolve, and a temporal filter. To filter any given pixel on the screen, TXAA uses a contribution of samples both inside and outside of the pixel in conjunction with samples from prior frames. The trade-off is blur, which for some is intolerable and for others, cinematic. This editor much prefers the mild blur of TXAA to the texture crawling and flickering while in motion without.

TXAA has improved spatial filtering over standard 2x MSAA and 4x MSAA, particularly on fences or foliage. TXAA is also capable of intelligently managing per-pixel effects without introducing lighting artifacts on object edges. The filtering used by TXAA results in a softer image compared to traditional MSAA – the blur.

TXAA uses hardware MSAA in conjunction with a temporal filter. The performance hit of TXAA will vary from game to game and is directly correlated to the performance hit of MSAA. In this game, 2xTXAA takes less of a performance hit than 4xMSAA. Screen shots look better with MSAA, but playing the game with the camera in motion or even a video capture can easily show the advantages of TXAA.

NVIDIA HBAO+

To advance Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) tech, Nvidia’s HBAO+ looks better than the original HBAO algorithm, especially on scenes with thin objects such as grass and leaves. It is now fast enough to be used by top GPUs.

Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCCS) and PhysX (APEX Turbulence)

An upcoming patch will make PCCS more pronounced and also add APEX Turbulence to the game. Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS) is a technique designed to simulate the natural softening of shadows that occurs over increasing distance from the occluding object. PCSS provides three notable improvements over hard shadow projections: shadow edges become progressively softer the further they are from the shadow caster, high-quality filtering reduces the prominence of aliasing, and the use of a shadow buffer allows PCSS to handle overlapping character shadows without creating “double-darkened” portions.

APEX Turbulence is a GPU-accelerated PhysX simulation system that allows for smoke sprite particles to dynamically and realistically behave in the world, being influenced by gravity, winds, character movements, and explosions. Additionally, these sprite particles have the ability to cast shadows on each other and soft shadows onto the environment using particle shadow mapping (PSM). When shadows are cast onto other particles it gives the particles a heavier and denser appearance than without

In addition, Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag is the first game to offer 4K textures – something probably best experienced by SLI’d GTX 780s or higher, especially 4K textures over 3-panel Surround.

DRM

Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag uses UbiSoft’s proprietary Uplay to launch the game and the gamer must connect to the Internet at least once.  Once the game is authenticated, the game can be played in offline mode on the PC it was installed on, and it never requires the game to be updated.  However, it is to the single player’s advantage to play while connected to the Internet as there are more options available, including a mini-game accessed from the captain’s quarters of the Jackdaw.

 

The performance/IQ analysis and 3D Vision

Check the next page for the performance and IQ evaluation of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.  We are using a GTX 780 Ti versus the R9 290X, the GTX 770 versus the R9 280 X and the GTX 760 versus the R9 270X to test performance, but we are only using the GTX 780 Ti to compare IQ in our screenshots.

First, let’s check out the complete test bed.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7 3770K (overclocked to 4.5GHz); Turbo is on. Supplied by Intel.
• EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard (Intel Z77 chipset, latest beta 03-12-13 BIOS, PCIe 3.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x using Plex chip), supplied by EVGA.
• 16GB Kingston DDR3 Kingston RAM (8x2GB, dual-channel at 2133MHz; supplied by Kingston)
• Noctua NH-DH14 CPU cooler plus 7 case fans, supplied by Noctua.
• GTX 780 Ti 3GB at reference speeds and also overclocked, supplied by Nvidia
• GTX 770 4GB at reference speeds, supplied by Nvidia
• Nvidia GeForce 760, 2GB, reference clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• PowerColor R9 290X OC 4GB at at Uber stock speeds (up to 1000MHz) Memory clocks are 1250MHz at stock.
• VisionTek R9 280X 3GB, reference speeds; supplied by VisionTek
• PowerColor R9 270X PCS+ at reference speeds, Supplied by PowerColor
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• Genius SP-D150 speakers
• Two identical 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives configured and set up identically from drive image; one partition for Nvidia GeForce drivers and one for ATI Catalyst drivers
• Two Kingston 240GB HyperX SSDs configured and set up identically from drive image; one partition for Nvidia GeForce drivers and one for ATI Catalyst drivers; supplied by Kingston
• Cooler Master Platinum Pro 1000W PSU, supplied by Cooler Master
• Thermaltake Overseer RX-I full tower case, supplied by Thermaltake
• Philips DVD SATA writer
• HP LP3065 2560×1600 thirty inch LCD
• Three 23″ ASUS VG236 3D Vision-ready 120Hz displays, supplied by Nvidia/ASUS.

 

Test Configuration – Software

• WHQL Catalyst 13.11 Beta 9.4; application controlled, Surface optimizations off, High Quality, Vsync off
• Nvidia GeForce WHQL 331.93; High Quality; Single-display Performance mode; Prefer Maximum Performance, Vsync off
• Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
• Latest DirectX
• All games are patched to their latest versions.
• Vsync is forced off in the control panels.
• Varying AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied; 16xAF forced in control panel for Crysis.
• All results show average frame rates
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 7 64, all DX9 titles were run under DX9 render paths, DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths and DX11 titles under DX11 render paths.

The Game

• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, supplied by UbiSoft/Nvidia as part of the Holiday Game Bundle

 

«1. The Story, Gameplay, Testbed and Graphics2. IQ and 3D Vision3. HW requirements, Performance & Conclusion4. View All»