Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag (PS3, X360, PS4, XBOne)

The lighting engine is really dated, has nothing to do with reality and that's one of the main reasons why everyone looks so strange...
My very little experience with the series -AC2 free with the "free for gold" special offer-, which was like 5 minutes and my layman eyes can tell you that you might be right.

I pre-ordered AC IV and I am really happy with that. I also think that AC2 seems to be a really good game. But the lighting engine got some things wrong when I played AC2.

When you are in a conversation and you can see the close-ups the faces seem to be a lot more shadowed than they should. -this helped me to test things like the black-crush and stuff like that though-

AC IV lighting seems to be a lot better judging from the videos, or AC2 was worse at that, I dunno.
 
The game is alooker even on current gen in the islands. Though it seems they took pics of foliage and pasted it everywhere on the mountains, but just th efact that they managed a good looking open sea adventure feels good for current gen. The rock textures are surprisingly sharp, I was expecting low res textures for this gen versions.Cities look a bit weird though, but seems more like it was their artistic choice: Lighting looks very bright and flat. But the game looks very busy for a current gen game, frame rate did falter sometimes during the city areas.

I don't really like the AC gameplay, but the island parts offer very good experiences. BtW, this game is a videogame version of Inception: Game within a game. Looks like they dropped the whole serious storyline I witnessed in AC1 !
 
I don't really like the AC gameplay, but the island parts offer very good experiences. BtW, this game is a videogame version of Inception: Game within a game. Looks like they dropped the whole serious storyline I witnessed in AC1 !

No, the storyline is continuous. The whole series is (quite) tightly tied together. However, AC IV may not feel so close knit because somebody died in AC3, but trust me, it's all tied together.
 
No, the storyline is continuous. The whole series is (quite) tightly tied together. However, AC IV may not feel so close knit because somebody died in AC3, but trust me, it's all tied together.

Shame. I totally missed on this one and i'm certainly not going to start from number 1... ah well
 
Shame. I totally missed on this one and i'm certainly not going to start from number 1... ah well

Doesn't really matter, go for AC4 if u want to. I havwn't played any since AC1 and a few hours of AC2 and. I am not feeling lost at all. But this one has mixed in pirates into the whole gameplay. If u want a true AC experience then AC2 is a good starting point. Ifu just waht to have fun in an sea adventure, go for AC4 straightaway, they have structured the game in that manner itself, i mean, even the premise ;) !

@Strange: will see if the old stories return later, but at the beginning the game shows itself as an offshoot, a side adventure in the same fiction.
 
Doesn't really matter, go for AC4 if u want to. I havwn't played any since AC1 and a few hours of AC2 and. I am not feeling lost at all. But this one has mixed in pirates into the whole gameplay. If u want a true AC experience then AC2 is a good starting point. Ifu just waht to have fun in an sea adventure, go for AC4 straightaway, they have structured the game in that manner itself, i mean, even the premise ;) !

@Strange: will see if the old stories return later, but at the beginning the game shows itself as an offshoot, a side adventure in the same fiction.

You'll find the regulars in a while.
 
Glad it's 1080p now - it's bad enough it's still 30fps :D Looked at some videos again, and coming from AC3 (which I've been playing the last few days for a bit, though I can't stand the game for more than 60minutes at a time - it's still a bit too clunky and directed at the moment), AC4 looks amazing, especially the plants and animation of them when you hide in them (and hiding in them seems a bit more believeable now too :D). There's clearly some Farcry 3 tech in here, as well as gameplay by the way, because it already looks much improved even on old gen.

Someone on gaf made some nice comparison GIFs.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=90569273&postcount=1502
 
But is it even still 30fps?? How can they increase resolution, even add AA without affecting the framerate?!? This is quite confusing to me?
 
Yes, they prioritised the framerate, that's why it was 900p initially. But they found more optimisations so that they could get 1080p with a better (which can still also be more efficient) AA solution at the same framerate.
 
Lazy devs :)

If they get this all in, and keep the fps...this could be everything, but certainly not lazy :)

So, is it really down to optimization? I have hard time believing this...we also had this for COD...they talked about a bug or something like this.

Really curious to me!
 
Billy, are you a PC gamer? If so, what you're seeing here is much like what happens when you install a new GPU driver version that boosts the framerate of a game you already own. Only the optimisation work only ever happens in the game, as there's no real driver going inbetween the GPU hardware and the game software.
 
Billy, are you a PC gamer? If so, what you're seeing here is much like what happens when you install a new GPU driver version that boosts the framerate of a game you already own. Only the optimisation work only ever happens in the game, as there's no real driver going inbetween the GPU hardware and the game software.

Yes, I am...and thanks for the analogy! This seems quite likely, especially for launch devices...
 
that looks more than just going from 900p -> 1080p. It even looks more than 720p -> 1080p :)
It looks like the lower res shot has something dodgy going on, bad blur

They did put in a better AA solution as well.
 
And the open world isvery fun too.they basically took whatever was fun in AC, far Cry3 and infamous open worlds and put it intoone game.

Its the melee combat which is annoying :(
 
The combat system is one of the reasons why I lost interest.
It's a pity though because the basics of the combat are good.
 
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