Pirates and Plonking Along

 So my husband surprised me this Christmas with a new graphics card for my zombie of a PC. As a fun surprise, a copy of Assassin's Creed IV came with the card. I loaded it up, just to see what all the fuss was about. I finished the first AC a long time ago, and made it about halfway (?) through the second one. Then we moved, and my husband unplugged most of the consoles, and .... we never really plugged them back up. So I never finished the second one. I never touched brotherhood or the third one. Okay, I didn't touch the third one mostly out of principle. Anything involving the American Revolution is usually painful. Well, a lot of history I find painful. Err, not history, the visual representations of it. Not that the AC games ever claimed to be accurate representations of history.

Ohmygosh. Getting back on track. The first thing that jumped out at me was that this game loves to randomly capitalize words. In every. Single. Line. Of. Dialogue. I will refrain from making any too many doge jokes, but yeah, many capitals. Such grammar. Wow. Seriously though, every single line of dialogue has these capitals. Even when you are outside of the Animus.

Then there's the matter of the controls. They are clunky, loose, and in some places a bit counter-intuitive. Granted, I have not played an AC game recently, and I suppose if I had that things would be different. Easier, perhaps. But that shouldn't be how a game is designed. A game should pull you in and be so smooth and fluid that you forget you are even playing, instead of frustratingly bashing your hips and knees against the crates and ladders and other climbable paraphenalia because ... not everything is climbable. Or you're doing something wrong. You are probably doing something wrong.

Other than that though, well, let's just say the game is gorgeous. I find it odd that so much of the intent behind this game is to run quickly and jump up walls and dodge and roll and hide here and there - but all I want to do is amble slowly along, taking in the sights. It doesn't make any sense for the game to be about speed and running blindly ahead when so much of the beauty of the game lies around you.

Then there's the characters. Yes, I am only just past the intro, but I am really loving the characters - the interaction between Edward and this guy ... whatever his name is. Yes, I realize I can't make a very strange argument for characters when I can't remember his name. But it was the interaction between them that caught my eye (ear?). Maybe we can attribute that to writing and voice acting more than characterization itself. But look! More Random Capitals!

In the end though, I'm determined to enjoy it, despite the clunky and sometimes vague controls, and consider it the only tropical cruise I'll probably ever have.