Shuffle or Boogie? | Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

Seen by many as a massive return to form for the series, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag puts you in the shoes of pirate Edward Kenway, sailing the West Indies in pursuit of his fortune. Black Flag manages to portray the sights of the Caribbean beautifully, the ocean in particular is probably the best looking thing I've seen in a game to date. The sounds however, fall so badly short of what we should expect of a so-called "AAA" game and consistently took me out of the experience of what should have been the most immersive pirate themed video game in history.

Let's start with what should have been priority one for Guy Francoeur, the foley artist for Assassin's Creed IV. If we take our ship out to the open ocean and focus only on the aural experience, so many things just don't seem right. The ambience sounds like it was recorded on a beach with a slight swell, lightly rolling on the sand. Then we look at the screen, there are large waves, rocking Edwards ship the Jackdaw to-and-fro, occasionally causing it to crash down at its front, sending a huge spray that covers the entire ship with sea water. Edward is constantly adjusting the wheel as wind changes blow you off course. Occasionally a whale or a pod of dolphins will jump above water alongside the Jackdaw.

Barely any of these visual elements have a contextual sound clip to go alongside them. The ocean is the most powerful thing on the planet, the sound of the waves should be far more prominent and the creaking of the ship as its being battered by waves has not been included along with Edwards turning of the wheel. All deadly silent.

These issues are further compounded when you enter travel speed. The camera zooms way out and all the sounds except the crew's shanties are muffled. This gives the player a bizarre feeling of being in some sort of void, not part of the sailing experience and is a great example of how many of the sounds in the game have a strange sense of perspective. Usually, Edward's quartermaster who is stood right next to him, can be heard just as clear as anything else, but when the player switches to travel speed, his voice awkwardly clips out of existence while the shanties carry on at the same volume.

Then there's the naval battles with cannon fire dominating the audio spectrum. The camera does an amazing job of putting you right in to the action when commandeering Jackdaw but when compared to Age of Empires III for instance, with its excellently foreboding cannon sounds, I just didn't feel the same tension. (Even though Age of Empires does not put you anywhere near the action.) Edward and his men never seem physically harmed by cannonballs, a historically brutal weapon known to tear limbs from bodies. I feel we should have had splinters whizzing past our head, the screams of a crew member hit by a cannonball all serving to properly immerse the player's senses in the game.

The final point to make about the water sounds in the game focus on swimming, one of my favourite things to do in a video game. In the opening area of the game we get to perform Assassin's Creed's iconic eagle dive into a beautiful emerald pool below. That joyful moment is short-lived however as every time Edward hits the water most frequencies are sucked away from the audio. It's a highly unpleasant sound akin to being hit by a grenade in games such as Uncharted, serious overkill for such a simple action and it sucked some of the fun out of taking a dip.

The audio while traversing on land is often equally jarring, let's look back at the first Tomb Raider game on the Playstation. Lara Croft's athleticism can be compared to the assassins of this series but I feel all of her movements have a weight to them. When you hold X in mid-air and grab a ledge, Lara's torso will hit the wall, this is accompanied by a thud and an "ooof." Perform a similar action in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and you will either hear silence or a very mild patter of wood. The controls in Assassin's Creed are already floaty enough and this accentuates that floatyness. Better sounds could have been used to make the parkour a bit more realistic, or at least create an illusion of realism.

I feel Assassin's Creed's combat has gotten mechanically worse with each installment since Brotherhood but this time the issues go far deeper than that. Most of the finishing move animations are out of sync with the audio. One animation stands out above all else, when Edward puts his sword straight through an enemy's head alongside...again, ghostly silence. None of the combat sounds have the proper weight or context to them. Edward also forcibly kicks treasure chests open with a mismatched thud as if he was gently closing a car boot.

What this all boils down to is the main problem I have with Ubisoft in general. Their attitude towards game design is completely backwards. When the first Assassin's Creed came out, it felt like Ubisoft were dying to innovate the stealth, action and open world genres and when they really took the time to try...boy did it show. Assassin's Creed 2 is looked upon fondly by the vast majority of people (even people like me who didn't like the first AC.) What we have now is a series of games continually settling for "good enough." The audio for Assassin's Creed IV was "good enough" for release, so they released it. Did it impress or immerse me in any way? No.

Now I need to give credit where it's due. Brian Tyler's score for Assassin's Creed IV is, in my opinion, the best yet in an AC game. It's a great balance of the thematic music of the golden age of piracy with undertones of modern electronica to remind us that, of course, it's still only a simulation created by the Animus. This is something Brian Tyler did equally well, though for different thematic reasons, in Far Cry 3 with his blend of tribal chanting, electronica & dubstep.Brian Tyler also managed to sneak a post-rock style track in to both Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed IV...a rarity as far as video game soundtracks go.

The violin motif of the main theme makes an appearance often, across the whole soundtrack but never outstays its welcome. There are hand claps, masked just underneath the orchestral percussion, adding a bit of a flamenco vibe which I feel works really well as the Spanish played a big part in this era of history. The string arrangements are phenomenal in the majority of tracks, conveying so many different moods, even within the same composition. They are often playful, conveying the sense of adventure that any fan of pirates can relate to and sometimes dark and foreboding as the open ocean on a stormy night.

A stand out track for me is 'In This World or the One Below.' The very brief change to the 5/8 time signature packs a real punch and the way the violin slides in to the harmony on the 4th bar gives me goosebumps. I would say the music in Black Flag is the driving force behind any tension or excitement I felt throughout the game. If it wasn't for the beautiful graphics and the incredibly fun sailing mechanics, Brian Tyler's music would literally be the one thing stopping this game from crumbling apart.

(Disclosure: This article was originally created for Gamesnosh.com)