Image: Ubisoft via AFP Relaxnews
Ubisoft’s second giveaway of December 2017 is the second best “Assassin’s Creed” game to date.
Piratical, loot-plundering, galleon-pinching affair “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” is free for a week until Dec. 18, 2017.
Celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the entire “Assassin’s Creed” franchise, which actually turned 10 in November, the giveaway is distributed via Ubisoft’s PC gaming service, UPlay.
Often held up as a high point of Ubisoft’s best-selling franchise,”Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” freshened up a familiar mixture of historical fiction, monument scaling, and stealthy adventuring with a dose of 18th century Caribbean swashbuckling.
Sea shanties on the open wave, clashes with opposing frigates, and treasure-hunting missions above and below sea level were the order of the day.
Following a one-week giveaway of another semi-historical gem, tactical battlefield title “World in Conflict”, “Assassin’s Creed IV” is being made available via UPlay and the free.ubisoft.com site until Dec. 18, 2 a.m. PST.
“Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” was released at a time when Sony and Microsoft were encouraging console gamers to move over from the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
At the same time, major third-party publishers such as Ubisoft were not yet prepared to limit reliable annual blockbuster franchises to the new consoles’ early adopters, and consequently “AC IV: Black Flag” arrived on PS3 and Xbox 360 as well as PS4 and Xbox One.
But how could it be considered the second-best “Assassin’s Creed”?
Released in the shadow of new console title “Assassin’s Creed Unity”, the following year’s “Assassin’s Creed: Rogue” was in fact exclusive to the older machines (plus Windows PC).
A shorter adventure, it retained the seafaring theme of the well-received “Black Flag” and was praised for a tighter storyline that offered a complete turnabout of the franchise’s usual framing while closing off a handful of leftover narrative threads.
And it’s because of those unexpected sparks of innovation (and, perhaps, its underdog nature) that, in some quarters, Bulgarian-made “Rogue” tops even “Black Flag” as franchise favorite.
Ubisoft Montreal, which steered global effort “Assassin’s Creed IV”, most recently oversaw development of 2017’s samurai, knight and viking multiplayer fighting game “For Honor” as well as Egypt-set prequel “Assassin’s Creed Origins”.
It has “Far Cry 5” in the works for March 2018, just last week bumped from an anticipated February launch, and, no doubt, we’ll see subsequent entries to the “Assassin’s Creed” arc from Ubi Montraal after that. JB
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