After the rather ambivalent Assassin's Creed III, switch owners are now getting the full package: In the Rebel Collection, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag not only contains one of the largest and best parts of the series, but everything that it contains still carrying flotsam in tow, such as the equally large successor Rogue and all the DLCs, including the standalone expansion Freedom Cry and so much content that we would get out of breath, we wanted to list everything here …
First of all, let's circle the target group of the Assassin's Creed: Rebel Collection to clarify who we are talking to: There are hard-nosed Assassin's Creed fans, who already know the games, but don't like them on the go want to do without. On the other hand, there are especially the Nintendo fans who have never played an Assassin's Creed and now have the opportunity to do so. This remaster is unsuitable for everyone else – to put it straight away – because anyone who has already played the games on another platform or is still planning to play them on a different current or, to my mind, last-gen console should use the switch – prefer version.
Finally a real Assassin's Creed for Switch
In contrast to the mediocre Assassin’s Creed III, which appeared on Switch in May, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is much more suitable for introducing them to players who have never come into contact with the series. Black Flag marked a high point in the series chronology, when it appeared it was by far the largest and undoubtedly most beautiful Assassin's Creed – and for many years it was also the best. Until the Origins series realigned.
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With Black Flag, Nintendo fans who have never played an Assassin's Creed game have the ideal opportunity to get a taste of the franchise and understand its fascination. Black Flag combines the advantages of all its predecessors and spreads them on a playground that corresponds to the area of the entire Caribbean. Black Flag is a mammoth of a game that gives up so much to do that it can be overwhelming. But Black Flag is also a game that shows how downright irritatingly bad these games have been that were only a few years ago.
With the fourth part, which is actually the sixth, Ubisoft finally left the vertical game world architecture with its parkour runs over the roofs and through the streets of the cities and instead spread it on the plain in front of the players. Settlements such as Havana and Nassau, with their huts and maximum two-story houses, look more like villages, but they are surrounded by a vast expanse of palm forests, islands, beaches, camps and fortresses that only truly lived up to the name “game world”.
And there is something to do everywhere: As pirate Edward Kenway, you penetrate enemy forts to loot their treasures, chase thieves through the streets, free slaves to recruit them for your crew, skinned animals to make new equipment, collects raw materials that can be used to reinforce your own ship, goes whaling, dives down to sunken galleons, blows up legendary ships and relives a story that historical personalities have smuggled into, such as the legendary pirate Captain Blackbeard.
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For some fans, it pissed off that Black Flag no longer felt like a real assassin adventure, but like a pure pirate game, the Caribbean showplace of which created a holiday mood rather than a bloody assassin atmosphere, and whose treachery in the winding streets of big cities was immersed in Bushes of banana plantations and paradisiacal islands gave way.
Gameplay Galore
Assassin's Creed IV is designed like a fairground for gameplay sandboxes. Every camp you enter is designed to sneak from cover to cover, hide in a field of banana trees and slip into a haystack from there, carefully survey the guards' patrol routes, and then one after the other to eliminate others. Ubisoft uses this to create a seamless gameplay patchwork that was considered unprecedented at the time: sneaking alternates with fighting, chases, exploring, crafting, hunting. And then these spectacular sea battles! And of course: lots of garbage. A lot …
I was amazed at how much fun I had with Assassin's Creed: Black Flag again in a very short time, when the remaster of part 3 had only recently shown me in a frightening way, how outdated the series at that time in direct comparison work with the newer games since Origins. And in fact, when playing, there is always the strange feeling of how amazingly bad this series has aged in many ways: trying to spare additional playing time with an infinite number of collectibles seems desperately unimaginative. The old combat system makes an almost awkward impression. The controls have also been out of date for a long time now, given the countless times that my character does not want to walk up or up there as I command, but rather hangs on a wall or squats on a box.
Switch test: what can the port do?
Like so many ports of games that were not actually developed for the Switch, Assassin's Creed sits a bit ambivalent between the chairs: On the one hand, it looks outrageously good for a Switch game. The richness of detail of this Caribbean with its beaches, primeval forests and cities immediately awakens wanderlust and grants astonishing foresight for the hybrid console. Nevertheless, it is unmistakably a game from the last generation of consoles, which you can at best turn your nose at as a PS4 or Xbox One player.
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Graphically, the switch version corresponds almost 1: 1 to the PS3 and Xbox 360 version. This may be refreshing for eyes that normally only see games like Fire Emblem: Three Houses or Pokémon Sword / Shield. But Black Flag clearly shows the switch the limits that your salvation in this form of realistic representation no longer needs to look for and that has to continue its own stylistic path, the Breath of the Wild, Link's Awakening or Luigi's Mansion 3 have long gone.
With Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Assassin's Creed: Rogue, there are two absolute classics for the Switch as part of the Assassin's Creed: The Rebel Collection.
Because as technically clean as Black Flag may turn out, the hardware of the Switch cannot completely prevent a clearly noticeable jerking and stuttering. Players of the current gen remaster version will also interfere with the edge flickering and textures that pop up in the distance every now and then – fairly, you have to add that it is significantly less noticeable than in Assassin's Creed III for Switch and in a fairly identical form the last gene originals "graced". After all, the game doesn't compromise its graphics quality through a blurred image like Wolfenstein 2 or more recently The Witcher 3.
