The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

First I'd like to say that I played this on a PS4 and it was not only beautiful to look at, it was incredibly fluid gameplay and animation wise. More fluidity than I've seen from any previous title on both 360 or PS3. They had no Xbox One build, else I would have tried that one too. Both versions seem to be incredibly smooth and wield framerates far surpassing the "Playbox 3/60" if you know what-ah-mean.

The triggers felt amazing with a wonderful amount of tension and resistance when pressed, very unlike the 360 and PS3. They weren't difficult to press or anything, but the tension was great. The shoulder buttons were also appropriately badass.

I didn't try the touch pad. I didn't swipe or click it.
The sticks felt much better than the PS3's, while still being in the position that I'm used to - and many PS3 fans will rejoice at our stick placement not changing.

The DPad and Buttons were largely the same.

The controller felt more comfortable than the PS3 and 360 controllers.
Overall Improvement from Previous Gen.

First: What I Didn't Get To Find Out/Play
- Edward Stealth
- - There was nothing about Stealth in this demo

- City Free Roam
- - It was a single, contained mission, I didn't want to risk being caught if I Out Of Bounds'ed ;]

- Jackdaw Stealth
- - The mission I played forced me into conflict with a Fort almost immediately. There was simply no chance to experiment with mechanics.

- Heavy Shot
- - Heavy Shot didn't seem to be a selectable Weapon Type for me

- The Pause Menu.
- - Pressing Option on the PS4 controller just brought me to a blue screen (I will talk more about the significance of this blue screen later) with lots of oceany graphics and sea-y, watery colors. It just said "Animus Pause Menu. Use L2 R2 L1 R1 to restart Mission."

Second: What I Did Try/Impressions

Ship Combat
Ship Combat is much faster than in Assassin's Creed III. It's a little complicated at first, but without a tutorial and with just a quick explanation from the Ubisoft representative, I was able to get the hang of it in about seven seconds.

What makes it complex is that there are at least four different attack types and you will only ever shoot in whatever direction Edward is looking in. If your camera is looking to the side of your ship, side cannons will fire. They are your primary damage dealers. If you're looking to the front of your ship, Chain Shots will fire. These slow and immobilize ships, allowing you to gain better Positioning on them. Ashraf is aware of how important Positioning is in Assassin's Creed and not only has he improved it for Combat (will get into it later) but for Ship Combat as well.

If you look out the back of the ship, you can toss out Explosive Barrels that you can then shoot using Swivels.

As for Swivels, they are much quicker to reload. You can shoot them pretty much indefinitely, as many times as you want, as quickly as you want. By holding Triangle/Y, you will fire Swivels in whatever direction you're looking at. Holding the button down moves the Swivels over a Red Target. When the Targeting Reticle and the Target line up, releasing will fire a (very satisfying) swivel shot that lands properly.

Swivels feel fun to use and there are a lot of Swivel Targets to exploit. You can open up additional Swivel Targets by using Mortars or shooting armored parts of Ships/Buildings/Forts using your Main Cannons. Interplay between Swivels and Main Cannons is huge, it seems.

Holding L2/Left Trigger will initiate the Aiming Reticle. The Chain Shot and Main Cannons will be aimed using the Right Stick. Pressing R2/Right Trigger while this happens will Fire. Yes, they switched the Triggers on the PlayStation version to fit the Xbox version. This is not a big change, it's actually very comfortable - coming from a PS3 fan and longtime PS3 player. Mind you, the PS3 version will PROBABLY STILL BE THE SAME, and only the PS4 version will likely be "Xboxified" but it's great fun and works well. Even Freerunning Triggers are switched from Shoulder to Trigger but it's great, no worries there.

Mortars work by holding L1. L1 makes Edward use his Spyglass. It's usable at any time. I'm not sure if it's usable on land, but it might be.

Spyglass allows you to Scout things in the far distance. You can see how much of something a possible Location/Target contains, the risk of attacking said Target/Location (with a sort of 'Rank' thing that tells you how strong it is) and finally, you can rain hell on your enemies by tapping R2 while in Spyglass - if you align the Mortar Reticle over it.

Mortars are absolutely devastating. They're your ship's most powerful weapon, and the only drawback is that they take a long time to land and they're a little trickier to aim. Also they take forEVER to reload. FOREVER. Like it's painfully long. Thankfully, you don't need to use them, they're just an option, like pretty much everything else. You're free to even chip away Fort walls using Swivels all day if that's what floats your Jackdaw.

I found myself Mortaring two of the gun towers, strafing the fort with a Main Cannon > Swivel > Main Cannon > Swivel. That destroyed it in about 30 seconds not including the Mortar actions before. Everyone else playing kind of fumbled about with it and were generally not spectacular haha, but this Fort was really easy. This playable demo was not designed to wreck the players trying it out. I could feel that my health was artificially pumped up - something they told me would not be the case in the real game.

Ships that are destroyed in the demo just linger. They do not sink instantly. In fact, they didn't manage to sink the entire time I was playing. Peeking at the other screens (there were three others to the left and right of me) I saw that the other players were VERY behind.

So, I decided, why not? I'll go Board a ship. I didn't NEED to do it, and no one else did (I spent a lot of time afterward watching other players play it just for the lulz and to see their gameplay/reactions) but I felt like it.

So I went over to one of the defeated ships and I held Circle. However, I didn't know that I was actually really far from it. The game didn't care how far I was. It initated the Boarding anyway. Told me to "Kill 10 Crew Members."

So I just leaped into the water and swam over to the ship. Some of my crew did the same. However, this is something I did while the Fort was still up and attacking my Jackdaw.

This made me notice something; You have Two Healthbars!
If any one of them (Edward/Jackdaw) hits zero, you will Desynchronize!

I had to quickly do the boarding, and get out without losing either my life, or the Jackdaw's. Meanwhile, the Fort was assaulting my ship, while my crew members were fighting as usual on top of it. I saw Crew - 1 and Crew + 1 appear as members were thrown into the water by explosions and rescued by me (you can 'Loot' Crew Members by getting close and tapping the Loot button, they instantly appear back on board and you don't Lose that man.)

This is when I tried out...!
Foot Combat
Oh my god, this was shocking.
They er... They changed the combat haha.
It's a LOT slower. Like NOTICEABLY slower.
Button mashing in Brotherhood, Revelations and even III was perfectly fine. You can't do this anymore.

AC4 Combat felt like AC1 Flow + AC3 Killstreaks.
That may not make sense, but it will when you play it.
Edward is a killing machine if you use Pistols and just obliterate everyone, but you only have so many of those shots. Your attacks are slower, so tapping at the right times is very beneficial. Directing your streak toward lower Ranks and doing Guard Breaks on higher Ranks will allow you to continue it - exactly the same as AC3 in that regard.

Countering works the same way as in AC3. Tap the Counter button, slight Slow Mo, tap what you'd like Edward to do to them, and there you go. Again, not all enemies are Counterable with all Counters.

I fought exclusively with his Dual Hidden Blades, which he had at this point in the game. The fighting flow was slower, but it felt more satisfying and in my gleeful description to my friend I kept saying over and over again, "It was SLOWER, it was more THINKY!"

Also getting hit really hurts. I did say I had padded health, but these shots are hilariously painful. If I'd gotten hit three or four times more I think I would have died.

I loved this.

Eagle Vision is back, but I didn't get to try out the new Mark and Track system. I ended up appreciating the "Kill" text above a Red dot, because everyone looks mostly the same, and sometimes the enemies (especially in this demo) blended in with the environment. The flames obscured the color of the red dot because everything else was burning and red. The "Kill" text allowed me the clarity to chase down and Running Assassinate (one of the Full Synch requirements) the person I was supposed to get.

I collected a single Animus Fragment during my Demo experience. Again, I didn't have to do it, I just felt like it and no one came over to stop me. Nothing special happened, but I got the DAZ thrill of getting an AC collectable (and the hunger for 99 more of them).

I also tried Free Aim. Holding L2/LT on land aims Edward's Pistol with the Right Stick in the same vein as Over-The-Shoulder games. It felt very Uncharted-like and Resident Evil/Gears of War-y. It was smooth, had great Default sensitivity and I was able to land a headshot on a running Standard Guard.

I HOPE they don't change the things I liked about this game, in the name of accessibility because anyone can get through them with enough practice and upgrades.

Edward's attack speed also gets upgraded later if you want it to be. A large part of replaying the game for me will be to get through the final sections without using any Edward upgrades. That the Jackdaw and Ed both have separate HP and can both be damaged at the same time REALLY surprised me and raised the tension to the MAX. That's gonna be epic, to see what kind of level design they can get out with that mechanic.

I ended up using the Boarded Ship's Loot to 'Repair the Jackdaw' but the Send to Fleet option was there too. The 'Recruit Crew' option was not selectable because the Jackdaw already had Maximum Crew at the time. The Jackdaw itself is very lively and has amazing 'idle' as well as 'active' animations. It teems with pirate life, people are always climbing something, climbing some kind of rope or rigging, chatting or turning, spinning and fastening stuff. They're never standing still.

Honestly, the most disappointing thing about this demo was that it was too short. I was very happy with my experience and I felt truly fortunate to receive such an opportunity.

The Demo alone felt better as an Assassin's Creed game than AC3's entire game did. Take that as you will. I didn't dislike AC3. I just love Black Flag and I will continue to love it til' the end if it turns out like this.

Thank you to The Hidden Blade for checking out my experiences as well. And here's hoping we come to some kind of agreement on what we want out of the game so Ubi can hopefully read this and say "Yes, this is what they want! Let's keep going strong!"

Oh yeah.
And I saw the Animus Ocean Floor.
Similar to the Black Room and White Room from previous games, it's the loading room where Edward can sprint around endlessly. It's an underwater, but with digital bubbles and techno-water effects environment. It looks and feels incredibly cool. You feel like even his regular sprinting animations are a little swallowed up by the water he's engulfed by. It's amazing. I'm excited.