As a big fan of the Age of Sail and the pirate genre (Tropico Pirates, Sid Meier Pirates, Black Flag, etc.) I watched a streamer on Twitch for a few hours and it looked like a lowest common denominator arcade game with a pirate theme. I wasn't disappointed, I'm just absolutely uninterested and see no reason to watch the streamer while they play it -.let alone buy it. Smugly generic is the only descriptor I have.
But like the bad type of ass
Like Rudi Giuliani's ass butt x4 after taco bell and getting his butt hair dyed black and soggy wet.
(Fucking hell some sentences shouldn't exist but here I go again)
From what I heard, the graphics were fantastic... and so performance intensive that they had to be turned down a bit. The gameplay and story, however... yeah, not good
I actually enjoyed the open beta so I might get it. I have to admit that I have more of a stomach for the Ubisoft formula than most people. I like extremely broad games with constant progression. Like you, I'm also a huge fan of pirate games and it's been such a drought in that aspect. I have been keeping my eye on Sea of Thieves for ages, but it never could convince me as a solo player to give it a try. The last pirate game I played was Black Flag. So short of a new Sid Meier Pirates - which I have been wanting for decades -, I might just settle on this one for now.
On an unrelated note, as a huge fan of the pirate aspect of Black Flag, but not having any real experience with other games. Which ones from the "pirate genre" do you recommend?
They are few and far between - the closest, loosely speaking is Sid Meier's Pirates - which is considerably older. AC Odyssey borrows from BF - but it's Greek themed and seems shoehorned in. There are plenty of strategy games that are AoS themed, Anno and others.
I’ve been following it since day 1 and it’s only gotten less and less impressive. Combat is extremely boring, no boarding ships, mini games for resources, NO STORY etc. what a joke of a “AAAA” game.
I’ll just replay Black flag.
>It is easily the worst video game story I've seen in a good while.
Boy you can say that again... I hammered spacebar through every cutscene and lost nothing of value. The most generic schlock, oh and don't get me started on the crew ~~barking~~ yapping. The VA in general is beyond atrocious, but the crew chit chat, I muted that shit so quick.
especially the first female officer she is so fucking annoying and the 2 Main Story all i heard was somthing negativ about men and the patriarchy for me to never want hear a Word from this woman ever again it should be a Pirate game ffs
no boarding is what killed it for me as a very casual gamer/follower who loves the golden age of piracy as an idea.
What's the fuckin' point? It's a third person shooter with boats? I just don't get it.
There is "boarding" in that you can approach a sufficiently-damaged enemy ship, press X to board, you get few seconds of a cutscene and a "Congratulations!" screen.
No in-person fighting, or in-person... anything. Like, you can control your character sometimes, but it's mostly just to talk to NPCs. Besides that, you're the ship.
Considering ubisoft has For Honour which has the base code to build half decent melee combat from its pretty shocking. These companies are getting worse. Only when people stop paying for the shit they are selling and do their research they won't listen to the consumer. If the consumer is blind and buys it because the shopkeeper says it's good they will keep taking advantage hiding behind a great brand someone else worked to build.
I don't know how they messed this up. Wasn't it always supposed to be Black Flag, but standalone, and bigger and better?
It lacks all the stuff that made Black Flag such a riveting experience. No boarding? No swashbuckling duels on the deck? No proper land exploration and treasure hunting? In a pirate game?
It's not even a matter of copyright or intellectual property, right? These are both Ubisoft games. If anyone could have literally made "Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag but without the Assassins," wouldn't it be Ubisoft? What the heck happened?
Right? Fuck, just make a literal sequel with the same characters and just don't focus on the overarching assassin shit. Just show me a fun pirate adventure set in that world... how did that not happen?
Literally had all the hard work done already. All the mechanics are there and work and are great. Literally just give us more of that with tweaks and improvements, a fresh cost of paint and maybe a new mechanic or two and it would've been incredible.
You can but all it does is go to a 2 second cutscene of your crew flailing their arms and then cuts out to a loot screen as they start to rush on.
Then the ship explodes in michael bay fashion and sinks :p
When I saw what the boarding ships amounted to in this review, I actually genuinely laughed. That was the most boring thing they could have possibly done. Ridiculous that this game is $70
I will never fucking understand how they failed to just make a Black Flag 2 without the assassin part of the plot... tha's all anyone fucking wanted...
It’s so true. Everyone was so vocal that it was the only thing they wanted. I think their heads are so far up their own asses that they mentally can’t wrap their heads around it.
Hell, even Mirage is the most middling Assassin's Creed game to date. They tried going back to form, which is what people have wanted all this time, did nothing new with the formula that people came to love in the first place, and called it a day.
This is one of those funny moments, when you know someone read a comment in a thread long gone, and took it as fact.
>AnvilNext 2.0 has been used for five Assassin's Creed games. It has been used to develop Assassin's Creed: Unity, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, Assassin's Creed: Origins, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and Assassin's Creed: Valhalla.
Unity is by far the best looking game Ubisoft have ever made. It also has the smoothest and most unique climbing. That aspect of AC was at its peak, on the same engine as Mirage, and even Valhalla. It has nothing to do with the engine, and all to do with the minds behind it.
and yet, sea of thieves is also shit.
For those downvoting, maybe you should add your vote to the metacritic since it appears most people also think it's pretty shit:
https://www.metacritic.com/game/sea-of-thieves/
Metacritic is an awful site for reviews. User reviews literally mean nothing on that site, and critic reviews haven't been posted since 2018, when the game was in a barebones state.
Use Steam reviews for games that are available there, and cross check with others and other reviews for when you need to check console versions.
Of course it's awful. So are steam reviews which are also incredibly biased and are also an awful source of reviews (see the many 'I have 6 thousand hours in Game A but it totally sucks' reviews).
I've tried sea of thieves myself, it is boring as all fuck and still has very little interesting content.
i mean you personally may not like the game but the steam reviews and player counts don't lie lol. 90% positive 271k reviews with 15k concurrents rn. this doesn't include the console playerbase which is going to be much higher.
you can say steam reviews are biased but they're quite literally directly from the consumer. with metacritic literally any schmuck can post a review whether they've played the game or not. it's a pretty big difference.
Metacritic is a joke of a review website, and has been for years.
I could turn around and give you this
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1172620/Sea_of_Thieves_2023_Edition/
Which has a 90% all-time positive rating.
Would have been awesome to have a huge world multiple ports that you could potentially raid, capture enemy vessels and you could interrogate the crew/search the captains cabin for clues to hidden treasure, attack pirate bases, explore islands, explore sunken shipwrecks, while in ports you could potentially start brawls in the bar choosing the wrong dialogue, etc.
You're right. To support this, they literally made the best pirate game and survival fps game - Far cry 3, AC black flag. All they had to do was merge these two together and a masterpiece could've been created with the duniya engine
>Sticking to "shoot until it sinks" is a formula that feels repetitive very quickly.
Idk, I think it really depends. I know that S&B went the opposite direction, but I think with enough richness and depth of mechanics you can actually make the ship combat an inherently enjoyable game loop.
Admittedly I'm a hardcore ship nerd so I actually loved the ship combat in Naval Action, which easily has some of the most complex and arguably best fighting sail ship combat in a game ever. Unfortunately the rest of the game sucked ass, but the skill ceiling of managing your sails and maneuvering with the wind, timing and aiming your broadsides, managing your crew in combat was inherently enjoyable for it's own sake
First thing I noticed skimming this video is why are the ships nosediving with their rear end in the air. How did they fuck up the most basic thing of getting the ships to sit on the water properly.
This thread, in this exact state, should be in a museum encapsulating reddit.
There are two responses total. One of them is ranting that the game is a woke exercise in emasculation because women exist in it. The other is a marketing intern on a burner account engaged in fellatio so deep and performative it would make Heather blush. Both have been piling up downvotes.
Eh some people are unrelentingly negative about gaming too. It’s honestly annoying. Every new game that isn’t perfect is “the worst game ever”!
Like Gotham Knights, or the Saints Row Reboot. Both had their issues, both weren’t perfect games, both were perfectly enjoyable experiences for what they were, but if you say that you will get absolutely shit on by a bunch of pissed off angry internet folks with a chip on their shoulder (I expect this from this comment, it’s okay everyone, let it out).
Skull and Bones (to me) is missing some core features I would want from a pirate game, especially one meant to be ubisofts answer to black flag. I won’t be buying it because it’s not the game style I would enjoy. However on critic I watched (skillup I believe) even said they had fun with it, it’s just the culmination of what it was meant to be, what it was advertised as, the price point, and some poor decisions that make it “bad”. This game will be something I consider if it goes on sale or on gamepass and I have nothing else to play.
TLDR: It’s just as annoying to hear constantly about how every game is now “the worst”, as it is to hear relentless positivity. It’s probably not the worst. It’s probably fine.
Edit: lmfao my first reddit cares. Go touch grass, caveman.
===
The “anti-woke” crowd are so loud and incessant that every time I hear a video on YouTube suddenly call something “woke”, I click the fuck off of it.
The culture war trash of the last decade in particular has poisoned discussions. I refuse to take someone seriously when I hear that a woman in a game or how both gender bathrooms are woke. What the fuck are you talking about you stunted troglodyte? Is a woman in your video games an attack on your masculinity if they aren’t a sex object? Get a fucking grip and learn to contribute to discussions of actual issue, not your fabricated bullshit and fragile ego.
Thanks for listening to my rant.
No, I’m not going to feed into your argument why I’m wrong and “liberal bad”. Downvote me and move on.
The other day I was watching a video on Suicide Squad and suddenly the dude started naming games ruined because they were “woke”, the first one was Alan Wake 2 “oh yeah I heard that one was not as good as the first one” I laughed, clicked out of it and deleted it from my watch history.
As someone who has played many ELECTRONIC ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT GAMES, I feel qualified in saying that SKULL AND BONES^tm is an exhilarating exploration of PIRATE THEME and fun for the whole family. SKULL AND BONES^tm truly shows the AAAA quality: it has GRAPHICS, and GRAPHICS, and PIRATES. Among other things too! Truly you should go and BUY SKULL AND BONES^tm if you want to be part of this year’s top gaming sensation.
It is true, I have been feeling like a thousAAAA™nd bucks since I started BONING™ my SKULL™! So, get your complimentary PIRATE-themed CANNONBALL, and start SKULLING™ your BONE™, too - be part of The CREW™!
I get that this is a joke but damn people on Reddit have no idea how actual game marketing works. Do you really think ubi cares about 1000 impressions a comment like this would get from “shilling” on a Reddit thread with 100 upvotes? There’s a literal paid media campaign on Reddit right now driving MILLIONS of impressions. Nobody is being paid to write comments, that would be a huge waste of time and effort.
In a world where Bethesda is commenting on individual steam reviews, I wouldn't necessarily put it past Ubisoft. It is a lot less common than most Reddit comments would lead you to believe, though.
I agree! SKULL AND BONES^tm has NO need to pay for shills because the game speaks for itself! SKULL AND BONES^tm has a strong identity of PIRATES and SHIPS and people can see that. Why would anyone pay someone to speak positively about SKULL AND BONES^tm when it’s AAAA quality speaks for itself? BUY SKULL AND BONES^tm.
It's unbelievable how ubisoft is soo consistent at making pure 100% just "okay" games. They invest enough to keep their games from being absolutely dogshit while putting exactly the right amount of laziness to make the game as boring as possible with some bits of interesting mechanics here and there. It takes some special talent to be this consistently mid
I am a huge fan of Black Flag and played some of the betas. It's not for me.
And this was a game I was looking for back when they first announced it. :(
Because he is the only one that knows how to write an essay lol. He knows how to argument points instead of being what 99% of the reviewing youtubers out there are “I like it/don’t like it, it felt awful/amazing” OK, but WHY?
This is actually making me want to give Black Flag another chance and I don't even like the franchise (quit the game when had an early quest to catch an NPC while avoiding capture/or something and I kept failing for almost an hour before I gave up in frustration).
I just want a pirate game with a decent story, large open world with multiple ports you could possibly raid and plunder, islands to explore, shipwrecks to find, after capturing a vessel you could interrogate the surviving crew or raid the captains quarters for clues to hidden treasure, long lost islands and all kinds of strange things.
Thing is I don't much like the AC gameplay (tried the very first game when it first came out, played a few hours, put the game down and never played another AC game again).
Yeah, most of that is Black Flag. It's the only AC game I've managed to really get into. Not really big on the AC formula, but Black Flag is a great pirate game, that happens to also be an AC game.
Ubisoft is so dumb ALL they HAD TO DO was make assassins creed blackflag multiplayer and it would have sold like crazy . THATS MINIMUM anything like a good story or more cosmetic controls would have been bonus but they are stupid and lazy and that’s why video games don’t sell anymore
The review basically just looks at gameplay mechanics in a vacuum. With Skull and Bones all you have to ask to give a fair review is, "would you pay full price for this or just buy AC4 ?".
Heres my review:
S&B is just a poorly made adaptation of AC4 that no sane person should shell out $70 for, if you want to play an open world pirate sim, just get Black Flag.
I've never been able to get excited for this game because the boat combat in the assassins creed games was my least favourite part of those games.
So, a game that is exclusively that sounds like it would get old in about 3 hours.
General shittiness from Ubisoft is another thing entirely.
Ubisoft calling any of their games triple A let alone quad A is a joke. They're a B grade studio at best and a syfy(if you know you know) production studio at worst.
From putting many hours in Sea of Thieves, I’ve been excited for this game to release. However, after watching a few stream, I’m so glad I didn’t preorder. In fact, AC Black Flag was on sale in steam, still is I believe, so I picked that game up instead. Sounds like after reading everyone’s comment, this is the best route lol.
I get that. Let me rephrase my wording. I was excited for a new pirate game different from Sea of thieves, however disappointed how skull and bones gameplay is.
I know that thid is an unpopular opinion, but sounds like a game for me. I liked the beta and I like open world games with constant progression. I also love the pirate setting. I suppose that I like that Ubisoft formula a lot more than most players because I enjoyed AC Valhalla and especially Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
My only complaints from the open beta were a gamebreaking bug and the fact that the graphics looked fairly dated. So I might wait till it goes on sale, not sure yet.
Just remaster Black Flag with better graphics, 60fps a new minimalistic HUD, adding a few islands/sidequests, let us play as Aveline and Adéwale in some missions and call it a day. Easiest profit ever.
after just having finished the most recent assassins creed games (Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, and Mirage), and going on/back to black flag, a little more than just changing out the graphics needs to be done.
Which of the newer ones would you most recommend to somebody who played a bit of AC 1&2 back in the day, and enjoyed the pirate stuff of Black Flag, but was otherwise never really big on the series? I think I've seen Origin and Odyssey on Game Pass, and thinking of giving one of them a try.
Both are good, I actually played the in reverse order Valhalla, Mirage, Odyssey and then origins. I would probably do them in order, Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, and then mirage. the last two if you like the first two of course.
Origins and Odyssey are very similar, you can see the game mechanics introduced in Origins get refined in Odyssey. I like Origins story better, but Odyssey's is not bad. Odyssey is a bigger map, and probably longer play time. People talk about these being more RPG like, and they are right, but I like RPG's so that was cool with me.
Edit: you will get some of the ship to ship combat in Origins, and much more in Odyssey. It drops off to almost nothing interesting in Valhalla, and Mirage has none.
Origins is the better game, and the story is the best in the saga since Black Flag plus Bayek is the best character since Ezio hands down… but Odyssey allow for builds that make you a crystal canon assassin and it’s very rewarding to one shot almost every enemy.
It's hilarious how the pirate in the thumbnail looks exactly like Derrick Rose, lol I would never imagine such thing, Rose looked like many things, but a pirate never crossed my mind
I wanted to give it a chance. The first hour or two of Beta was fun. 3-4th hour was not as fun, then Spurlock gave me a mission that took 15 minutes to sail to, I was supposed to sink a ship 3 levels above me, which i almost did but then ran out of repair kits and died. So 15 more mins of sailing to get more kits, 15 mins back, new fight instance; this time i run out of cannonballs… yeah this ain’t as fun as i imagined..
I so wanted a good pirate game.. sadly if I could put money on a game failing miserably I would bet it all on this one. Skull and Bones is dogshit and nowhere near the 70 euro asking price AND a subscription. Ubisoft are on drugs.
I watched someone play it and actually like it, but only because he was outright bullying almost everything he ran into.
As soon as the game presented him with any sort of a challenge he got upset and ran off.
I mean, 5 minutes in, the controls, the character models, the animations...
Why the fuck does Ubisoft have so many studios? Are these really resort locations for executives? And if so, Why is Ubisoft telegraphing this? What the fuck man.
The issue I have with this is I feel like I've already played it before, even with the bits of things Black Flag didn't have. This release just pushes my opinion of Ubi a bit lower.
I’m Singaporean and I remember getting invited to their office to try the play test build literally 10 years ago. You could sign up for the PTB and when you get the invite, you’ll head to the office, play the game, get interviewed by them about the game and then they would give you like a shopping voucher as a thank you. And in all honesty, even during the first session of the PTB, you could immediately tell that this game wasn’t going to be successful, it was just super boring and repetitive, like after the first session, we took a break and I dreaded going back for the second session. I had friends working there during the development of S&B and when they left Ubisoft, the game still wasn’t completed.
Fast forward to 2024, they prolly never took the tester’s feedback into consideration cause while the game mechanics has changed, the whole game looks just as bad. My friends recently got married and they invited the Ubisoft team, and when they were thanking Ubisoft in their speech, there were a few tables including us that were chanting,”skull and bones, skull and bones, skull and bones” just to poke fun at them
End of the day, I just don't think the arcade "Black Flag" ship combat model is worth pursuing as a gameplay style...period. Black Flag wasn't good because of the ship combat, it was good because the mini-game called ship combat was just good enough between ground locations and all of it felt novel in contrast to the many games before it.
It is weird. People want to play as a pirate with all the things pirates can do, with their friends. Not as a ship shooting at other ships only. Something ilke what sea of thieves does is what this game should have done.
He answers that question in like the first 5 mins. Compared to Black Flag it is a worse pirate game. But if you ignore all the comparisons and all the drama around the game it's just an OK pirate game that he didn't hate. But it's still overpriced and lacking in a lot of areas
If you have "quadruple A" expectations, you'll be disappointed. It's missing some elements Black Flag had. Instead of building on them, they axed them.
The development of the game was REALLY poorly done. There are a couple of videos that cover it, but it's the culmination of multiple axed projects ending in "fuck it, just finish and ship it!"
> If you have "quadruple A" expectations, you'll be disappointed.
According to SkillUp, Bull and Scones *barely* even qualifies as AA, and his "acceptable price" for it is $30 or less - so while "Quadruple-A" expectations are definitely overblown, so apparently are AAA expectations, and even with AA expectations, one would ostensibly have to rein them in a bit.
His big review before this was Suicide Squad which he didn't recommend because of the context...where was that vacuum?
End of the day, Skill Up is loosing cred for me...wants to pull out the "let's be fair" card whenever he feels like it to avoid criticism. I like pirate games as much as the next guy but to say this game is "ok" but something just as "ok" like Suicide Squad is spat at with vitriol? Like, idk it's confusing. I've played a lot of the games he's playing recently and it feels like he's losing the plot a bit.
Im all for not letting hatebait bullshit dictate game criticism, because at the end of the day artists and big teams of people who had nothing to do with meta-level or genre decisions...they just put the work in to make the best game they could and sometimes that game isn't for everyone.
If the art is good? Say it. If the writing is good? Say it. If the combat is good? Say it. If it isn't? Say it. I'm tired of every game being pulled into "well their manegement did X so everything in the game is bad"...like no...just say "their management did this so don't financially support the game but I do want to mention X, Y, and Z are actually done phenomenally."
For Skull and Bones I'll say the cosmetic system is amazing, customization is on point, and the world is really well made even if the engine looks old af and lacks crisp...but at the end of the day...what does it matter when the only thing you do with your avatar is run around to pick up quests?
I also just don't think the arcade style black-flag ship combat style is deep enough for 2024 gamers, even in Black Flag it was faceroll. It worked for 2010 for a game franchise that predominantly had you on land climbing shit pivoting to a fairly robust seafaring minigame...but 2024 just has gamers demanding more out of their experience. Sea of Thieves made the game look pretty bad and Sea of Thieves is still dieing because of its focus on PvP but terrible pvp design and failure to make good PvE to satiate either crowd.
Im a big pirate game fan and really want them to succeed but Skull and Bones is a classic Ubisoft filler game with filler mini-game level combat...and that's a shame, because if they just had some kind of ground combat and ship boarding led to a real fight they really could have made a special game, even if I still think the arcade style combat is faceroll...it's a vibe.
End of the day...feels like SkillUp is really choosey about when he wants to give a game a fair shake and when he wants to bait for clicks.
Pick a camp, either you're a low life hate bait youtuber like Asmongold going from outrage to outrage or you've got dignity and know what the medium takes to create and respect the craft and want to talk about it.
Skill Up used to be camp number 2.
Because context is what is largely dragging Skull and Bones down. The game feels fine, just OK, until you realize this was suppose to be a spiritual successor to Black Flag, a game released over a decade ago. And despite that timeline, there are many things this game does worse than Black Flag.
Having played Suicide Squad, I can assure you, it’s not the context that’s the biggest problem with that game lol.
Idk I think suicide squad is very fun and have had more fun with the combat than I did with Arkham but I was also fairly done with the whole Arkham "spam button till Counter and Batman does everything for you" style of button masher combat. The traversal mechanics in Suicide is very fun to experience in combat.
My only gripe with it on a gameplay level is lack of hero specific abilities. There are 2 and the only other one is just a team one they all have and melee is about as braindead as it was in Arkham without the amount of animation variety that people seemed to like in Arkham where Batman did a lot of shit while you spammed one button until the counter window showed up.
The looter part ain't my favorite but it doesn't get in the way like it did for games like Anthem, and the hero part isn't undermined by the loot and damage situation like Avengers. I'm holding my breath on it. Really depends what the post-launch content is and how dependable it is to add more flavor. Avengers had nothing prepared and it flopped because of it (on top of having a much worse launch situation)
I didn't hate it, but I think even the best thing that it manages to get right, the traversal, is a design decision that has a lot of negative impacts that most people don't realize.
Suicide Squad's biggest issue for me is that it just doesn't do anything that makes it stand out in a sea of dead live service looter shooters and I've played pretty much all of them.
Skull and Bones at least has a chance by virtue of it being the only game like it. The only game coming close is Sea of Thieves, and having played both, they both have pirates and that's about where the similarities ends.
I mean given Suicide Squad plays more like Sunset Overdrive than any modern looter I don't see how it gets in the way. If anything it puts less emphasis on guns which are disappointing in most games, even ones like Borderlands where they get outlandish.
I just wish there was more focus on hero abilities and less on guns...but I don't personally see how their traversal does anything but enhance the combat experience.
Havent had this much moment to moment fun and decision making in a looter pretty much ever....but looter combat is almost always super basic and dull. Either you are just bunny hopping all the time and spamming ridiculous weapon effects or cover firing basic guns that aren't in themselves interestings it's never this fantastically reactive nor has this much momentum.
But I guess maybe I'm just more prone to enjoy games that focus on movement as a core element...as the speedster archetype has always been one I've rarely seen done well and Suicide Squad specifically does it exceptionally well for me turning your speed into a teleport with movement and a bullrush.
The movement itself is really fun, I'm not trying to imply it isn't.
The problem I have with it - is the map is pretty clearly designed around the movement. There's a reason pretty much all fights take place outside and it's because it's heavily reliant on clearing large amounts of spaces in a short period of time.
The game knows it's movement is a large part of what it has to offer and it has to design the map and combat around it. There's a few indoor moments, but they're few and far in between for a reason.
It's going to be hard to design indoor encounters that allows for that movement to flourish. Which is a shame, because the interior designs that we did get to see were far better than the exterior in my opinion.
Everything is contingent on clearing wide swaths of space and that has design ramifications on the map and the moment to moment combat feel. While it's fun, it's going to be an extremely constricting design parameter for Rocksteady to work against.
As a big fan of the Age of Sail and the pirate genre (Tropico Pirates, Sid Meier Pirates, Black Flag, etc.) I watched a streamer on Twitch for a few hours and it looked like a lowest common denominator arcade game with a pirate theme. I wasn't disappointed, I'm just absolutely uninterested and see no reason to watch the streamer while they play it -.let alone buy it. Smugly generic is the only descriptor I have.
"But it's a Quadruple A Game!"
Quadruple A for ass ass ass ass
He is going to take you back to the past. He is going to play these games that suck ass.
Ah man, I need to pick those videos up again! AVGN is a legend!
Now stop and make that mother *%%#%**+ hammer time like
That's a lotta ass
But like the bad type of ass Like Rudi Giuliani's ass butt x4 after taco bell and getting his butt hair dyed black and soggy wet. (Fucking hell some sentences shouldn't exist but here I go again)
Last time I heard that was about the callisto protocol. Except there it felt earned, cause they were only on about the graphics
That's a game I keep forgetting was released. I heard tons of talk, then nothing.
From what I heard, the graphics were fantastic... and so performance intensive that they had to be turned down a bit. The gameplay and story, however... yeah, not good
Who'd have guessed it was a PUBG spin-off.
Iirc, it was planned to be. But then they pulled an invisible war on it
As soon as I read that I had a strong feeling it was a hot pile of garbage
>Sid Meier Pirates That's the remake/update I want to see...
I actually enjoyed the open beta so I might get it. I have to admit that I have more of a stomach for the Ubisoft formula than most people. I like extremely broad games with constant progression. Like you, I'm also a huge fan of pirate games and it's been such a drought in that aspect. I have been keeping my eye on Sea of Thieves for ages, but it never could convince me as a solo player to give it a try. The last pirate game I played was Black Flag. So short of a new Sid Meier Pirates - which I have been wanting for decades -, I might just settle on this one for now.
I have SoT, I could not get into it as a single player.
Me on the other hand, thoroughly enjoy it as a solo. Sure, it's like playing it on the hardest difficulty, but it's very fun.
I’m like you. I got it and am enjoying it!
I'll probably pick up when it's 20 bucks in 3 months.
This has gamepass written all over it, I'll download it for free in about 6 months
On an unrelated note, as a huge fan of the pirate aspect of Black Flag, but not having any real experience with other games. Which ones from the "pirate genre" do you recommend?
They are few and far between - the closest, loosely speaking is Sid Meier's Pirates - which is considerably older. AC Odyssey borrows from BF - but it's Greek themed and seems shoehorned in. There are plenty of strategy games that are AoS themed, Anno and others.
I’ve been following it since day 1 and it’s only gotten less and less impressive. Combat is extremely boring, no boarding ships, mini games for resources, NO STORY etc. what a joke of a “AAAA” game. I’ll just replay Black flag.
No boarding ships in a pirate game? What in the hell.
everyone knows pirates obliterated enemy ships and sunk all the treasure /s
Having played the open beta I can confirm the game unfortunately does have a story. It is easily the worst video game story I've seen in a good while.
>It is easily the worst video game story I've seen in a good while. Boy you can say that again... I hammered spacebar through every cutscene and lost nothing of value. The most generic schlock, oh and don't get me started on the crew ~~barking~~ yapping. The VA in general is beyond atrocious, but the crew chit chat, I muted that shit so quick.
especially the first female officer she is so fucking annoying and the 2 Main Story all i heard was somthing negativ about men and the patriarchy for me to never want hear a Word from this woman ever again it should be a Pirate game ffs
It's a canadian studio, it's about all you can expect along with some socialist talking points being shoehorned in there as well.
It seems like a last minute patchwork of a shitty nonsense Chinese low cost VR game, what the truck have that been working on for the past years
no boarding is what killed it for me as a very casual gamer/follower who loves the golden age of piracy as an idea. What's the fuckin' point? It's a third person shooter with boats? I just don't get it.
I thought this was like an alpha release of black flag for mobile or something
>it’s only gotten less and less impressive. That implies that it was ever impressive at all
hey man impressions can go in the negatives. -100 is still less then 0.
It makes sense if you start with Black Flag and remove features.
tbf everyone initially thought it would be black flag expanded. but the more they revealed the more obvious it was that that was not the case at all.
No boarding ships? Man, Pirates of the Caribbean Online had this back in the day…
There is "boarding" in that you can approach a sufficiently-damaged enemy ship, press X to board, you get few seconds of a cutscene and a "Congratulations!" screen. No in-person fighting, or in-person... anything. Like, you can control your character sometimes, but it's mostly just to talk to NPCs. Besides that, you're the ship.
I see this ship sinking fast when they boasted so much about it
Considering ubisoft has For Honour which has the base code to build half decent melee combat from its pretty shocking. These companies are getting worse. Only when people stop paying for the shit they are selling and do their research they won't listen to the consumer. If the consumer is blind and buys it because the shopkeeper says it's good they will keep taking advantage hiding behind a great brand someone else worked to build.
Yeah that's the problem, Ubisoft doesn't seem to like to share their collective innovation from their games.
I don't know how they messed this up. Wasn't it always supposed to be Black Flag, but standalone, and bigger and better? It lacks all the stuff that made Black Flag such a riveting experience. No boarding? No swashbuckling duels on the deck? No proper land exploration and treasure hunting? In a pirate game? It's not even a matter of copyright or intellectual property, right? These are both Ubisoft games. If anyone could have literally made "Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag but without the Assassins," wouldn't it be Ubisoft? What the heck happened?
Right? Fuck, just make a literal sequel with the same characters and just don't focus on the overarching assassin shit. Just show me a fun pirate adventure set in that world... how did that not happen?
Literally had all the hard work done already. All the mechanics are there and work and are great. Literally just give us more of that with tweaks and improvements, a fresh cost of paint and maybe a new mechanic or two and it would've been incredible.
I say we all replay Black Flag to fuck up Ubisoft's mind.
Yeah, buying their games, that'll show em.
Or you can sail the high seas to play a game about sailing the high seas like a true pirate
Yeah, I don't see any reason to give Ubisoft money for anything.
They mean go get a "High Seas" Copy of Black Flag. Wear a Fancy Hat And Sail The High Seas and play Black Flag instead of buying Skull and Bones.
No boarding ships?!
You can but all it does is go to a 2 second cutscene of your crew flailing their arms and then cuts out to a loot screen as they start to rush on. Then the ship explodes in michael bay fashion and sinks :p
To be fair they explore in Black Flag too if you board and choose not to keep the ship, but at least you still get to board and fight the crew.
"ten years ago we had these mechanics and no one complained"
When I saw what the boarding ships amounted to in this review, I actually genuinely laughed. That was the most boring thing they could have possibly done. Ridiculous that this game is $70
Sounds like I should give Sid Meiers Pirates a few more years. Thought so. Thanks 👍
I will never fucking understand how they failed to just make a Black Flag 2 without the assassin part of the plot... tha's all anyone fucking wanted...
It’s so true. Everyone was so vocal that it was the only thing they wanted. I think their heads are so far up their own asses that they mentally can’t wrap their heads around it.
Well this is definitely one of Ubisoft games of all times
It's such a ubisoft thing to do. To discover a wining formula that players ask for and to dumb it down to the point that no one would like it.
And then call it Quadruple A. "Am I out of touch? Nah, it's the gamers that are wrong."
What more could you want? Grinding for mats and skilless gameplay, it's like the perfect combo.
Hell, even Mirage is the most middling Assassin's Creed game to date. They tried going back to form, which is what people have wanted all this time, did nothing new with the formula that people came to love in the first place, and called it a day.
Mirage is tight but it's the least interesting setting yet.
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This is one of those funny moments, when you know someone read a comment in a thread long gone, and took it as fact. >AnvilNext 2.0 has been used for five Assassin's Creed games. It has been used to develop Assassin's Creed: Unity, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, Assassin's Creed: Origins, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and Assassin's Creed: Valhalla. Unity is by far the best looking game Ubisoft have ever made. It also has the smoothest and most unique climbing. That aspect of AC was at its peak, on the same engine as Mirage, and even Valhalla. It has nothing to do with the engine, and all to do with the minds behind it.
It’s still tied for first place with everything they’ve released in the past 5 years, unfortunately.
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They had a map and spent 11 years reading it incorrectly. Sea of thieves took their map and made a better game with it.
And did it faster.
Eh on release sea of thieves was extremely empty and boring
Still better than Skull and Bones
and yet, sea of thieves is also shit. For those downvoting, maybe you should add your vote to the metacritic since it appears most people also think it's pretty shit: https://www.metacritic.com/game/sea-of-thieves/
Metacritic is an awful site for reviews. User reviews literally mean nothing on that site, and critic reviews haven't been posted since 2018, when the game was in a barebones state. Use Steam reviews for games that are available there, and cross check with others and other reviews for when you need to check console versions.
Of course it's awful. So are steam reviews which are also incredibly biased and are also an awful source of reviews (see the many 'I have 6 thousand hours in Game A but it totally sucks' reviews). I've tried sea of thieves myself, it is boring as all fuck and still has very little interesting content.
i mean you personally may not like the game but the steam reviews and player counts don't lie lol. 90% positive 271k reviews with 15k concurrents rn. this doesn't include the console playerbase which is going to be much higher. you can say steam reviews are biased but they're quite literally directly from the consumer. with metacritic literally any schmuck can post a review whether they've played the game or not. it's a pretty big difference.
Metacritic is a joke of a review website, and has been for years. I could turn around and give you this https://store.steampowered.com/app/1172620/Sea_of_Thieves_2023_Edition/ Which has a 90% all-time positive rating.
yea it really is. i hate the stupid gates it has on higher level play that isnt explained at all.
Would have been awesome to have a huge world multiple ports that you could potentially raid, capture enemy vessels and you could interrogate the crew/search the captains cabin for clues to hidden treasure, attack pirate bases, explore islands, explore sunken shipwrecks, while in ports you could potentially start brawls in the bar choosing the wrong dialogue, etc.
You're right. To support this, they literally made the best pirate game and survival fps game - Far cry 3, AC black flag. All they had to do was merge these two together and a masterpiece could've been created with the duniya engine
>Sticking to "shoot until it sinks" is a formula that feels repetitive very quickly. Idk, I think it really depends. I know that S&B went the opposite direction, but I think with enough richness and depth of mechanics you can actually make the ship combat an inherently enjoyable game loop. Admittedly I'm a hardcore ship nerd so I actually loved the ship combat in Naval Action, which easily has some of the most complex and arguably best fighting sail ship combat in a game ever. Unfortunately the rest of the game sucked ass, but the skill ceiling of managing your sails and maneuvering with the wind, timing and aiming your broadsides, managing your crew in combat was inherently enjoyable for it's own sake
I had a good laugh when the exec called it a AAAA game, knowing full well there was no ground/melee combat 😆
First thing I noticed skimming this video is why are the ships nosediving with their rear end in the air. How did they fuck up the most basic thing of getting the ships to sit on the water properly.
That’s been a thing since AC: black flag lol
11 years to fix what is part of 90% of the game...
But does he have a long winded metaphor about a boats momentum????
This thread, in this exact state, should be in a museum encapsulating reddit. There are two responses total. One of them is ranting that the game is a woke exercise in emasculation because women exist in it. The other is a marketing intern on a burner account engaged in fellatio so deep and performative it would make Heather blush. Both have been piling up downvotes.
Didn't expect to see an ideepthroat reference in here...
the GOAT
can you explain for us normies
She did amateur porn under the name ideepthroat and the name was NOT false advertising
Definitely no amateur, that’s for sure.
ahh ty
>Why are the pirate ships in this game crewed with women? This was the very next post after I read yours. Lol
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Skull and Boners???
Poor guy isn't even a shill. They're just unrelentingly positive about gaming lmao. Imagine that in 2024, couldn't be me.
Eh some people are unrelentingly negative about gaming too. It’s honestly annoying. Every new game that isn’t perfect is “the worst game ever”! Like Gotham Knights, or the Saints Row Reboot. Both had their issues, both weren’t perfect games, both were perfectly enjoyable experiences for what they were, but if you say that you will get absolutely shit on by a bunch of pissed off angry internet folks with a chip on their shoulder (I expect this from this comment, it’s okay everyone, let it out). Skull and Bones (to me) is missing some core features I would want from a pirate game, especially one meant to be ubisofts answer to black flag. I won’t be buying it because it’s not the game style I would enjoy. However on critic I watched (skillup I believe) even said they had fun with it, it’s just the culmination of what it was meant to be, what it was advertised as, the price point, and some poor decisions that make it “bad”. This game will be something I consider if it goes on sale or on gamepass and I have nothing else to play. TLDR: It’s just as annoying to hear constantly about how every game is now “the worst”, as it is to hear relentless positivity. It’s probably not the worst. It’s probably fine.
Edit: lmfao my first reddit cares. Go touch grass, caveman. === The “anti-woke” crowd are so loud and incessant that every time I hear a video on YouTube suddenly call something “woke”, I click the fuck off of it. The culture war trash of the last decade in particular has poisoned discussions. I refuse to take someone seriously when I hear that a woman in a game or how both gender bathrooms are woke. What the fuck are you talking about you stunted troglodyte? Is a woman in your video games an attack on your masculinity if they aren’t a sex object? Get a fucking grip and learn to contribute to discussions of actual issue, not your fabricated bullshit and fragile ego. Thanks for listening to my rant. No, I’m not going to feed into your argument why I’m wrong and “liberal bad”. Downvote me and move on.
The other day I was watching a video on Suicide Squad and suddenly the dude started naming games ruined because they were “woke”, the first one was Alan Wake 2 “oh yeah I heard that one was not as good as the first one” I laughed, clicked out of it and deleted it from my watch history.
Hahaha you are so right
I've only read like 6-7 posts above this comment but literally none of them are like what you described
I have not seen either of those options
I cant wait for the entirely predictable Dunkey review.
He’s gunna say AAAA game like 17 times
Gonna just be him playing sea of thieves.
As someone who has played many ELECTRONIC ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCT GAMES, I feel qualified in saying that SKULL AND BONES^tm is an exhilarating exploration of PIRATE THEME and fun for the whole family. SKULL AND BONES^tm truly shows the AAAA quality: it has GRAPHICS, and GRAPHICS, and PIRATES. Among other things too! Truly you should go and BUY SKULL AND BONES^tm if you want to be part of this year’s top gaming sensation.
I have been convinced by this comment. I am going to buy SKULL AND BONER^tm right away.
It is true, I have been feeling like a thousAAAA™nd bucks since I started BONING™ my SKULL™! So, get your complimentary PIRATE-themed CANNONBALL, and start SKULLING™ your BONE™, too - be part of The CREW™!
i am torrenting black flag instead
I get that this is a joke but damn people on Reddit have no idea how actual game marketing works. Do you really think ubi cares about 1000 impressions a comment like this would get from “shilling” on a Reddit thread with 100 upvotes? There’s a literal paid media campaign on Reddit right now driving MILLIONS of impressions. Nobody is being paid to write comments, that would be a huge waste of time and effort.
In a world where Bethesda is commenting on individual steam reviews, I wouldn't necessarily put it past Ubisoft. It is a lot less common than most Reddit comments would lead you to believe, though.
I agree! SKULL AND BONES^tm has NO need to pay for shills because the game speaks for itself! SKULL AND BONES^tm has a strong identity of PIRATES and SHIPS and people can see that. Why would anyone pay someone to speak positively about SKULL AND BONES^tm when it’s AAAA quality speaks for itself? BUY SKULL AND BONES^tm.
It's unbelievable how ubisoft is soo consistent at making pure 100% just "okay" games. They invest enough to keep their games from being absolutely dogshit while putting exactly the right amount of laziness to make the game as boring as possible with some bits of interesting mechanics here and there. It takes some special talent to be this consistently mid
The talent you see exists in the trailer making department.
Just play Sea Of Thieves for a good multiplayer pirate game or AC4 for a singleplayer one.
And for those PlayStation players, just hang on a bit longer, with the rumours of it making its way to PS5.
I am a huge fan of Black Flag and played some of the betas. It's not for me. And this was a game I was looking for back when they first announced it. :(
Skill up does such a good job with his reviews.
Because he is the only one that knows how to write an essay lol. He knows how to argument points instead of being what 99% of the reviewing youtubers out there are “I like it/don’t like it, it felt awful/amazing” OK, but WHY?
Why is anyone surprised? It's fucking Ubisoft. Lol
But it's AAAA! It's gotta be good! Corporations wouldn't lie to customers
They would *never*
This is actually making me want to give Black Flag another chance and I don't even like the franchise (quit the game when had an early quest to catch an NPC while avoiding capture/or something and I kept failing for almost an hour before I gave up in frustration).
I was in the same boat as you and gave black flag another chance, it’s an amazing game
I just want a pirate game with a decent story, large open world with multiple ports you could possibly raid and plunder, islands to explore, shipwrecks to find, after capturing a vessel you could interrogate the surviving crew or raid the captains quarters for clues to hidden treasure, long lost islands and all kinds of strange things.
You've basically just described black flag lol (aside from the interrogating crew, but you can find treasure maps)
Thing is I don't much like the AC gameplay (tried the very first game when it first came out, played a few hours, put the game down and never played another AC game again).
Yeah, most of that is Black Flag. It's the only AC game I've managed to really get into. Not really big on the AC formula, but Black Flag is a great pirate game, that happens to also be an AC game.
Try assasin Creed rogue it's a fun tittle that g to forgotten due to it being released on the death stages of the ps3
Rogue is great
Ubisoft is so dumb ALL they HAD TO DO was make assassins creed blackflag multiplayer and it would have sold like crazy . THATS MINIMUM anything like a good story or more cosmetic controls would have been bonus but they are stupid and lazy and that’s why video games don’t sell anymore
if "quadruple A" games are like this we are so fucked.
Apathetic Anemic Average Anticlimactic Heck, let's throw "Awful'' in there and make it a AAAAA game!
The review basically just looks at gameplay mechanics in a vacuum. With Skull and Bones all you have to ask to give a fair review is, "would you pay full price for this or just buy AC4 ?". Heres my review: S&B is just a poorly made adaptation of AC4 that no sane person should shell out $70 for, if you want to play an open world pirate sim, just get Black Flag.
If the Guillmont family didn’t own Ubisoft, Yves would be out on his ass
The waves lol. Imagine getting waves wrong in a game primarily about ships. AAAA my aaaass.
I've never been able to get excited for this game because the boat combat in the assassins creed games was my least favourite part of those games. So, a game that is exclusively that sounds like it would get old in about 3 hours. General shittiness from Ubisoft is another thing entirely.
I played the closed beta, and after fetch questing for over 2 hours, I couldn't keep going. This game has potential but is just mid.
I'll probably give it a try once I can get it for "free" with Gamepass or PlayStation Plus.
Can we all stop giving Ubisoft and these other shit companies money for like 2 years to make them shit their pants and make good games again
Ubisoft calling any of their games triple A let alone quad A is a joke. They're a B grade studio at best and a syfy(if you know you know) production studio at worst.
From putting many hours in Sea of Thieves, I’ve been excited for this game to release. However, after watching a few stream, I’m so glad I didn’t preorder. In fact, AC Black Flag was on sale in steam, still is I believe, so I picked that game up instead. Sounds like after reading everyone’s comment, this is the best route lol.
This game is nothing like Sea of Thieves beyond there being pirates and a sea in it.
I get that. Let me rephrase my wording. I was excited for a new pirate game different from Sea of thieves, however disappointed how skull and bones gameplay is.
Lol shit game is shit
A 46 minute "review"?!?! Who is watching 46 minutes of this toilet bowl flushing?
I know that thid is an unpopular opinion, but sounds like a game for me. I liked the beta and I like open world games with constant progression. I also love the pirate setting. I suppose that I like that Ubisoft formula a lot more than most players because I enjoyed AC Valhalla and especially Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. My only complaints from the open beta were a gamebreaking bug and the fact that the graphics looked fairly dated. So I might wait till it goes on sale, not sure yet.
Just remaster Black Flag with better graphics, 60fps a new minimalistic HUD, adding a few islands/sidequests, let us play as Aveline and Adéwale in some missions and call it a day. Easiest profit ever.
after just having finished the most recent assassins creed games (Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, and Mirage), and going on/back to black flag, a little more than just changing out the graphics needs to be done.
Which of the newer ones would you most recommend to somebody who played a bit of AC 1&2 back in the day, and enjoyed the pirate stuff of Black Flag, but was otherwise never really big on the series? I think I've seen Origin and Odyssey on Game Pass, and thinking of giving one of them a try.
Both are good, I actually played the in reverse order Valhalla, Mirage, Odyssey and then origins. I would probably do them in order, Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, and then mirage. the last two if you like the first two of course. Origins and Odyssey are very similar, you can see the game mechanics introduced in Origins get refined in Odyssey. I like Origins story better, but Odyssey's is not bad. Odyssey is a bigger map, and probably longer play time. People talk about these being more RPG like, and they are right, but I like RPG's so that was cool with me. Edit: you will get some of the ship to ship combat in Origins, and much more in Odyssey. It drops off to almost nothing interesting in Valhalla, and Mirage has none.
Nice. Thanks. I'll go ahead and download at least one origins or odyssey.
Origins is the better game, and the story is the best in the saga since Black Flag plus Bayek is the best character since Ezio hands down… but Odyssey allow for builds that make you a crystal canon assassin and it’s very rewarding to one shot almost every enemy.
Yeah I agree
Black flag crew lemme see you
The term "Ubisoft original" should have been the sign to not purchase.
Should have remade sidmeyers pirates. Can get it on backwards compatible for xbox
My favorite part of the game is when the pirate looked directly at the camera and said "It's Skull and Bones time!"
It is like Twisted Metal with ships, only without the interesting combat or tone.
I’m having fun with it
It's hilarious how the pirate in the thumbnail looks exactly like Derrick Rose, lol I would never imagine such thing, Rose looked like many things, but a pirate never crossed my mind
I kinda enjoyed it for what it is. Not too much complexity and a mind to zero pew pew pirate game. Its entertaining.
I wanted to give it a chance. The first hour or two of Beta was fun. 3-4th hour was not as fun, then Spurlock gave me a mission that took 15 minutes to sail to, I was supposed to sink a ship 3 levels above me, which i almost did but then ran out of repair kits and died. So 15 more mins of sailing to get more kits, 15 mins back, new fight instance; this time i run out of cannonballs… yeah this ain’t as fun as i imagined..
It's a game they made so they could have a tax deductible vacation to Singapore.
I so wanted a good pirate game.. sadly if I could put money on a game failing miserably I would bet it all on this one. Skull and Bones is dogshit and nowhere near the 70 euro asking price AND a subscription. Ubisoft are on drugs.
I played the open beta for a few hours. i thought it was pretty boring honestly.
Disagree with lot of statements, except around $70 (cheaper on PC), AAAA and CEO statement that literally ruined everything
I watched someone play it and actually like it, but only because he was outright bullying almost everything he ran into. As soon as the game presented him with any sort of a challenge he got upset and ran off.
I guess the Ubi pay off wasn't good enough to get them a "I highly recommend Skull and Bones!"
Review: It’s terrible and not even worth $5. There you go saved you a click.
I mean, 5 minutes in, the controls, the character models, the animations... Why the fuck does Ubisoft have so many studios? Are these really resort locations for executives? And if so, Why is Ubisoft telegraphing this? What the fuck man.
Itachi and other anime characters are overrated they're not even real people and you call them things like goat or god.
Ubisoft is about to learn about sunk cost fallacy.
Who the fuck is gonna watch a 45 minute review of a game none of us are excited about?
I don’t know, but Skill Up arguments and speaks so well I watch everything even if I have 0 interest on the game he is talking about.
His videos are usually so good its worth watching even if you only have a passing mild curiosity.
The issue I have with this is I feel like I've already played it before, even with the bits of things Black Flag didn't have. This release just pushes my opinion of Ubi a bit lower.
Ubisoft once again proving what is wrong with Game companies these days.
I’m Singaporean and I remember getting invited to their office to try the play test build literally 10 years ago. You could sign up for the PTB and when you get the invite, you’ll head to the office, play the game, get interviewed by them about the game and then they would give you like a shopping voucher as a thank you. And in all honesty, even during the first session of the PTB, you could immediately tell that this game wasn’t going to be successful, it was just super boring and repetitive, like after the first session, we took a break and I dreaded going back for the second session. I had friends working there during the development of S&B and when they left Ubisoft, the game still wasn’t completed. Fast forward to 2024, they prolly never took the tester’s feedback into consideration cause while the game mechanics has changed, the whole game looks just as bad. My friends recently got married and they invited the Ubisoft team, and when they were thanking Ubisoft in their speech, there were a few tables including us that were chanting,”skull and bones, skull and bones, skull and bones” just to poke fun at them
End of the day, I just don't think the arcade "Black Flag" ship combat model is worth pursuing as a gameplay style...period. Black Flag wasn't good because of the ship combat, it was good because the mini-game called ship combat was just good enough between ground locations and all of it felt novel in contrast to the many games before it.
It is weird. People want to play as a pirate with all the things pirates can do, with their friends. Not as a ship shooting at other ships only. Something ilke what sea of thieves does is what this game should have done.
So is it good or not? I don't want to watch an hour video I just want to have fun.
He answers that question in like the first 5 mins. Compared to Black Flag it is a worse pirate game. But if you ignore all the comparisons and all the drama around the game it's just an OK pirate game that he didn't hate. But it's still overpriced and lacking in a lot of areas
If you have "quadruple A" expectations, you'll be disappointed. It's missing some elements Black Flag had. Instead of building on them, they axed them. The development of the game was REALLY poorly done. There are a couple of videos that cover it, but it's the culmination of multiple axed projects ending in "fuck it, just finish and ship it!"
> If you have "quadruple A" expectations, you'll be disappointed. According to SkillUp, Bull and Scones *barely* even qualifies as AA, and his "acceptable price" for it is $30 or less - so while "Quadruple-A" expectations are definitely overblown, so apparently are AAA expectations, and even with AA expectations, one would ostensibly have to rein them in a bit.
It's an ok double-A $30 arcade-y ship shooting pirate-themed game. Alas, it's sold as a quadruple-A $70 Black Flag successor.
His big review before this was Suicide Squad which he didn't recommend because of the context...where was that vacuum? End of the day, Skill Up is loosing cred for me...wants to pull out the "let's be fair" card whenever he feels like it to avoid criticism. I like pirate games as much as the next guy but to say this game is "ok" but something just as "ok" like Suicide Squad is spat at with vitriol? Like, idk it's confusing. I've played a lot of the games he's playing recently and it feels like he's losing the plot a bit. Im all for not letting hatebait bullshit dictate game criticism, because at the end of the day artists and big teams of people who had nothing to do with meta-level or genre decisions...they just put the work in to make the best game they could and sometimes that game isn't for everyone. If the art is good? Say it. If the writing is good? Say it. If the combat is good? Say it. If it isn't? Say it. I'm tired of every game being pulled into "well their manegement did X so everything in the game is bad"...like no...just say "their management did this so don't financially support the game but I do want to mention X, Y, and Z are actually done phenomenally." For Skull and Bones I'll say the cosmetic system is amazing, customization is on point, and the world is really well made even if the engine looks old af and lacks crisp...but at the end of the day...what does it matter when the only thing you do with your avatar is run around to pick up quests? I also just don't think the arcade style black-flag ship combat style is deep enough for 2024 gamers, even in Black Flag it was faceroll. It worked for 2010 for a game franchise that predominantly had you on land climbing shit pivoting to a fairly robust seafaring minigame...but 2024 just has gamers demanding more out of their experience. Sea of Thieves made the game look pretty bad and Sea of Thieves is still dieing because of its focus on PvP but terrible pvp design and failure to make good PvE to satiate either crowd. Im a big pirate game fan and really want them to succeed but Skull and Bones is a classic Ubisoft filler game with filler mini-game level combat...and that's a shame, because if they just had some kind of ground combat and ship boarding led to a real fight they really could have made a special game, even if I still think the arcade style combat is faceroll...it's a vibe. End of the day...feels like SkillUp is really choosey about when he wants to give a game a fair shake and when he wants to bait for clicks. Pick a camp, either you're a low life hate bait youtuber like Asmongold going from outrage to outrage or you've got dignity and know what the medium takes to create and respect the craft and want to talk about it. Skill Up used to be camp number 2.
Because context is what is largely dragging Skull and Bones down. The game feels fine, just OK, until you realize this was suppose to be a spiritual successor to Black Flag, a game released over a decade ago. And despite that timeline, there are many things this game does worse than Black Flag. Having played Suicide Squad, I can assure you, it’s not the context that’s the biggest problem with that game lol.
Idk I think suicide squad is very fun and have had more fun with the combat than I did with Arkham but I was also fairly done with the whole Arkham "spam button till Counter and Batman does everything for you" style of button masher combat. The traversal mechanics in Suicide is very fun to experience in combat. My only gripe with it on a gameplay level is lack of hero specific abilities. There are 2 and the only other one is just a team one they all have and melee is about as braindead as it was in Arkham without the amount of animation variety that people seemed to like in Arkham where Batman did a lot of shit while you spammed one button until the counter window showed up. The looter part ain't my favorite but it doesn't get in the way like it did for games like Anthem, and the hero part isn't undermined by the loot and damage situation like Avengers. I'm holding my breath on it. Really depends what the post-launch content is and how dependable it is to add more flavor. Avengers had nothing prepared and it flopped because of it (on top of having a much worse launch situation)
I didn't hate it, but I think even the best thing that it manages to get right, the traversal, is a design decision that has a lot of negative impacts that most people don't realize. Suicide Squad's biggest issue for me is that it just doesn't do anything that makes it stand out in a sea of dead live service looter shooters and I've played pretty much all of them. Skull and Bones at least has a chance by virtue of it being the only game like it. The only game coming close is Sea of Thieves, and having played both, they both have pirates and that's about where the similarities ends.
I mean given Suicide Squad plays more like Sunset Overdrive than any modern looter I don't see how it gets in the way. If anything it puts less emphasis on guns which are disappointing in most games, even ones like Borderlands where they get outlandish. I just wish there was more focus on hero abilities and less on guns...but I don't personally see how their traversal does anything but enhance the combat experience. Havent had this much moment to moment fun and decision making in a looter pretty much ever....but looter combat is almost always super basic and dull. Either you are just bunny hopping all the time and spamming ridiculous weapon effects or cover firing basic guns that aren't in themselves interestings it's never this fantastically reactive nor has this much momentum. But I guess maybe I'm just more prone to enjoy games that focus on movement as a core element...as the speedster archetype has always been one I've rarely seen done well and Suicide Squad specifically does it exceptionally well for me turning your speed into a teleport with movement and a bullrush.
The movement itself is really fun, I'm not trying to imply it isn't. The problem I have with it - is the map is pretty clearly designed around the movement. There's a reason pretty much all fights take place outside and it's because it's heavily reliant on clearing large amounts of spaces in a short period of time. The game knows it's movement is a large part of what it has to offer and it has to design the map and combat around it. There's a few indoor moments, but they're few and far in between for a reason. It's going to be hard to design indoor encounters that allows for that movement to flourish. Which is a shame, because the interior designs that we did get to see were far better than the exterior in my opinion. Everything is contingent on clearing wide swaths of space and that has design ramifications on the map and the moment to moment combat feel. While it's fun, it's going to be an extremely constricting design parameter for Rocksteady to work against.