Ubisoft has just released Skull and Bones on PC and consoles. And, from the looks of it, the game wasn’t received well by some gamers. Not only that but it appears that Skull and Bones can be worse than Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, a game that came out a decade ago.
Youtube’s ‘Gameinvader’ has shared an interesting comparison between AC: Blag Flag and Skull and Bones. In this video, Gameinvader compares these two pirate games, and the results may surprise you.
Let’s start with what you may have already heard. Yes, the shipboarding is bad in Skull and Bones. Instead of actually boarding an enemy ship, the game shows just a cut-scene for it. It sucks and it’s clearly a downgrade over Black Flag.
Moreover, while players can swim in Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, they can’t do so in Skull and Bones. My guess is that Ubisoft decided to disable swimming for gameplay purposes. After all, in Skull and Bones, you can only leave your ship when you sail to a safe port. Again, this is a downgrade over what we got in Black Flag.
Also, since this is GaaS title, Ubisoft has focused on those elements. As a result, in the cut-scenes, we can easily spot lower-quality lip-syncing than what we saw in Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. This is to be expected really. Black Flag was a single-player story-driven title. It needed great cut-scenes. Skull and Bones is a GaaS title. So, you can’t really compare them when it comes to facial expressions.
Graphics-wise, Skull and Bones looks better but this is to be expected. But hey, at least we don’t have another Gotham Knights on our hands (which looked worse than Batman: Arkham Knight).
The biggest issue of Skull and Bones is that it took most of the elements of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, made them worse, and tried to exploit gamers with its “Games as a Service” approach. In short, this is yet another Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Like Rocksteady, Ubisoft took a look at what people liked about Black Flag, and tried to create a GaaS title. Also like Rocksteady, Ubisoft seemed to miss what made Black Flag stand out when it came out.
Now as I’ve said, the game still suffers from the MAGPIE error code that plagued its Closed Beta and Open Beta builds. As such, we can’t benchmark it. Thankfully, Ubisoft is offering a Free Trail to everyone. So, if you’re remotely interested in it, you should first test that free trial!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email