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.”
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Imagine releasing the same game twice.
They couldn’t even do that.
Started last night: the game works great with no problems on my 4090 and I’m also really enjoying it. It’s better, much better than Black Flag which I obviously played a long time ago.
bot comment definitely
Go make idiotic comments somewhere else…………👌
Ubicrap bot confirmed.
How do you know it’s better if you can barely remember Black Flag? Sounds like cope.
good night……………………….
I’m not defending Black Flag like everyone on internet or say that Skull & Bones is bad…but man,i installed the trial last night on my PS5 and after 10 min max i erased that game from my memory.
AC Odyssey had way better naval battles than this(maybe i didn’t played enough S&B to see if anything changes from aim&shoot only tactics),but where is ramming?Brace for impact? where are the 3 different speed choices from AC Black Flag(loose sails,main sails,travel sails)?
Also why when if you want to buy the full game it directs you to Ultimate edition?
Also since when Pirates play fair,safe and play nice?
1 credit goes to Ubisoft still,for the motto under play game “Long Live Piracy”…this game kk. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4a8e7347f16fc6db608b35a384dc4705b3e747c61f7bf95d1d1ef5d75530cf84.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/07c567944fc04576c9d0acb9ba6c42461ee9e1385e1e396efafbdecc9ef894df.jpg https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4d133c9d34574c559c69570814780c54486cc8ee683af6a4e2ca452a999fa537.jpg
“Long live piracy!”
Funny stuff there.
Especially considering b*tches from Ubisoft. Well they pirated their own soundtracks after all.
That “play nice, play fair, play safe” garbage is so cringe.
” we all play by the same rules ” literraly shows woke, feminazims and coloured manipualtion.
Try looking up the meaning of literally.
see?? 3 manipulators didn’t like my comment , point proven!
Nice sarcasm, you dp implies ur proud owner of gt1030
Idk how much u remember about black flag but I think not that much since ur not bringing any clear argument why u think skull n bones it’s superior to black flag…
We don’t want ppl to think u just trolling. Just share a few words about why u think is ” much better…” or what does S&B have over black flag in terms of gameplay, and I bet ppl will stop busting ur chops.
Nobody cares about your opinion John, just give us the objective facts. That’s what a journalist’s job is
This is gaming you muppet. Nothing objective about it.
This is why I don’t download new games anymore.
I’m done with gaming, cos anyway, it seems that developers have reached a limit or something, and they’re obviously unable to do better than what has been already done a decade ago.
When you have around 100-200 of the best games from 1990-2015 or so, you have seen pretty much everything the gaming world can offer to you.
Every new game is only like an alternative which is slightly different, and in general, worse than old games.
That’s because developers today are miserable for a multitude of reasons. Most just have zero passion for the game they are working on so it’s just another job. Some are treated terrible and hate the workplace. No matter the reason it clearly shows in the end result of the product.
ubisoft does not have does not have any passion , they hired people who are doing nothing in there and then the ones who make something deliver mediocre stuff , because all the others are talentless or are fighting for “equality” and when those don’t get what they want accuse the ones working of harassment and racism , pure manipualtion
woke dislikes …tf you doing here? move to another dimension.
It only seems that way because of the decisions that are being made from the higher-ups. All the best talents have been chased out of the industry but even the ones who remain that are competent aren’t being afforded the luxury to make something new and enticing due to other interests that are more lucrative. That’s capitalism for you.
Plus, all of the subversive ideologues who have been undermining the whole industry play a big role in why everything has become so stagnant and regressive to some extent.
Star Citizen is literally the only game I can think of that is trying to push beyond the boundaries we’ve come to accept but we all know how this community feels about that project.
The only thing Star Citizen is trying to push beyond is the barriers on how to squeeze every last cent out of their supporters.
Lol I had a feeling I would get a response like this. Perhaps by the time SQ42 releases some of you may change your tune a bit. We’ll see.
If it releases, I won’t have the money to buy it anyway, so it won’t matter to me. It also won’t change how RSI has milked their supporters over the years. Didn’t they recently exceed $500 million in donations? Without ever delivering a finished product? Nothing but promises, more promises, and maybe a roadmap to the development roadmap while expecting people to fork out hundred of dollars for virtual ships they can fly in a technical preview of a game? Call me when the game they actually promised to make is out, then we’ll talk.
When was the last time you ever watched an actual gameplay video from SC? Its gone through radical changes throughout the years and has delivered on many aspects. I don’t see online component nearing completion any time soon but they already announced that SQ42 is feature complete and is now in polish phase. How long that will take? Nobody knows. My hope is that it’ll be released within a year from now.
But if you’re more than willing to play games like Valheim, Enshrouded and all the other early access games that have sold millions of copies or you don’t see any issue with how incomplete they are considering their popularity then it only tells me that you’re very selective about what you choose to be enraged by. Like it or not, a game like Star Citizen at its current scale and what it strives to achieve will never exist any other way, especially when you consider the state of AAA studios nowadays. I’m just glad that this experiment exists and continues to thrive and intrigue newcomers. While you accuse this game of being a scam have fun playing Starfield where the planets you can fly directly into are literal flat JPEG images placed in the distance. The game being complete is not much of a rebuttal because it doesn’t look like an experience worth anyone’s time.
The majority of ships in SC can be purchased in-game without the need of spending real money. I don’t know how many times they need to explain it so that the haters can comprehend that information but the only purpose of spending real cash beyond the base game is to further support their development of the vision that we all want to see. What people spend with their money shouldn’t have to bother you or anyone else. I can see the money going into worse things like working girls in the online business if you get my drift. Or gambling and other pointless affairs.
I’ve tried the “free fly” things a few times. They were mostly pointless. The game barely ran even on modern hardware, and eventually they forced TAA on everyone that was so blurry that you could barely see through it. They gave you ships you could fly, but the keybinds were so complicated that it was nearly impossible to navigate them and figure out how to actually fly the ships. They had a few ports you could land at, and nothing you could do in them. I’ve seen in-game stuff that was featured in the trailers, and there was nothing you could do there except sometimes find a store you could shop at. The NPC’s were mostly just non-interactive like the ones in Starfield, and they didn’t really have much you could talk to the few interactive NPC’s about. It was super easy to get your ship stranded just trying to fly around the starter solar system due to limited fuel, and flying ships in No Man’s Sky was more enjoyable (granted I played that game 100% of the time in VR).
Why are you listing games you assume I’ve played? I don’t normally rush out and buy early access games. I do have Starship Troopers Extermination, but a friend sent that to me because they wanted someone to play it with. It’s not complete of course, but the company also made Squad so they have a history of actually working on and releasing games (or at least a game). RSI has no history of game releases.
I never said you couldn’t buy the ships for Star Citizen in-game. I was complaining about the fact that they sell those same ships for real-world money (United States Dollars) on their website at obscene prices. They have ship packs/bundles that are worth thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars. For worthless digital assets. I don’t understand the compulsion some people have to defend companies that operate this way. They’ve raked in $500 million+ from the poor saps who are supporting them. When is it enough? When do they actually release a game?
OK, so they claim Squadron 42 is complete, but remember when they said they’d publish a development roadmap by a certain date, and then a few months after that they instead said they were going to publish a roadmap to the roadmap? At what point does anyone actually think they are a trustworthy company and will actually do anything they have promised? For years now they’ve been on a “I’ll believe it when I see it” basis with me, and with many other gamers as well. With the amount of money they have pouring in, they should have had a game release years ago. How long does a AAA game take to make? 3-4 years? Star Citizen has been in production for over 12 years with no final release in sight! When 3D Realms did that with Duke Nukem Forever it was a meme, but while 3D Realms did take some early pre-orders they didn’t milk their fans for more and more money over that time period as everyone waited for the game to release.
Well the game definitely has a huge learning curve and I think you approached it with a certain expectation based on your experience with NMS. Unless of course you didn’t play that game beforehand. Outside of the pre-rendered in-engine trailers which glamorizes or exaggerates certain things about the game, they usually show what you will get in the game whenever a major update comes along. Their ship commercial trailers tends to show things maybe you won’t see in the game just yet like other alien species and planets. And yeah the NPCs are rough at the moment and clearly they were thrown in just to make the environments feel populated.
I don’t know if you were trying to play it like NMS because in that game you have unlimited fuel but in SC you’re supposed to be a little bit more calculated and realistic about your ventures. I think the game certainly requires people to watch online tutorials before playing it because if it weren’t for Arena Commander then the whole experience would be worthless and frustrating for anyone coming in with no knowledge of what they’re getting themselves into.
I didn’t assume you played any of those games or that you intend to play them but I was giving examples of ones that have been covered on this site and yet they never received the same kind of backlash that SC would normally get. All the major people leading behind this project were picked because of their track record and expertise in the industry. These aren’t newcomers who are suddenly jumping into the deep end of the pool.
You are right about the pricing being ridiculous. No middle class person in their right mind would spend a fortune buying these items. The thing is I don’t think many of them are. It’s really only the devoted and well off aspect of the community who CIG is targeting with their tens of thousands of dollars worth of it items they sell in their store. People can call it shady, anti-consumer, greedy or whatever but it appears all that money directly goes into the production. The company continues to grow and they’ve moved their studios to better locations to accommodate their growing workforce. If people are willing to throw cash at the most expensive ships in their store then why should they stop selling it? They’re making the game all of us can only ever dream of playing and they need all the support they can get if they wish to make it independently without any third party or middleman ruining it for everyone. Normally in a case like this I would be worried but seeing how competent and transparent the whole team has been thus far, it leaves the impression that they’re to be trusted.
Not sure if I’m fully aware about the SQ42 roadmap situation so it’s something I’ll have to check out later on. But you have to remember that this isn’t an ordinary AAA game. If anything this is what a AAAA, which Skull & Bones claims to be, is supposed to look like. They’re trying to incorporate that living universe from Persistent Universe into their single-player campaign. Something like that does not take 3 or even 5 years of development if we have to be honest to ourselves. Not even an established studio like EA could accomplish something like this at a faster rate than CIG. Only games with conventional limitations are created in a timely manner.
SC started with the expectations of making an experience that was much smaller in scale but when the community donation just kept pouring in they eventually asked the public if they should expand on their goals if they continue to receive support. The majority said yes and that’s why we’re still here in alpha phase after all these years. If the community were to make a poll in order to compel CIG to stop implementing features and just release the whole thing with what’s actually complete but polished of course then maybe they’d listen. Especially if the majority of the their customers participate in the poll. The thing there’s no sense or urgency by anyone to do that. There is a Reddit community based on those who got a refund but I don’t think they’re that big in proportion to those who are complacent with game’s current state.
No Man’s Sky doesn’t have unlimited fuel for anything beyond simple flight thrusters, meaning you can run out of fuel for drives that allow you to quickly move from planet to planet or even launch your ship, but they never completely strand you in space without fuel. The fuels that are limited you have to make out of things you harvest, and there’s always asteroids nearby to blast to get the mineral to make pulse engine fuel from to ensure you can make it to the next planet. I was using No Man’s Sky as an example of a game where you fly space ships that’s more fun, and wasn’t intending to compare the fuel mechanics (No Man’s Sky isn’t perfect either).
As for the monetization model, have you ever considered that if they are making millions off of a game they never released, then what’s the point of releasing it? If the money ever starts to dry up then they might actually move to a release, but as long as their cash flow remains reasonably stable what’s the point of release? They are literally just milking people. The game should have been done years ago.
It’s easy to blame “the community” for the state of development, but at the end of the day the company needs to actually take some responsibility and decide to work towards a finished product. All of these cool features people want can be added after final release just like MMO’s do. There’s no need to hold up releasing the final game for a decade just to implement tons of random features “for the community”. All of this just feels like a cheap excuse to never actually release the final game.
Fair enough. I also think no game should stay in development (alpha) phase longer than it needs to, especially if it’s a crowdfunded game, and they should take a page from No Man’s Sky and others on how to deal with feature implementations. Like I’ve mentioned though, they intend to make a persistent universe unlike any other. Realistically, they can achieve that goal within a 4-5 year long development but it would mean so many things that are currently present in the alpha version simply wouldn’t be there. And the whole concept of trying to make every single individual an actual living entity who can affect the economy and societies at large within the universe would have to be scrapped. NPCs would mostly be used as props rather than becoming dynamic AI that are actively going about their lives like any other actual player. It would be like any other game essentially.
Things like volumetric clouds with actual rain droplets, oceans with dynamic water simulation, realistic sweat and blood, etc. are unnecessary features they could have just been added in after the more crucial elements the game needs in order to feel like a fully fledged title. While I understand the sentiment behind the whole milking people’s wallets and such, I think we can all agree that the company aren’t scamming anyone in any way shape or form. They’re very much transparent about everything and are extremely communicative whether it’s through their YouTube channel or on various forums. The fans of the games are constantly giving their feedback and I’ve seen many instances whenever they get frustrated over certain delays or lack of decent news via their weekly updates.
The game runs well from what I’m seeing but obviously you need a decent and modern rig to get the most out of it. You’re probably not going to get that consistent 60fps even with a $700-1000 rig but it’s stable enough for an alpha game that is constantly changing. Based on the development timeline, CIG aren’t going to change their approach with this game so there’s really no use in complaining about it unless the majority of the fan base one day decides to say “enough is enough”. The best thing anyone could do if they’re not happy with the way things are going is to just focus on other space sims that are feature complete. If the playerbase dies out and there’s less engagement happening on their social networks then perhaps CIG would begin to rethink on what they’re doing. But we’re not at that point yet given the kind of coverage and positive feedback we see all around.
Again any additional features, engine updates, etc. can all be added after a final release. Both Star Trek Online and Tera Online did engine updates to their games many years after release to modernize the graphics API they were using (from D3D9 to D3D11), enhance the visuals of their games, and make the binaries native 64-bit. If they had just focused on delivering a finished game with the engine they had instead of getting stuck in feature creep then they could have had their final release, then started slowly working on these fancy new features and their engine upgrades to slowly bring them into the finished product over the years. They would have had a finished and polished game, people would be happy, and no one would think they’re a scam.
Instead of doing that they chose to not bother working towards a final release, allowed themselves to get stuck in an infinite state of feature creep, and milked their supporters for a ridiculous amount of money over the years. This is not how a responsible game studio operates.
Elite Dangerous started development in 2012 after a crowdfunding campaign in November of that year, and in December 2014 they released the game for Windows. Since then it has had (I think) over 2 dozen updates, new content, a VR mode was added, and I think co-op was added at one point as well. That’s an example of how a crowdfunded game should be handled.
Star Citizen is an example of what appears to be a man running a scam who is making it appear like he’s delivering a product by hiring people and having those people work endlessly on a game that never releases. If it isn’t a scam, then they have really screwed up their development process, and they need to step back and reevaluate how they are working on this game and try to get things in order so they can get a finished version out the door.
Well, I said what I’ve had to say. The company isn’t going to change its current routine in how they’re developing this. You may call it irresponsible but if the community is largely complacent about it then there’s nothing anyone can do other than complain about the whole situation. Perhaps over time more and more people will get fed up and subreddits like /r/starcitizen_refunds will reach a point where they’ll have to be addressed by Chris Roberts himself. That forum already has 16.1k members whereas the official Star Citizen subreddit has 398k.
Some folks support the whole feature creep aspect of it. Others don’t. The backers made their voices heard and encouraged CIG early on to continue adding things to the game beyond what was initially promised with their crowdfunding stretch goals. Sure, it was different time when crowdfunding in general was at its infancy but that mindset is still prevalent. It could very well be an opportunistic situation by CIG but I don’t think the people who continue to fork over hundreds of dollars for these so-called JPEG ships are stupid. Well maybe some of them are but I doubt the majority of them are unaware of their own actions, especially after all these years.
Clearly plenty of people have found success in achieving refunds so if anyone else is fed up then they should be encouraged to do same. Like I said, complaining isn’t going to change the fact that CIG are going full steam ahead with the way their handling their projecting. Calling them immoral, scammers or disorganised isn’t going to change their outlook. Not unless some massive, perhaps governmental entity steps in to confront them. Pushing the whole refund movement will possibly work but it’s all dependent on their growth. Either way I think the fate of this whole project will eventually teach everybody a valuable lesson.
exactly the same way as me.
Respectfully, I don’t agree with this kind of defeated mentality.
Yes, most of new games suck but there are still great new games coming out every now and then that are both fun and creative. You just have to pick wisely
Indie games are still great and indie developers still come out with original fun games all the time. I avoid the “AAA” games and have for years now.
I understand where you’re coming from, but there are still great new games coming out today.
Terminator Defiance comes out tomorrow for example and it’s really enjoyable.
It’s the AAA space that’s completely beyond saving.
A bug shake up seems to be imminent in that space however.
I’ve become jaded as a middle-aged gamer, having experienced incredible games of the past from Half Life 1 and 2, to Deus Ex, to Battlefield 2, to Uncharted or Gears of War etc., I wonder if my disillusionment is from aging, but no, games these days are such a rehash, from CoD 10 or 12 or whatever it is now, to even Hawked which is a blatantly overt clone of Fortnite: it’s shameless cash grabbing, Live game services with F2P models that provide sh*ty games that even with financial investment from the consumer offer far too little an increase in experience. The worst of the worst are games like Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes in which players actually spend hundreds or thousands of £€$, and get what? Absolutely minor cosmetic or minor modifications to the base game: this is criminal to me, unethical practices that are a cancer to the gaming world. Skull and Bones: a total downgrade of a game like AssCreed BF, but what can we expect from Ubisoft? The latest AssCreed in the preview trailers looked entirely identical to Origins but was promoted as going back to its roots: bullshit, it’s a clone, a clone like most AAA or AA games these days.
The red flags were all there during Gears and Uncharted games.
You just needed some foresight when they started adding DLC to everything and dumbing down the gameplay of games to appeal to a more casual crowd.
This is a quadruple A title.
This should exceed all previous triple A games.
The fact that you have forgotten this is silly.
To anyone who doubt me on saying that ubisoft recycles games , there you go, its even worst …
But skull and bones is worst , it has feminazism , woke and raibow terrorism.
Yeah looks pretty much a downgrade and reskin for a gaas model yuk but I’m sure many will still play it. I need to get back into 4, it is great but just moved on before finishing it. It sucks that jubisots does make some great games but pulls their launcher nonsense and keeps denuvo on 7+ year old games like Origins. I booted that up again, the offline free version, and it’s a fantastic game despite the fixes you have to do to not get stutter and such. FC2 modded is awesome and FC3 still a fun game, blacklist, future soldier, odyssey even COJ series is thiers but techland did gunslinger for them before dying light. A few great AAA games here and there but mostly indies and older classic AAAs are best.
quadruple A in cost but not in terms of gameplay, people always will be compare this to black flag since it use black flag as base and they know it. They should’ve think to make it better in terms of gameplay. It would be good if they only use Black Flag mechanics then make it like Sea of Thieves or just like MMO co-op live service.
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