The Best Game I Don't Want to Play

One of the first computer games I ever played was Sid Meier's Pirates, but I never beat the game. I've owned this game on no less than four separate occasions. It was given to me on a floppy disk and then when we owned a computer without a floppy drive I bought it on CD. After that I ended up buying a downloadable version on one of my laptops and finally I bought the iOS version for my iPAD. I've never stopped enjoying the game, but to me the game wasn't about finding the lost sister. It was about being a pirate and taking over the Caribbean for whatever country I was representing.

Now, 26 years after Pirates was first released there is a new pirate game and my feelings about it are much the same. I am talking about Assassin's Creed IV. I've played the game for a bit now and I should be deeper into it than the fifth chapter, but I don't want to play the actual game. I want to roam the Caribbean causing mischief and mayhem. I want to take down ships, improve my ship, and then take down bigger ships. I find the game extremely fun, but the main quest feels like a side adventure in the life of a pirate, and as of right now I've left it far behind me and have spent much more time pillaging and raiding the Spanish Main.

The hallmark of a truly great open world game is that it gives you the freedom to create your own game. All the times I've played Pirate my game was to take over the world. I turned it into a game of Risk with pirates and as of right now I am playing Assassin's Creed IV in much the same way. I don't know what will happen when I have the ship fully upgraded. I am sure I will finish the main quest. It hasn't gotten that intriguing but I am generally curious to see where it goes, and you have to play the main quest to unlock some of the better equipment in the game.

Some of my feeling about the main quest line might be that I enjoyed Assassin's Creed III immensely and the best innovation in that game was the combat. That is gone in IV and Edward Kenway plays much weaker than Conner. Conner flowed through combat and taking down large groups of enemies wasn't much of a challenge. There were more than a few times that my entire play session involved me running through the wilderness reenacting scenes from The Patriot.

I found the combat to be the best part of that game, and that is what I find lacking in IV. With all that being said I think I am going to enjoy IV more as a game. The navel battles and the joy of being a pirate are what make it fun. The Assassin's Creed part of the game feels like it is almost an afterthought, and I am ok with that, because like Sid Meier's Pirates years ago I don't need to even play the game to have fun playing the game.