My man o’ struggle, the HMS Gibraltar, torn from the palms of the English Royal Navy, is my most interesting ship. It’s been out at sea on a mission to ship cargo for in-game weeks (an excellent 12 hours in actual life), and its odds of success on its harmful expedition have been solely 75% after I despatched it on its manner. Dropping this ship can be disastrous for my naval operation as Edward Kenway in Murderer’s Creed 4: Black Flag.
The following day, I test in on my ship following its in a single day journey, and… success. The nice ship Gibraltar has returned from its voyage, and my assets and coffers are full.
However I restrain myself from shouting an audible ‘yusssss,’ as a result of I’m surrounded by commuters on the London Underground, the place displaying any form of emotion might get you drowned in a sea of silent disapproval and side-glances. See, all this occurred in 2013, after I was obsessively utilizing the Black Flag Companion app on Android to handle my fleet of stolen ships in the primary recreation. Each commute, each bedtime, each sedentary rest room break was spent managing my fleet on that rattling app.
The fleet administration was a part of the sport correct, however it felt so effectively suited to the cell format that I just about solely handled this a part of the sport by my pill. It meant that after I’d get dwelling from work again to the ‘big-screen’ expertise of the primary recreation, as a substitute of diddling round within the fleet menu, I’d be singing shanties on the excessive seas, trying to find treasure, completely ignoring the primary quest, and all the opposite great actions that the sport was actually designed for.
The app and the sport had a symbiotic relationship. The fleet administration felt form of tedious in the primary recreation and added little to the cinematic pirate fantasy, however to have the ability to do ship admin out of your pill on the rest room prepare, bus or beneath the desk throughout Thanksgiving dinner was borderline magical. A function that pulled you out of the sport when used on the console all of a sudden become one which saved you embroiled in that world if you have been away from the large display screen.
The best trick this app pulled was making me delude myself into pondering that I used to be truly saving time, or one way or the other outsmarting the sport, through the use of it. In fact, the fact was that it made the Murderer’s Creed IV: Black Flag permeate out of the PS4 and into these little moments of downtime in my day, and in reality I wound up spending a lot extra time on this planet of Black Flag.
I’d handle my fleet each evening earlier than I went to mattress, then sleep straightforward realizing that as I dreamt of treasure hunts and tavern wenches serving me gutrot rum in Nassau taverns, my schooners and frigates have been crusing by the evening, and that within the morning I’d return to seek out my coffers full, able to spend on upgrades to the primary ship I, as Edward Kenway, sailed within the recreation itself.
That wasn’t all you may do with the Companion App. It was additionally a map that dynamically tracked your home within the recreation world, depict enemy ships in real-time (on an even bigger scale than your in-game minimap), and revealing the situation of treasure that you just wouldn’t in any other case be capable of discover, full with old-timey drawings displaying you the treasure’s actual location.
Successfully, you may delegate the annoying strategy of pausing to test your map on a regular basis to a pill propped up by your facet. It was good, providing you with an expertise that was one of many primary promoting factors of the Wii U (which got here out round a yr earlier in 2012), however by way of a free app fairly than a cumbersome and dear piece of {hardware}.
Ubisoft used to dabble fairly a bit on this stuff. Murderer’s Creed: Unity additionally had a companion app with a persistent real-time map, in addition to puzzles that you just needed to clear up by way of the app to unlock chests within the recreation. There was additionally a fairly weird one for Far Cry 4, referred to as Enviornment Grasp, the place you compelled individuals and animals to pit-fight in opposition to these owned by different gamers. Dodgy ethics apart, this one didn’t fairly have the influence of the Murderer’s Creed ones because it didn’t have that compelling influence on the primary recreation.
The mid-2010s have been rife with companion apps of various high quality. Dying Mild had a fairly good one the place you’d ship scouts out on missions, and in the event that they have been profitable you may ship their loot to your primary recreation. The Pip-Boy was a fairly charming app for Fallout 4, however all it actually did was provide you with everlasting entry to your in-game menu; with that mentioned, in case you bought your palms on the Pip-Boy duplicate cellphone case that you just truly strapped onto your wrist, it grew to become an immersive (if clunky) piece of equipment.
Nowadays, companion apps are likely to preserve issues easy, appearing as bulletin boards for video games like Future 2 and Name of Obligation, however these early efforts to combine the companion app into the physique of the sport felt way more formidable and spectacular. The Black Flag app is not out there – one more sufferer of Ubisoft’s tendency to cull on-line parts from its video games – however practically 10 years on it stays the most effective of its sort, and I’d wish to see extra.
