For the past six years, the Assassin's Creed video game series has hosted murderous sprees across the history of Western civilization, all with a weird meta-connection to modern-day times. Beyond its consistent “run-anywhere, kill anything” core gameplay—as if Spider-Man were scaling giant buildings while hiding swords in his sleeves—the series' soup of ancient evils and corporate villainy has always proven an awkward juggle.

Game Details Publisher: Ubisoft

Platform: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PS3, Wii U, PC (Nov. 19), Xbox One and PS4 (on launch)

Release Date: October 29, 2013

Price: $59.99

Links: Official website | Steam | Amazon UbisoftXbox 360 (reviewed), PS3, Wii U, PC (Nov. 19), Xbox One and PS4 (on launch)October 29, 2013$59.99

Still, at least settings like ancient Italy and the American Revolution maintained a tenuous connection between past and present by way of, say, the Illuminati or conspiracy theories. Wackadoodle, but doable. The series' sixth major installment, conversely, seems to say “aw, whatever” to such strides. "People love pirates, right? Let's do pirates."

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag doesn't necessarily play as half-assed as that might sound. Once the game sets sail, its swashbuckling hero combines the extremes of a superpowered assassin and ruthless ship captain on a quest that seems to go on forever, traversing nearly the entire real-life enormity of the West Indies.

Yet this stupidly huge game—yes, even bigger than the giant Assassin's Creed III—somehow feels claustrophobic. Even if you haven't burnt through every AC entry thus far, and even if you're charmed by the variety of set pieces throughout the latest campaign, ACIV sees the series both run out of creative gas and miss out on opportunities to refine its most basic gameplay elements. Interested pirates can expect a mighty long journey in ACIV, but they should beware dehydration and scurvy along the way.

Metagame testing 101

Edward Kenway is the assassin this time, a Welshman eager to find riches on the open seas in the early 18th century. No parrot on his shoulder, though; just a chip, mostly in the form of a beleaguered wife left behind during his travels (and hinted at in numerous flashback clips).

Unlike the protagonists in other AC games, Kenway doesn't start things off as an officially ordained assassin. Once he reaches the West Indies, he kills another assassin and steals his identity—and his trademark white robes—while trying to deliver cargo under a new name. Once that jig is up, Kenway goes full pirate. He rounds up a crew, secures a pirate ship, and sails from island to island in search of rum and loot.

Of course, by then, he's also caught up in an order of assassins, a few mystical relics, and a batch of Templars, the series' longtime foes. From here on, his missions—mostly on-foot like games of old, with a smattering of open-sea missions in between—alternate between noble efforts and ignoble deeds.

As in prior entries, ACIV sporadically drops you into modern-day society, though this time not as series regular Desmond Miles. Instead, you're a new, unnamed employee at Abstergo Entertainment, the company that has mined Desmond's efforts in prior games. You're asked to play through Kenway's memories to build an entertaining virtual reality experience. At one point, an executive barks about the project by saying that pirate movies were “what made Hollywood, and we have access to the real deal!”

So to review: you play as a video game tester who plays as a pirate. Seems like a perfect canvas for despondent game designers to lambast their companies' working conditions or the drudgery of bloated, corporate games, yet such commentary is mostly left on the cutting room floor. (Tucked away in menus, Abstergo employees argue about things like the game's mentions of slavery: “It's kind of part of the history of the region,” one says. “Folks want to have fun, right? Not think about social injustice and stuff,” the other replies. That's as subtle or sophisticated as the game's “meta” content really gets.)

What remains instead is a well crafted but forgettable campaign about piracy in the West Indies, often featuring real figures from history. The vocal performances and text are rarely offensive or annoying. That said, these are neither the campy, fun-loving pirates of a Bruckheimer production nor the cold-hearted, memorably brutal savages of pulpy pirate stories.

Thankfully, Blackbeard shows up midway through the quest with fire in his eyes—and in his beard—to put some juice into the otherwise staid cast. Too bad Kenway doesn't emerge as much more than a money-first pirate with occasional flashes of the moral high ground.