Researching the West: Assassins Creed, Black Flag

This game gives the player an undeniable sense of freedom, which seeing as it's a Pirate game, it should. When I played through this game I remember setting up my exercise bike in front of the TV and playing simultaneously (I know, genius right?)  and the time would fly by. But for my I got greedy, which fits the pirate tone. As in most game you can upgrade your ship until it becomes the most deadly in the Caribbean, until then, there are alot of ships you will simply not be able to go up against, such as the Man o' Wars and the Legendary ships. This challenge made me desperate to take down the biggest, hardest ship in the game, these Legendary ships are so heavily armoured that you have no chance without the upgrades. Heres a reference of size between a you ship 'The Jackdaw', and a big ship 'Man of War'.

And then you have your Legendary ships, that are twice to tree times the size of those. But me being as determined as I was, I decided to swim to one, and trying to take everyone on board without fighting the ship, and without my crew, I realise now this was slightly stupid as these ships shot you a long way off. As I swam for about half an hour, trying to dodge the sight of the sniper, I eventually (on what must have been the 4th time) made it, and as I approached the ship, clutching to the the wood as I pulled myself from the water, the cannons blew me far from the ship, and I instantly died. You need to have almost everything fully upgraded to do this. This took me a long time to learn. And it takes a long time to do this. Although the free running, and story where great elements in this game, and every great game should have broken up gameplay to keep in interesting, taking down huge ships was my personal favourite bit of this game. The control of the ship is amazing, and I've never seen a game that does this so well. You are still in charge of your ship as the character, but you have the ability to give the orders, of shooting the Motars (a long range, big damage shot that shoots to the sky and lands on ships afar), your broadside cannons (normal vertically aiming cannons you see on ships), your swivel guns (that you can fire to do extra damage after the initial shot has been taken, your chase cannons (which fire forwards for an enemy you maybe in pursuit of), or your heavy shot (an extremely powerful shot from your Broadside cannons), you can also throw fire barrels that you can explode from the back of your ship, in case someone in chasing your tail, and you can choose the speed in your ship, which changes how fast you can turn. You can also ram enemies with your ship. After these sometimes lengthy battles, you have the option to board the ship, to take crew, treasure, and parts of the destroyed ships. In this you have to aboard the ship and kill a percentage of the crew, and sometimes a few specific people on board. I found these battles to never get tiresome, I would sit on my bike for hours playing, dripping in sweat and seriously needing a shower without realising the time gone by. You also find these pre-defeated ships, which have a certain amount of time to be before exploding, in this short space of time you can board the ship, and take what you can before it blows. You can also explore underwater shipwrecks infested with sharks, save stranded men and take them as crew, and take floating treasure, go up against strongholds as well as go fishing for sharks and whales, often meaning taking out a row boat and harpooning the animal. This game did not only capture the ascetics of being a pirate, but also the atmosphere and exhilaration of it, the want to be the most feared and powerful ship on the seas. These ideas are something I would want to have in my comic, different ranks of ship, different battle techniques, maybe even each ship could have a different method of combat depending on the animals on board or the animal the Captain is, to mirror his hunting techniques?