The Ezio Collection is still a notable absence but Ubisoft continues to bring its back catalogue of Assassin’s Creed titles onto Nintendo Switch, this time with The Rebel Collection – combining the last two last-gen series entries into one release. Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag and AC Rogue are now available on Switch with all DLC included. It’s a whopping 20GB install in total, so what does this actually deliver? Are we getting a mildly upgraded last-gen experience or a hybrid release with some of PS4 and Xbox One’s enhancements?
First up, I think it’s worth stressing that it’s a genuine pleasure to see these games again. Black Flag re-invigorated the series, adding an emphasis on ship-to-ship battling, taking the series from parkour to large scale naval warfare. Calm coral blue bay areas quickly turn to stormy seas – a battleground beholden to wave deformation. It’s exhilarating to watch and looks wonderful in both games, which are well-delivered on Switch and in many respects, superior in play compared to the PlayStation 3 version.
Yes, they are ports – but some thought has gone into the conversions. Quality of life improvements are made, for example. The HUD is adjusted, HD Rumble is supported and there’s also the ability to use the Joy-Cons’ motion controls for aiming. If you liked the approach to Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed 3 Switch port, this follows suit. In terms of basic rendering specs, that means you get an impressive upgrade over last-gen’s native 720p resolution, with both Black Flag and Rogue delivering a dynamic 1080p when docked. Standard 1920×1080 is the upper bounds there, but resolution will drop in intense scenes.
In naval warfare and in dense forest spots, the lowest I measured is around 1600×900 in Black Flag. For Rogue I’ve counted a little lower as the worst point, at 1472×828. However, on balance it’s surprising how much of the experience remains at the target 1080p. Also impressive is that the portable experience is mostly fixed at 1280×720 to match the screen’s native resolution, and while we didn’t pick out any DRS in the action, it may well be there in extreme cases. All round, the port is competent where it needs to be. The resolution improvement over last-gen is clear and the wobbly 20-60fps unlocked frame-rate of the older games is gone with a more preferable capped 30fps in place instead.
Dynamic resolution scaling seems to be doing a good job here in stabilising performance. While it’s not a clean, locked, properly paced 30fps for the entirety of the experience (as it was on PlayStation 4) the performance level is there and only drops sporadically – and even then, we’re still in the high 20s. Black Flag – the star of the show – is more stable overall than Rogue, but the performance outlook overall is sound enough. The same situation applies to the mobile experience, which is arguably better still. There seems to be a better lock to the target resolution and while performance is not perfect, it’s even closer to a stable 30fps.