 Hey, what's up, guys? This is Chris Pike. My friends call me Bixie. Back in action. Today, I want to show you some heartbeat moments using the heartbeat tool about the skull and bones release. And in particular, I've got a review that I really, really enjoyed. It's by Skill Up. And here's the thing. The review is almost 47 minutes long. So there's a lot. I mean, it's a great review, but I found some of the best moments in it. And to be fair, most of the beginning moments, most of the moments are at the beginning. So why don't you join me and my captain here down at the bottom right screen. And let's go through some of the best moments of Skull and Bones review here featuring Skill Up. So here we are. I'm on heartbeat. I'm going to click on quick summary 11 years. It starts off pretty quick. Here's the simplest, most direct and most accurate summary of Skull and Bones that I can come up with. Ubisoft spent 11 years making an Assassin's Creed Black Flag spin-off that is objectively worse than Assassin's Creed Black Flag in every aspect. They then charged $70 for it, but also stuffed it full of in-game spending and the season pass. So there you go. That is the, that is the statement for all of you that are wondering if you should pick it up. That just about summarizes the guys. 11 years and it's a worst game. How do you even do that? I don't know. I don't have words for it. It gets worse though. I mean, there are some redeeming moments. Don't get me wrong. Later on, we'll get into those, but let's skip forward a little bit here and let's talk about what is the world's first quadruple-A video game. Yeah, you're going to love this. They then declared it the world's first quadruple-A video game when it is at an absolute stretch, a double-A title, and realistically I play many indie games that have better production values and more content at launch than this does. There you have it. So they're claiming it's a quadruple-A game. It's double-A at most according to Skill Up. And if you look at the reviews from other people and you look at the gameplay footage, yeah, this guy's, he's on track here. So let's skip forward here a little more here. He talks about the CEO and how he either lied to shareholders or, you know, maybe misrepresented what they were doing to shareholders. Let's go right there. Minute 19. And the fact that the CEO straight up lied to his shareholders about the very nature of what this game is and where it sits in the market. So I wouldn't quite go that far. I'd say he stretched the truth, but yeah, I mean, that's his opinion and he's entitled to it. And yeah, there you go. So anyways, let's now let's kick into some of the core elements and let's see what what he's got going on in terms of that. It is no exaggeration to say that every core element of this game, Black Flag did it better right down to the sailing and the ship combat. And that is the one thing that this game had to do better. You had one job. You had one job, man. And you didn't get that one job done. Unbelievable. Guys, this isn't like a game that came out last year and it's not quite as good. This is not an 11 year gap. I mean, really let that sink in. All right, let's get forward a little bit more and he talks about he goes a little more in depth into that 11 year gap that I just mentioned. Like how do you spend 11 years making a worse version of a game that you already made? Just think about what it would take to arrive at that result that is just unfathomable. Yeah, he's not wrong. So in comparison to Black Flag, in comparison to what we consider to be a reasonable price point, in comparison to what we would expect from a triple A game, let alone this ridiculous quadruple A label, Scullombones is a colossal failure. Yeah, so there you go. Relative and contextually speaking, this game is a train wreck. All right, so with all that out of the way, he actually didn't mind parts of the game. Let's skip forward and listen to that part. But as I was playing it, I wasn't hating it and broadly speaking, 20 hours in, I had a decent time with it. I did. I had some fun with Scullombones and I've certainly reviewed many, many games that were objectively better than this, but that I disliked for a variety of reasons. So let's now listen to some of the reasons why he didn't hate it. Let's get forward a little here. Why don't I hate it and I kind of arrived at two conclusions. Number one, it's really cool to be a pirate and there he said it F bomb. I might have to edit that out, but you heard it here. Try as they might, not even Ubisoft can mess that up. It's cool to have a pirate ship. It feels good to drop the sail and catch the wind. It's really nice to sell an expense of water with pirate shanties playing in your ear. It's exciting to spy a distant vessel, accelerate to attack speed and then let the cannonade roar. That ship is just cool. And while a lot of those things are worse here than they were in Black Flag, they aren't so much worse that they are ruined. Okay, here's the second reason coming up. Secondly, I really thought about how much Scullombones is undermined by those contextual elements, the link to Black Flag, the development timeline, the price tag, and Eve Gilmore's embarrassing comments. Right. So if you think about this objectively, like if you can, and it's hard to do, if not impossible, but if you take the game on its own without all that nonsense that came with it, yeah, this is his opinion. And I thought to myself, let's remove all of that. Let's imagine that Black Flag never existed, and this is the first time that Ubisoft had made a pirate game. Let's imagine that it wasn't stuck in development hell for 11 years and instead had a thrifty three to four year development cycle. Right, like it was just a regular game with the regular backstory. All of that, you know, maybe it's not so bad. So anyways, that's his opinion. I'm going to skip forward a little bit more now, and let's get to another big, big, big issue is the price tag. Let's imagine that this game wasn't an absurd 70 US dollars plus extra for the deluxe or whatever, but a more reasonable 30 dollars. And let's imagine that Eve Gilmore never opened his mouth and said something so stupid that it's basically painted a target on this game's back for everyone with a social media account. Yeah, he's not wrong there, guys. So if this was a reasonable 30 dollar game, I think a lot of people would buy it. But when you paint it as a quadruple A game, creating a whole new category and an 11 year development cycle for something that's not even as good as the game it's ripping off or trying to emulate, yeah, it's just nightmare city stuff. So anyways, let's go on. He talks a little bit more about the game and how it's, you know, not too bad and what's good and bad about it. So let's kick in and check to that part. Is Skull and Bones an absolute catastrophe? No, it's not. It's just a really average video game that most people are going to think is boring, but some people are going to find some enjoyment in because to Ubisoft's credit, there isn't any other game quite like this one. So he's not completely destroying the game, right? It's not all down. Like, he's being relatively objective, which I think is, you know, is pretty fair. So another really interesting part here is that the 504 party talks about he reviews it basically with context and the video game business as a whole. The video game business is in a, you know, in a sad state, according to a lot of people, and he discusses it. Let's go. We're going to review Skull and Bones as a video game. And I'm going to tell you that it's broadly fine. But at the same time, I don't think we should ignore the broader context stuff because I think Skull and Bones is a very powerful example of how much worse the business of video games has gotten over the years and how brazen video game executives are in their lives to prop all of this up. Yeah, that's the executives are going to get a bit of a shellacking here. And rightfully, so they've been propping this up. They've probably had businessmen and people in suits delaying it. God only knows. Let's keep going on and hear what he has to say about that. Ubisoft really did spend 11 years to make a worse version of a game they already made so they could perpetually charge for it. And that is the money shot right there. Is this just a game they made because they wanted to get some sort of, you know, licensing model where people pay monthly some sort of residual income, as opposed to a one off like their previous game. Is that why it took so long? Is that behind all the delays and all the changes? And, you know, the fact that they're selling it the way they're selling it? That is a seriously good question. Anyways, it goes on and on about that. But let's get forward a little bit more. And he talks about what is Skull and Bones? Or a living. So what is it? Well, in broad strokes, I'd say that Skull and Bones is kind of like a really stripped back pirate themed survival game. It does have a campaign and missions aka contracts, but they're extremely bare bones, no pun intended. There are world events that's born on the map, but they're very few in far between. The main focus of the game is its sandbox. And you strike out from port with the intention of collecting materials that you can use to maintain your ship, both in terms of repairs and ammo, but also upgrade your ship by crafting new equipment. So that in a nutshell is basically what the game is about. He goes on a little bit more in a few seconds here to talk about what this core of Skull and Bones is. Let's let him add in a little more context here. What is the core of Skull and Bones? It is a big wide ocean that you sail around on so you can collect materials to craft ship upgrades. It's the focus on sandbox materials and crafting that make this feel more like a survival game than a lot of the other stuff in Ubisoft's portfolio. But that feeling also comes from just how little there is around that experience. Survival games typically feel very lean and mechanical, and that's usually a reflection of their focus on making their survival systems deep and flexible. Right, so we're looking at a survival game there, but yeah, it's pretty lean, I guess you can hear him say there. So it's there, it's there in spirit, but yeah, it's pretty bare bones. Let's go on a little bit further and let's hear him talk about the PvP or lack thereof. Let's get his opinion on that. What about PvP? Well, yeah, the game does support PvP, but in my 20 or so hours, I never actually experienced it. That's because PvP is only for specific events during the leveling experience. And when those events were happening, there was just no one else around. So that's interesting. So it's in the game, but yeah, they got to be during those specific events. And again, no one's around and you have a tree falls in the forest, you know. There is a lot more PvP at the end game, but again, I spent a few hours at the end game and I couldn't find any PvP. I joined PvP events and no one else would show up, but it's definitely there. However, it is always optional. Right, so there you go. So there you go. It's basically it's there. It seems pretty rare and I guess you kind of almost have to coordinate it in order for it to really happen. So yeah, let's get forward and talk about one of the other major issues that people have brought up is getting out of your ship. Remember, you could do this 11 years ago quite easily. So what about the whole getting out of your ship thing? Oh man. Okay. So you can get out of your pirate ship in Skull and Bones. You can only do so at specific ports. So it's not like you can sell up to any shoreline and hop out like you could do 11 years ago. What the hell in black flag? No, you sell up to a port. You hold down a button to disembark the screen fades to black and then all of a sudden you are magically ashore. Crazy. So that is a huge drawback in this game. It's I don't know. I don't even know what to say about that. I don't even know if this is going to be bug fixed or not, but it's pretty darn bad. So there you go. You heard it here. And then a couple other moments that are interesting are the I guess some of the gathering and the chopping. Let's look at that there. To chop down trees and mine or in this game. And rather than do those things at the on foot locations I just spoke about, which would make a lot of sense. You do it while you're on your ship. You sail up to a resource node and then you press a button to bring up a mini game. And you press it again when the little thing is in the green zone to maximize your harvest. And you do that like three or four times. And then that's it. The stuff just materializes in your cargo. That is objectively silly. Like I mean, you're collecting iron ore while you're on your ship and they're using a mini game and a meter that you can sort of like hit the button when the space bar or hit your space bar when it gets to where you want it. Like that just doesn't seem right to me. That just seems like 1999 kind of stuff. But hey, that's just me. And then I'm going to get into the last bit here, which is combat or the lack of land combat. This is also quite frustrating. And finally, just to clear up any confusion, there is no on foot combat in this game at all. You cannot fight on land. And when you board another ship, here's what happens. Watch this. Did you blink and miss it? Yeah, that's the boarding cutscene that plays. When I bought an enemy ship, a quick cutscene shows us hauling them close to us. And then it just cuts to a loot screen, even when I'm in the middle of combat with other ships, by the way, which is super annoying. And then I have to quickly press the collect all loot button. And that's it. That's what boarding a ship is like in Skull and Bones. That is so far away from what it should be like. It should be, I don't know, it should have little, you should have your guns and your scimitars and your cutlasses and parrots and fighting and, oh, what the hell, just a couple of buttons in a loot grab. I don't know, guys. Anyways, those are the main moments of this game here. I mean, it's not a complete train wreck, but in context, it really is. Let me know what you think of this. And again, check out the full review by Skill Up. It's absolutely awesome. It's 46 minutes long. It's incredible. It's probably the best one on the internet, or best one on YouTube. And yeah, let me know your thoughts. Thanks for watching.