Ubisoft's use of a new post process anti-aliasing solution is also quite subtle, failing to make itself known via a sea of overly smooth edges and imposing texture blur. Certainly, we expect those with large HDTVs to benefit the most from the upgrade, while those with smaller displays may find it more difficult to notice the benefits.

At times, beyond a slightly extra bit of fuzziness around the edges of fine objects and a few softer-looking textures, it can be hard to tell the unpatched and patched versions apart - less so in close-up scenes of the characters. Sub-pixel imagery in general is more defined and we also see a small increase in texture clarity. We see more fine detail, such as the strands of hair on the characters' heads and the rigging on ships sailing far off in the distance. Look closely and the differences become more apparent. The original 900p framebuffer is actually upscaled well to 1080p without introducing much in the way of unwanted artefacts, and the anti-aliasing solution in both versions helps to give the game a smooth appearance. On first impressions, the differences between running the game upscaled from 900p and natively in 1080p are actually quite subtle: there's a slight but noticeable boost in sharpness, and images appear a little more crisp, but nothing that immediately grabs you as amounting to anything approaching a sensational upgrade. We kick off with a 1080p head-to-head video showcasing a number of clips from the first hour of the game. With the patch now available in the US, are we looking at a noticeable upgrade in visual quality, or a more modest refinement to the original, unpatched presentation?

Ubisoft recently revealed that the PS4 version of Assassin's Creed 4 would gain an update shortly after the game's release, bumping up the rendering resolution from 900p to 1080p, along with some improved visual effects and a new anti-aliasing solution, with all of this possible via further optimisation work carried out after core development was completed. The end result is that some launch titles are effectively finished via the release of patches and updates designed to fix various bugs and glitches, or to improve noticeable performance issues - as we saw recently with Call of Duty: Ghosts. With next generation tools and system resources often in a state of flux before the final hardware is ready for release, game development continues right down to the wire, in some cases with last-minute optimisations and graphical tweaks completed after a title's master disc has been pressed and duplicated for the final release.

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