Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Remastered – Review
Follow Genre: Action/adventure
Developer: Ubisoft Sofia/Kiev/Pune
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Tested on: PlayStation 4

Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Remastered – Review

Site Score
7.9
Good: Great amount of game content to keep you entertained for hours
Bad: Graphically not quite polished
User Score
8.0
(2 votes)
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Rating: 8.0/10 (2 votes cast)

Assassin’s Creed is to Prince of Persia, what Devil May Cry is to Resident Evil. Though the idea didn’t quite mesh well with a prince being an assassin, the game was ultimately redubbed Assassin Creed and the franchise has been on two generations of consoles. The first game in the series was released in 2007, so the franchise is over a decade old. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue was a game that was the last to be released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and was released alongside Assassin’s Creed: Unity, the first Assassin’s Creed fully on the current generation. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Remastered brings the game onto the current generation consoles and gives players who don’t have a previous generation console a chance to play the game.

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Story

Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Remastered is the story of Shay, an assassin who is indoctrinated into the Creed. He goes about his missions with a fervour and has a very high success rate. He’s acknowledged by his brothers in the Creed, but is also very brash and sometimes downright arrogant. So when the game starts, he comes off as smug and unlikeable. It’s only as the story progresses, and he starts to distance himself from the Creed and opens his eyes, he grows as a person and realises things don’t need to be so black and white. This story is downright the best written and acted narrative in the whole series hands down.

Shay as a person is written in such a manner that he actually acts in such a way that he doesn’t necessarily immediately turn on his former brothers/sisters but wants them to see reason. Even after what they did to him. The confrontations with his former friends turned foes tug at the heart strings as you realise with every step you’ll be forced to sever strings. The only way this could drive the point home even further would be if there were more missions where the player had a chance to bond with the members of the Assassin’s Order. If the first chapter had been all about the Creed and its members then the following chapters would be even more devastating. Almost on the level of Spec Ops: The Line.

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Graphics

The game has been optimised for current consoles, but that’s not necessarily something that’s visible. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Remastered suffers from “pop in”, both objects and scenery. There are quite some graphical glitches where you’ll fall through levels because the actions set pieces aren’t triggering. If you’ve played the last game in the series: Assassin’s Creed: Origins, then you’ll have a very hard time with the parkour and free running mechanics. The animations of Shay running are rather comical as he runs, he waggles. When it comes to the parkour some objects look like they can be traversed or climbed, but Shay will just dry hump them taking way too much time to decide what to do as he just stands there, suddenly jerking awake to climb up or just run onto it, and jumping off while the object is clearly climbable. It doesn’t exactly scream off: polished.

Sound

Voice acting in cut scenes is really well done, and the bond between the writing and the intent can clearly be heard as the scenes play. The voice actors really did their best and it shows.

The audio cues in the game bring the world to life. From the barking of a dog, to the conversations between NPCs in the streets. They also help you track enemies. There’s an enemy that you’ll be able to track by the whispers you hear as you near them. They’ll hide, but the as the whispers grow louder you’ll be alerted to them. So you’ll not only have to use your eyes to kill enemies stealthily.

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The sounds of the cannons on the boat and the overall gunfire actually sound like they do damage as their bullets tear through enemies, enemy ships or walls. The only exception is the ‘Puckle guns’, weapons you’ll use when boarding a ship to thin out the enemy crew. Their fire doesn’t really stand out and this is weird as any enemy in their line of fire are reduced to ragdoll upon being hit.

Gameplay

Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Remastered is an action/adventure game where you play an assassin turned rogue. What Assassin’s Creed is known for is having a lot of content in them. An absolute metric shit ton of content. Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Remastered is no different. It combines the best from all of the previous entries, the naval battles, the upgrading of the Morrigan – your vessel –, liberating forts, upgrading your own gear with skins you get from hunting. Renovating buildings to earn you money, finding artefacts that unlock armours, hunt down shanties, kill off pigeons, so assassins won’t receive their objectives on who to kill. That’s all side content mind you. The main missions will mix up naval battles with actual stealth and assassination. If you want to be successful at them you’ll have to use every tool at your disposal. Tools you’ll gradually unlock so you’ll have ample time to get a feel for them.

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There’s the swords, for when you feel all gung-ho and want to stab a bitch, although it needs to be said that melee combat consists of tapping square to attack, circle to deflect and sometimes X to break their guard, making it feel rather barebones, there’s the pistols for when you just can’t be bothered. When opting for stealth there’s the dart gun, with sleep darts, berserk darts if you don’t want to get your hands dirty and let someone else massacre your enemies –Not civilians mind you –, there’s firecrackers you can shoot to lure out enemies that are hidden. If that’s not your thing, and you want to really go out with a bang, there’s the grenade launcher. With shrapnel, berserk and sleep grenades which will definitely get the party started.

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The traversal of the game world has changed a lot over the course of the Assassin’s Creed games, with the Assassin’s Creed: Origins being the most fluid of the bunch, but lacking in the verticality department – which is mainly due to its setting – but Assassin’s Creed Rogue: Remastered does give the player that feeling of speed and agility as you climb trees and race across rooftops. The running animation being a little over the top aside, the traversal isn’t always so smooth. Sometimes Shay refuses to climb up objects that are clearly labelled as climbable, and he just stands there, sometimes he’ll run up to it, and just jump off the wall instead of grabbing the ledge, as mentioned before. It sometimes doesn’t feel like you are controlling a character, but more a walking hitbox. Now if you are just climbing and exploring at your leisure, it’s less of a problem, but when things get heated during the campaign or if you’ve cocked up a stealth run of a fortress, you don’t want him to just jump back into a group of oncoming enemies.

Conclusion

If you liked Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, but don’t have a previous generation console, then Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Remastered will scratch your itch. If however you’ve fallen head over heels in love with the fluidity of movement in Assassin’s Creed: Origins and are digging that games’ combat, then don’t look into this game, as only frustration will await you.

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Rating: 8.0/10 (2 votes cast)
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Assassin's Creed: Rogue Remastered - Review, 8.0 out of 10 based on 2 ratings
Q


First game ever was Crash Bandicoot 3 Warped, ever since then, gaming has been something that I've gravitated to. Reading's fun but not as interactive. Always up for a bout of online multiplayer. If that multiplayer is co-op. So if you are up for a friendly co-op session, hit me up. Rahenik's the name to search on PSN.

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