Developer: Ubisoft Sofia
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: 360, PS3, PC (Early 2015)
Tested on: PS3
Assassin’s Creed Rogue – Review
Assassin’s Creed Rogue, the game that was released simultaneously with Assassin’s Creed Unity, was specifically designed for the ‘last generation’ of consoles, presenting players with a separate story than that of the next-gen Unity. Not only does the game have another story but you actually play the role of a templar, which spices things up in a certain sense. An interesting choice that pays off for the most part. Let’s indulge ourselves in the world of Assassin’s Creed Row-gue.
Story
This game mostly situates itself (in the animus) roughly a year later than the events portrayed in Assassin’s Creed IVl: Black Flag. Oddly enough, you will not play the role of a typical assassin this time but rather as an assassin slayer.
You will play the role of Shay Patrick Cormac, a man who was once on the side of the assassins but now his beliefs have shifted and it is he who now hunts the hunters. After seeing certain things that he could not support and perhaps even a certain feeling of betrayal, Shay decides to take up arms against the league of assassins in order to fight for his own beliefs.
Soon after the start of the game, Shay will go out hunting key figures of the league of assassins, thus making him some powerful enemies along the way.
As with any of the other Assassin’s Creed games, the story will present itself by bits and pieces of information, that will form a clear(er) picture by the end of the game. Whilst some storytelling might be quite subtle, most of the information if brought to you more than clearly enough. Of course you can expect a portion of story content in the ‘present day’ as well.
Graphics
Graphically the game looks quite pleasing, especially seeing it’s only out on the previous generation of consoles. There are plenty of details, be it the movement of the clothes, facial expressions and so on.
The environments look quite filled with small details as well, the seas and boats look decently animated but they seem to be suffering from the ‘copy-paste-syndrome’, which makes sure you will constantly see the same boats over and over again.
As for the buildings, it seems that the buildings are becoming slightly less impressive, compared to the earlier Assassin’s Creed games. You will see less of those majestic high buildings for you to crawl and freerun upon.
Sadly, the game has some typical Ubisoft bugs but luckily they aren’t all that bad. Except for the occasional soldier fighting an invisible foe or running into an invisible wall, there aren’t that many issues, except for some buggy textures.
Overall, for a last generation game, Ubisoft did a great job in making this a great looking game.
Sound
Assassin’s Creed Rogue has a decent soundtrack and decent voice acting throughout the course of the game. Whilst not being overly impressive, you’ll get treated to certain qualitative tracks of battle music that make for great adventure music.
The characters themselves have fairly convincing voices, adding up to the overall atmosphere of the game. Nothing more, nothing less.
Gameplay
Assassin’s Creed Rogue, is still like the previous games, a stealth-like game filled with a lot of action. You can either take a more subtle approach in vanquishing your foes or if you’d rather go in murdering everyone in sight, it’s actually completely up to you.
It’s clear that Assassin’s Creed Rogue got its inspiration from the previous game, Black Flag. You’ll be spending a lot of time (actually most of the time) on your boat, which you can customize to make it that much more powerful or simply put, deadly and badass. Sadly, being on a boat a lot, means you’ll have less freerunning options.
As stated above, you’ll notice that your boat will play an important role in the game and thus the game presents you with a decent amount of options to make the boat your own personalized floating fortress. You’ll be able to buy extra cannons, ice breakers and so on.
Naval battles are of course a natural result of you spending a lot of time on the wide blue waters. Battles are quite easy, seeing you can simply blast away your opponents to their watery graves or you can take the more direct approach by boarding your opponents ship. When boarding a ship, you will need to kill a fixed amount of enemies and at certain moments you will also need to kill the captain of the vessel. When achieving your goals, you will be able to choose to store the vessel in order to receive a lot of extra rewards or to repair your own ship and receive the normal amount of resources for winning the battle. Last but not least, later in the game you will unlock the possibility to add captured boats to your own personal fleet, which can be used for side-missions in order to secure trade routes and so on.
Occasionally you’ll set foot on the ground in order to slay the target you are after. When doing so, you will experience the same old school Assassin’s Creed gameplay we’ve come to love from the previous games. A stealthy approach will often ensure a safer way to approach your target but battling your opponents is certainly a fun option as well. As usual, you are still as overpowered as the other assassins, seeing you can pretty much block and parry all other attacks. Rogue has a tad less instakill counters or attacks compared to the other games. That being said, you still have instakill takedowns when sneaking up on opponents.
It’s fun to see that you can unlock more weaponry as you go, especially if these weapons bear names that are subtle (actually not so subtle) winks to characters from previous installments of the genre.
Conclusion
Assassin’s Creed Rogue is certainly a fun way to celebrate the end of a generation of consoles by giving it a fun title to end a generation. Rogue offers gameplay that has been deemed quite typical for the Assassin’s Creed franchise and the game builds on that already decent base. Whilst the naval activities may be a bit too much, all in all Rogue is a decent addition to the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
Assassin's Creed Rogue - Review,
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