Assassin's Creed Rogue - Review

Ubisoft have had amazing success with Assassin’s Creed on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, I mean the series debuted on those platforms way back in 2007 and since then we have been treated to many stories of varying strength, but they all focused on Assassin’s taking down Templars, a noble goal to be sure, but after many entries it was time for a change. This is where Rogue takes centre stage, as you play through the story you will see this endless war from another side, a first for the series.

You play as Shay Patrick Cormac, a young Assassin who, apart from being a little rambunctious is good at what he does. During the first few hours of the game, Shay fights alongside fellow brotherhood members to stop the Templars from doing something, at this point no one really knows what they are doing. What is important is to stop them and the best way to do that is to get to their destination first. When Shay is selected to head to Lisbon, events unfold here that change him forever and when he returns back to his Mentor, Achilles and yes the same from Assassin’s Creed 3, he makes a choice that changes everything.

The problem that I have with this story is that Shay just goes from normal Assassin to Templar pretty easy, having spent a lot of time hunting them down, you might think he would be weary of those dressed in their clothes or wearing their symbol, but he is not. He just accepts it and moves on, which is very Anakin of him and not something I think works. Because the Assassin stories have always taken place over years and decades over days and months, there is no build up to anything resembling resentment or questioning the creed, he just swaps sides.

Thankfully the story of Rogue serves a great purpose than itself and that is given you places to go and people to meet. The world of Rogue is more in line with what we saw in AC3 than AC4, but the ship combat and sailing is still very much taken from AC4, think of it as the best of both worlds. The city of New York in Rogue is not as detailed as it was in AC3, but it is set sometime before then, so it is to be expected. What it lacks in depth it makes up for in character, in fact all of the major cities have a nice feel to them, while nothing new due to the locations repeating themselves, it is the smaller settlements that I enjoyed exploring while on land. Of course, land is only half of the game and the other half is even better.

Taking your ship out into the waters of the Atlantic is great fun, its wide open sea is a sight to see, lots of sea life to watch from your ship and of course other ships you can engage in combat to loot or sink. It is when you venture inland, to the coves and rivers that the game gets a little frustrating, with very little room to move at speed, you lose that sense of speed and wonder only for it to be replaced by slow and steady sailing. These spaces are both great in comparison to those of the Arctic Circle, which all should know as a land of ice and snow and while your ship can cut through sheets of ice on the water, it is the ice bergs and lack of things to do that make it hard to visit outside of missions.

Whenever I engaged in ship to ship combat on the Atlantic Ocean, I never worried about crashing into anything, even into other ships, it was fun. When you go inland you need to watch out for cliffs, beaches and outcroppings to be sure you don’t damage your ship, but the problem with the Arctic is that while you are in large open spaces according to your map, you are still going to bash into chunks of ice and even Ice bergs, which are hard to avoid when you looking in every direction for enemy ships, in fact most of the damage I took in combat in the Arctic was from Ice Bergs, large and small. The other reason to avoid the Arctic is that it has very little to do in it, at least compared to the other regions.

As you will spend a large portion of your time on the ship, sailing around and what not, it is a good thing the game looks just as good as last year’s Black Flag when on the water. The detail in your ship as well as the surrounding landscapes are very nice to see and the game does not suffer from any major issues in displaying it all on screen at once, also you can transition from ship to swimming in the sea with no problems, even docking to a settlement along the shore and running into the hills results in no loads, a great feat to be sure. Going into New York however does require a load, as well as transitioning between the various areas, thankfully the load times are minimal.

That is where the compliments must end for the presentation I am afraid, because when you look at character models up close, in cutscenes and when you take the time to look at them are very strange to look upon. This is not because the character models are weird, but the lighting system; the shadows that are cast over the faces are really distracting and add in the fact that no one moves their mouths in time with their speech it is really bad form. While I may sound harsh with this, it is only really a minor gripe and will probably only impact you if you are investing in the story.

The other part I disliked about the game is how much the flow is broken here, constant references to real world events and discussions while I was “in the animus” just feels wrong, as does actually stepping out of it and walking around the world of Abestergo Entertainment. The other element that breaks the flow are the end of mission summaries, while I appreciate the need to inform players how they have performed, asking how much fun the mission was and pausing the game to do so just does not work.

Assassin’s Creed Rogue is a strange game, it has the feeling of being an expansion at times but there are times where it feels like a fuller game. Shay does a 180 way too fast for my liking, which stretches the belief he could change sides and not question it at all and while the game is on the last generation of hardware it does look incredible, excluding some weird shadows.

The Score

8.0

Review code provided by Ubisoft

The Pros

+Playing as a Templar does add some freshness to the mix

+More sailing is always welcome

The Cons

-Shay does a 180 in his viewpoint, without any hesitation

-Old school design feels weird to play after Unity