You are sent on a mission to go to a Precursor Site only to accidentally destroy it which sends you running away from an earthquake. Then you get onto your ship and sail the Arctic as a Templar. That’s Assassin’s Creed Rogue in a nutshell.
Yes, that’s the whole reason as to why Shay Patrick Cormac becomes Templar. A little bit dissatisfying, no? We all knew when the game was being “promoted” that we were going to be a templar. What I was really looking forward to was how we were going to become a Templar. When I discovered the reason, I was lft disappointed. Actually… I was disappointed with the whole game.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue is basically a reskin of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, give or take a few different things. Ubisoft pretty much took AC4 and slapped Rogue on top of it and said, “There! It’s a prequel to AC3. Nice. Good job team!” No. Not good job team. You, Ubisoft, made a crappy game of what could have been a good templar tale.
The main character, Shay Patrick Cormac, is likable. He didn’t annoy me, only when he said, “I make my own luck” which is about every other sentence he says. Shay is assassin turned templar after accidentally destroying a Precursor Site which sets off an earthquake killing thousands. As I said, that reasoning to me is a bit disappointing. But whatever, let’s roll with it. So now Shay is off to destroy the American Brotherhood. Ok, cool. Let’s do that.
The combat is same as AC4. The exact same. The only new thing about Rogue, combatwise, is the grenade launcher Shay gets in the beginning of the game. You only get three types of ammo for it: sleep, berserk, and firecracker. Firecracker distracts enemies and sleep and berserk are self-explanatory since we had them in previous games as blow dart ammo.
The ship is back. Yay… The one thing I never wanted to see again… This time we sail in the Arctic. Oh yeah, don’t swim. Never swim. You’ll freeze and die. I did that once. Not fun. We were told that ship would be much faster in terms of sailing. It felt the same to me as it did in AC4. The only good thing about the ship is that we didn’t have to sail as much as we did in AC4. Yay! Let me just point out before you get angry with me, I’m not a fan of sailing or the ship combat. But Sam here, she loves it. To each one’s own.
What irritated me the most in this game is the modern day characters. I wanted to kill each and every one of them. I have never been so angry at characters like this before. If Ubisoft wanted me to hate templars even more than I already do, well they did their job. The modern day story is an extension of the modern day story in AC4. Someone hacked into your workplace and now you have to fix it via hacking into computers.
The computer hacking mini-games went from three in AC4 to one in Rogue. How unfortunate. I quite enjoyed the hacking mini-games in AC4 but to see it reduced to one mini-game over and over again in Rogue was sad. The mini-game is basically light up all sections of this sphere with lasers and whatever. No matter how much the game tried to raise up the difficulty, it was all the same. I found the mini-game too easy.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue could have been a great game. We explored the side of the templars but it was so short lived. The game was only six sequences long. That is two sequences shorter than Assassin’s Creed Liberation and that was a Vita game. A VITA GAME! Rogue was put out on consoles and PC and it was shorter than a Vita game.
Another problem Rogue faced was having little to no promotion and being in the shadow of it’s bigger brother Unity. No one really thought twice about Rogue. It was all about Unity.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue was a game I was really looking forward to but it was just a reskin of AC4 and was underdone. It could have been great if the story was expanded more and had more than just six sequences. You could have had it all Rogue but Ubisoft threw you under a bus for Unity, the game with terrible glitches and nightmare faces.
Assassin’s Creed Rogue
2.5/5
The game was too short and it was a reskin of AC4. Ubisoft should have spent more time on it and could have made it so much better. I am happy that there is a templar game but it could have been so much better. SIX SEQUENCES?!?! REALLY UBI?!?!
