Assassin's Creed Rogue: Remastered (PlayStation 4) Review

Originally coming out after Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Rogue takes strong inspiration from its predecessor and casts players into the role of Shay Cormac, an Irish-American ship captain who is inducted into the Assassin brotherhood and tasked with finding powerful relics. To do so he must explore islands and towns on foot, while taking out key targets, and roaming the seas by ship to reach new destinations and sink enemy vessels.

Assassin's Creed Rogue strongly deviates from other games in the series when Cormac's allegiances switch later in the adventure, and he finds himself fighting on the side of the Templars. Shay Cormac's voice work and emotional range is exceptional, as are many of the performances overall, with a subtle, yet also elevated, score to back up key scenes and compelling gameplay events. Playing Assassin's Creed Rogue can be detriment to people new to the franchise, as there isn't a means of recapping the events of earlier games within this one, but the plotline in its own bubble is still interesting and engaging.

Assassin's Creed Rogue follows the open world template, and offers a vast amount of locations to find and explore, collectibles and special items to discover, and foes to battle. Due to the geographical location of the setting there isn't a great deal of differentiation in design for the majority of these places, but all towns and cities are uniquely designed, with one in particular unfolding into an action movie set-piece in later narrative.

The game makes full use of every button and trigger on the PlayStation 4 controller, the touchpad in particular being an intuitive way to view the map and set destination waypoints. Hand-to-hand combat is very simple and often relies on button-press timing for counter attacks, but stealth kills and obstacle manoeuvring are encouraged by many mission objectives for more overall efficiency. The new rifle mechanic can help this greatly, with tranquiliser and berserk darts aplenty.

Due to the nature of the analogue movement, it can be easy to misalign Cormac when beginning a string of jumps, but the automatic leaping chain from holding down the run trigger and the typical placement of said obstacles in the environment usually allows for seamless movement and navigation in the field.

Ship battles and seafaring are similarly intuitive, and contain the vast majority of new weapons and upgrades over the course of the escapade. Starting with simple side cannons and a battering ram to venture through ice sheets, many new cannonball types can be added, and even oil slicks to light foes on fire. Bringing an enemy vessel's health down to a certain point can allow for hostile boarding with Carmac's crew; recruited from taverns in many towns or rescued from sinking ships and hostage situations. The considerable amount of play-styles and options in Assassin's Creed Rogue sound overwhelming on paper, but it does an admirable job of explaining each new mechanic as it is needed.

Upgrading tools, weapons, and the Morrigan ship are strong motivators to explore and loot in Assassin's Creed Rogue, but one such investment later on allows for renovating key areas of New York, and doing so yields extra funds in the bank over time. Like many popular open world videogames, the world in Rogue is utterly massive, and as such contains an extensive array of collectibles, cheats to unlock, and features to find. Add to that a compelling plot and interesting protagonist, great visuals and voice work, and enjoyable ship battles and assassination techniques, and the result is that series' fans will be well served here.