Avast, ye good guys!

The thing with Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is that it such a vast open-world game where your attention span was reduced to that of a hummingbird. Yes, you had definite and exciting missions, but more often than not, you could easily get sidetracked by the gazillion distractions.

But we love that – you can either finish your missions and then come back to the said distractions, or be distracted and get back to your missions later. It’s a world of choices and there’s nobody to stop you (except for certain factors such as power cuts, an angry girlfriend or well, work). Moreover, the entire Assassin’s Creed franchise makes you feel good about playing as the bad guy. Lucky for us, Rogue didn’t disappoint us at all.

Just as the previous instalment, Assassin’s Creed Rogue has a new protagonist – this time an Irish man who goes by the name of Shay Patrick Cormac. The character is, thankfully, not as stereotyped and is a welcome change from the usual crop of anti-heroes. And as the name suggests, Shay is a rogue Assassin. He has a fallout with the Order of Assassins, over matters that concern the conscience (that’s new!) and joins the Templars.

However, we would have loved if there were any new insights into the Templars – with constant harking back to the organisation in every iteration of the game, there’s isn’t much of a back story left for the flashbacks. There’s no mystery. And we realised that the Templars aren’t too different in their ways of working from the Assassins either.

But Rogue makes it a point to substantiate Shay’s turncoat ways – the makers have rewritten the game as one which shows the Assassins as someone who’ve been corrupted by the power, and been overrun by greed and avarice. In fact, they now show the Templars as the ones who restore peace and order and bring prosperity to the lands. Still, you won’t feel too bad about this change because you’ll be having way too much fun playing it.

Keeping the story apart, Rogue is almost identical to Black Flag in terms of gameplay and controls. The interesting bits are the new weapons – an air rifle that comes with a host of attachments, including a grenade launcher. You get more non-lethal weapons too, including ones that enrage your opponents instead of making them fall asleep.

Thanks to Black Flag, stalking has become easy – a bit too easy, we must add. A few new tricks in that bag would have been appreciated. However, thanks to the new weapons, you get the ability to create chaos from a safe distance, and watch your anomalies take care of themselves. That’s quite delightful. But the ship combat is where Black Flag excelled, and thankfully Rogue carries this forward. The ship has been fitted with new tricks too, such as leaving behind a trail of flaming oil (to eliminate enemy ships that dare get into its slipstream.

Despite all the similarities with Black Flag, its predecessor, Assassin’s Creed Rogue isn’t what you’d call identical. It misses out on the good parts, such as the entire lot of multiplayer modes. Forget about the creation of new modes, this one has the usual crop missing.

However, the graphics and attention to details in the visuals is splendid as usual, so that may be compelling enough if you’re an AC fan.

We think that this would have sufficed as a big extension pack at discount, and not as an iteration on full retail.

₹2,999

Love – New weapons;

Ship warfare is better

Hate – No multiplayer modes;

Storyline isn’t fresh