Welcome to our CHEATfactor Game Review of Assassin's Creed: Rogue. We review the game and then factor in how the available cheats affect the overall game experience. For better or worse, our reviews will help you decide whether or not to use cheats when playing the game.

Playing through Assassin's Creed: Rogue, I couldn't help but think of the 1952 Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds classic "Singing' in the Rain." In the movie Debbie Reynolds plays little known singer Kathy Selden who has a great voice but is held back by Lina Lamont, who can't sing but looks really good on camera and the television executives put all of their money and stock into her. Rogue is the unlucky Selden and Assassin's Creed: Unity is the built up Selden who eventually crashes and burns. Okay, maybe Rogue isn't that good of a game, but next to the disastrous launch of it's next-gen counterpart, it's easier to appreciate how it sticks to what the series knows best. At it's best, it's a game that knows what it does best but at it's worst it's a retread of familiar ideas that never really tries to do anything more.

Rogue tells the story of Shay Patrick Cormac, who interestingly enough starts out the tale as an assassin, but through a series of events winds up as a Templar. This isn't the first time that the Assassin's Creed series has tried to make us sympathetic to the story of the bad guys but it is the best that it's best done to date. Compared to recent games in the series, Rogue's story is given a surprising amount of time to unravel and doesn't feel rushed nearly as often. It's still pretty predictable but I found myself caring about the story more here than in anything the series has done since the days of Assassin's Creed 2 and Ezio. Be warned though, the game still tries to force the confusing Abstergo story and it works just about as little as you'd think but it's easy to bypass if you're really looking to.

Smartly, Rogue takes the open water mechanics, one of the best additions to the Assassin's Creed series in years and builds a new tale around it. I never truly understood why Ubisoft completely ditched the pirate theme for Unity but was happy to see it make a comeback for it's lesser known little brother. The game takes place in North America and you'll be charting the waters of The Atlantic instead of the Caribbean but the game is mostly the same. It's still fun to take on other ships and explore, looking for your own adventures, and Rogue plays more like a direct sequel to Assassin's Creed IV than anything else but that familiarity is also it's biggest downfall.

Rogue plays so much like it's predecessors that not much in the entire experience felt even remotely new. You'll run across rooftops, take out targets and yes, sail the seas but it's all things that the series has done so many times before. The story, which finds you swapping sides and hunting down targets you once aligned yourself with adds a bit of variety but Rogue is clearly Assassin's Creed 101, and that's fine, especially since Unity was such a different experience but at this time the horse that Ubisoft is beating isn't just dead, it's decaying and the series is suffering as a result. That's not to say that Rogue is a bad game, it's a pretty good one in fact, it just doesn't try to do anything new with an aging engine at all.

Similarly, Rogue's world initially feels large and open but once you've spent some time in it, it feels a lot like an empty stage without much substance. The game is filled with a lot of Assassin's Creed-y type things to do but I never really felt compelled to do any of them. Maybe it's because I've been playing the same formula for the better part of ten years but nothing felt integral to the progress of the game. Not even the question mark missions on the map, which I usually enjoy more than anything else in the series felt like they were worth the time and energy spent finding and completing them. Sadly, for everything Rogue does right it ultimately ends up feeling like a hollow experience.

I liked Assassin's Creed: Rogue for what it was, but hated it for what it could have been. It does Assassin's Creed remarkably well at the most basic level and the unique double-cross story gives your actions new meaning but it never really tries to go above anything that's come before. If you've played an Assassin's Creed game in the last ten years it's highly likely that Rogue will feel way too familiar to be fully enjoyed. If you still feel scorned by the disastrous launch of Unity, there's definitely some enjoyment to be had here but it's fleeting at best.