Make your own luck? How about those genetic superhuman abilities, dick?

A few hours in, AC Rogue's protagonist Shay picks up a saucy new catchphrase: "I make my own luck." And he keeps. On. Saying it. Dude won't shut up about how he's manifesting his own destiny, like he's a Saturday morning cartoon character or something.

... So, that aside. I came into Rogue expecting more of the same buckle-swashing from Black Flag, and was pleasantly surprised -- although not at first. Rogue's first hour or two contains some of the worst mission design in any modern game, some guy telling you to sail to some place, so that another guy there can tell you to sail to another place. But it does pick up, and in addition to a wide open sea and plenty of destinations, there are the expected story-driven stalking and assassin-ing and et cetera-ing.

Rogue, iteratively, adds some refreshing new (and old) twists to the Black Flag formula. In-city enemy strongholds are back, waiting to be infiltrated and overthrown. A new aspect of Eagle Vision allows Shay to track hidden assassins, and uh, counter-assassin them. Uh... grenade launcher, which works like the bombs from Revelations, but with launching.

There is even a good story in Shay, although the game does a pretty shoddy job of telling it. Whereas Edward Kenway was a selfish antihero who often succeeded despite himself, Shay is a real idealist, who just wants to do right by the world -- and whose idealism, unfortunately (and somewhat transparently), makes him vulnerable. But this sentiment comes through haphazardly in the game's storytelling, as if swaths of character-building dialog were cut from the game before it was released. Shay consequently comes across in cutscenes as more emotionally volatile than he really seems like he should be.

Of course, this is really just more of the same for the Creed. And that sentiment, in general, is what brings Rogue down the most; the weight of the franchise's legacy is becoming very obviously cumbersome. Climbing towers to "synchronize" the map is boring and tired. The glowing collectibles strewn over rooftops and tree branches are bothersome distractions. The naval warfare time-management minigame is unspeakably dull.

And I mean, come on. The network television-caliber modern-day plot is so, goddamned, convoluted and stupid. What makes it worse is that Ubisoft continues to waste text and voice acting on skippable backstory bits, for dozens of utterly disposable characters. I wouldn't be put out in the least if a future Assassin's Creed tells you that it was all a dream, or some matrix-within-a-matrix inception shit.

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