Wonder how good a "last-gen" game can look when it's maxed out on PC? The answer is pretty much what you'd expect. It's not that Rogue looks bad, but clunky animations and texture pop-ins make its older target hardware very evident. Overall, it's a lovely game while you run around killing people (read our review), but its visual flaws are apparent in the context of a brand new, big budget PC game. Watch the video above to see for yourself. 

A quick note: the gameplay was recorded at 1440p, but unfortunately we encountered an error while exporting that wouldn't allow it to export at full-res. Still, the game ran at a smooth 60fps that you can enjoy at 1080p.

Want to see more from the LPC archive? Check out some of our other recent videos: Dying Light, Far Cry 4, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, Ryse: Son Of Rome, Metro 2033 Redux, Deus Ex, Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein: The New Order, and Arma 3. There's a lot more where that came from. Have a game in mind you'd like to see the LPC take on at ultra settings? Tell the LPC directly on Twitter.

A cynic could have a field day here. After all, it s the second swashbuckling AssCreed since 2013, developed by a gaggle of Ubisoft s international studios while its prizefighter Montreal team was busy strapping hidden blades to the cast of Les Mis for Unity. More of the same, then—what else would you expect of a series that invites you to give feedback via a star rating after every mission, as if you just passed through airport security or had a parcel delivered? Could that system produce anything but more of the same?

There s no denying that Assassin s Creed Rogue is fundamentally a redeployment of Black Flag s winning formula in a new location, and it s also true that it bears the crow s feet and laugh lines of a graphics engine optimised for ageing last-gen consoles. But here s the kicker: none of that gets in the way of your enjoyment. Not if you re prepared to exercise a little patience in the opening hour or two.

Since you ask, that winning formula is as follows: you re plonked on a beach with nothing but a colloquial British Isles accent (you re Irishman Shay Cormac this time, fledgling assassin hoping to foil a Templar expedition for ancient artefacts) and exceptional parkour skills to your name. Oh, and a fully-crewed ship. Quite important, that, because your freedom to roam the seas, dock at any number of alluring locales or hurl cannon balls at other vessels still imbues Assassin's Creed with an irrepressible sense of adventure. Even the second time round.

It s while manning the wheel of the Morrigan that you ll find Rogue s most grabbing activities: attacking ships to plunder them for crew members and resources, which you spend on ship upgrades. So you can attack bigger ships, obviously. Or, you can go about it the old-school way and strip-mine each onshore location of all its treasure chests, shanties, Animus fragments, naval Animus fragments, Templar maps, native pillars, Viking swords… I m probably forgetting a few more minimap trinkets. They re dizzying in volume. Oh, and there s a city management layer later on too. You re quite the busy man.

There are billions of collectibles to pick up, of course, but the scenery across Rogue s three game maps—New York, River Valley and the North Atlantic—provides a powerful incentive to hop from ledge to tree branch to cliff top in pursuit of the odd knick-knack. The northern lights cast a ghostly shimmer across the North Atlantic and its ice sheets which soothes your soul after a hard day s stabbing, and River Valley s craggy archipelagos and quaint lighthouses put a spring back in your step after your last whaling misadventure. The visuals are far from bleeding-edge, but Rogue manages a kind of rugged handsomeness through thoughtful large-scale environmental design. Of the game s successes, its breezy and atmospheric setting might be the one it can actually call its own, rather than a continuation of Black Flag s form.

It s a double-edged sword of course, Ubisoft s strategy to lean on Edward Kenway s exploits as the foundation for Rogue. It means that if you got sick of that overlong trade-cannon-balls-then-board naval combat sequence the first time, you re bored before you even begin in Rogue. And if the combat was starting to feel outmoded by AssCreed s contemporaries in 2013, it feels positively arthritic by now. If you ve clocked in some hours with a Rocksteady game and/or Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor since guiding Kenway s blade, the adjustment back to a slower pace and lessened precision here is tough and unflattering.

Then there are the other longstanding AssCreed problems. The frustratingly imprecise parkour control; the lukewarm stealth mechanics; the uninspired and repetitive mission templates; the ten-hour-long tutorial sequence. The latter alone threatens to stifle the potential of Rogue s open waters; the game is bizarrely reticent to let you loose on its prized open world until you've hit key story points.

It isn t that Assassin s Creed Rogue is without problems, or particularly fresh within the context of the series. Critically though, it puts you in a mindset in which you re inclined to let a lot slide, because it s one hell of a power fantasy. You begin as unknown assassin/pirate and quite quickly become the single most important man who ever lived. I m not even referring to the main story missions explicitly—even outside of that, you ve a shipful of sailors ready to die for you, all kinds of friends in high places, and basically own New York. That s an addictive feeling. Rogue understands how to create a sense of adventure using old mechanics and new locales, and as such remains very playable despite the franchise-long problems AssCreed endures in combat, mission design and story.

As promised, and pleasantly on schedule, Assassin's Creed: Rogue is now out for the PC—and so too is the day-one patch.

Assassin's Creed: Rogue tells the tale of Shay Patric Cormac, a young initiate of the Assassin Brotherhood who grows disillusioned with his new gang when he realizes that they're not quite the stand-up guys he thought they were. It all comes to a head in a spot of unpleasantness that leads Cormac to switch sides, and much of the game is actually played as a Templar, the sworn enemies of the Assassins. I suppose that's technically a spoiler, but given that the twist has been the focal point of the game's entire marketing campaign (like the launch trailer that came out last month), I feel safe tossing it out.

And with the launch of the game comes the release of the launch day patch, which as Gameranx notes is a lighter list of fixes than might be expected. The 1.1.0 patch includes:

• Minor Fix UI
• Minor Fix Graphics
• Minor Fix Uplay Actions/Rewards
• Minor Fix various Resolution issues

From where I sit, that means one of two things: Either Assassin's Creed: Rogue went out the door in unexpectedly good shape, or this is going to be a very ugly week for Ubisoft. Since Rogue is on an older engine than Unity, let's hope it's the former.