Take a Trip to Japan (in Assassin's Creed Shadows)

Plus, there's a new industry-wide union in NA.

Author

Robert Scarpinito
March 21, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

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Assassin’s Creed Shadows is finally here, and our reviewer Andrew Stretch had… well, some fun with it. But It wears out its welcome, especially with its “simultaneously bloated but sparse open world.”

I’ve been playing it too, and while I haven’t finished it yet, I see what he means. Personally, I’ve found myself caring more about Naoe and Yasuke the more I play the game. They both sort of lighten up after their respective inciting incidents, giving way to some slightly cheeky banter throughout the game.

However, early on I quickly found myself annoyed with the open world. Stretch’s description above captures it well, but outside of that, I found the pathing to be extraordinarily obtuse. Shadows strongly encourages you to stay on pre-carved paths, instead of encouraging off-the-beaten-path exploration. It really hampers any sense of exploration.

I still stand by what I said when I first previewed Shadows though: It’s the best Assassin’s Creed I’ve played in years. If that’s what you’re looking for, this’ll hit for sure. It already hit 1 million players in its first 24 hours, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it climb higher as we get into the weekend.

There’s a new industry-wide union for those who work in video games, which is very much needed amid the onslaught of layoffs we’ve seen in the past couple years. Let’s not forget too that working conditions in general tend to involve crazy hours and occasional harassment, depending on where you work.

Unfortunately, those affected by the recent layoffs at the Wizards of the Coast likely won’t get help from this. I’m not sure a virtual tabletop for Dungeons & Dragons would have counted under this new union.

The money-printing Pikachu machine never stops. There aren’t any specific details yet, but I’d bet real money that a Lego statue of Pikachu would be one of the sets. They can’t not have that yellow buzzmouse, right?

If you need your Pocket Monsters fix sooner, check your phone. The next TCG Pocket expansion, Shining Revelry, will bring shiny Pokemon to the popular mobile game/card-collecting app thing.

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