{"id":2156,"date":"2025-03-18T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/?p=2156"},"modified":"2025-03-20T18:20:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T18:20:18","slug":"assassins-creed-shadows-review-ubisoft-takes-a-trip-to-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.isshicare.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/18\/assassins-creed-shadows-review-ubisoft-takes-a-trip-to-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Assassin\u2019s Creed Shadows review \u2013 Ubisoft takes a trip to Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n\t\t\"Yasuke\t<\/div>
Assassin’s Creed Shadows – a relatively dynamic duo (Ubisoft)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ubisoft<\/a>\u2019s pivotal new entry in the Assassin\u2019s Creed<\/a> series features two different playable characters in 16th century Japan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Assassin\u2019s Creed franchise<\/a> is notionally about the millennia-spanning conflict between the Order of the Assassins and their arch-nemeses the Templars. Experienced in the modern world via the Animus, a machine that lets people inhabit the memories of long dead ancestors, early releases in the series made a big deal of current era interludes between bouts of remembered historical assassination.<\/p>\n

At some point, Ubisoft realised those were easily the dreariest parts of the games and decided to abandon forays into the modern era. But while Assassin\u2019s Creed Shadows doesn\u2019t bring them back, it does feature mysterious glitches in the Animus that let you hear the voice of ‘The Guide’, a sort of digitally enabled Deep Throat who wants to lead you to discoveries beyond the memories you\u2019re playing through.<\/p>\n

Moment to moment though, Shadows is still all about quietly creeping up on unsuspecting characters and stabbing them in the neck, and while its Feudal Japanese setting provides an entirely new architectural style to leap around, that\u2019s still the game\u2019s focus. Or at least half its focus, because in this instalment you play not only as stealthy ninja assassin Naoe but also as hulking samurai Yasuke, who\u2019s not nearly as stealth orientated.<\/p>\n

Yasuke is a real historical figure and a former slave, having arrived in Japan with Portuguese Jesuit missionaries. That\u2019s also the case in the game, where he\u2019s taken under the wing of enjoyably evil warlord Oda Nobunaga, who trains him as a samurai before setting him to work burning villages and brutalising fellow clans in the name of unifying Japan. Yasuke\u2019s colossal, muscular frame does not lend itself to climbing or creeping about, but it does make him feel like an unstoppable Terminator style killing machine.<\/p>\n

While most extremely large video game characters are slow and ponderous, his bulk is accompanied by fearsome speed and, especially in the first part of the game – before baddies get more wily, he can feel practically untouchable. Running straight through locked castle gates, enemies stand about as much chance against him as bread does against an electric slicing machine, with approximately the same outcome.<\/p>\n

Naoe is more in line with traditional Assassin\u2019s Creed protagonists. Her shinobi skills make her exceptionally fleet of foot and her grapple hook gives an instant escape route, allowing her to scale pagodas or nearby rooftops in seconds, so she can strike rapidly and then disappear.<\/p>\n

\n
\n