Games Inbox: Is Assassin’s Creed Shadows the best ninja game?

The Wednesday letters page thinks a Metroid Prime 4 reveal this week makes total sense, as one reader predicts Mass Effect won’t be part of any Nintendo Direct.

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Stealth assassins
I’ve been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed Shadows and I have to say I’m really enjoying it. It’s not really doing anything new for the series, but the graphics are very good and there’s not many bogs, which is a nice change. But the thing I like best? It’s the closest thing to a next gen Tenchu I’ve ever played. Which by default makes it the best ninja game of the modern era.

The problem is that there aren’t many other contenders. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is definitely a better game but it’s not that similar to Tenchu, which is fine because that’s not what it was trying to do and I’d much rather FromSoftware make something original. (The irony is From did actually make a Tenchu game, back in their pre-Dark Souls days, but it was just an Xbox Live Arcade spin-off.)

Ubisoft isn’t exactly on their artistic level though, so they’re the perfect ones to make a new game that is Tenchu in all but name and I kind of love them for it. I’ve honestly had a lot more fun with it than Ghost Of Tsushima, which wasn’t trying to be that stealthy but I found became repetitive much too quickly. Maybe Shadows will in the end but so far I’m enjoying sneaking over rooftops and peering round corners, just like Tenchu on the PS1.
Franky

Crazy Direct
The idea of another Nintendo Direct this week seems crazy at first, given everyone’s waiting for the one next week, but I think we’re forgetting just how weird and unpredictable Nintendo can be. Metroid Prime 4 and Mario Kart 9 makes sense to us as a launch line-up, but we don’t know how far along those games are or what they’re like.

It seemed madness to me that there wouldn’t be a Switch 2 specific version of Metroid Prime 4 but what if, instead, Nintendo uses it to show how much Switch 2 improves the quality of Switch 1 games? That actually makes more business sense, because then you’re telling everyone that even though the Switch 2 looks the same it actually makes the games you’ve got even better.

It’s the PS5 Pro pitch, except I imagine the differences will be more obvious and the console will be more affordable – and do other things the original can’t. So, if there’s a Switch 1-only Direct this week and Metroid Prime 4 is the focus, I actually wouldn’t be surprised.
Onibee

Winners and losers
It will be kind of hilarious if this autumn there’s nothing out except GTA 6 and Switch 2 exclusives. I can easily imagine it too, because we know that’s what’s people are interested and as publishers now seem to be accepting, people haven’t got time to play a dozen games a year.

It’s an extreme example, that probably won’t be repeated again, but it does highlight the vast gap between the winners and losers in this business. Gamers aren’t willing to take a risk on anything that isn’t either a big name or dirt cheap, preferably free.

That’s always been true but never to this degree. Seems to me the answer is to make smaller and cheaper games but I don’t see any sign that anyone’s trying to do that. It’s the same old problem of everyone trying to be number one and nobody being willing to admit they won’t be.
Clancey

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Vapour, where?
So is there any theory for why Rockstar hasn’t shown Trailer 2 of GTA 6 yet? I hate to ask a stupid question, but it seems really strange to have your first one in 2023 and then nothing, and we’re now a quarter of the way into 2025.

A delay seems the only explanation, but Take-Two says it’s not that, so what is it? Are we only ever going to get two trailers? Are we going to get a bunch of them all in a row, just before release? Won’t that seem a bit overkill?

I just don’t get it and if this was any other game we’d be accusing it of being vapourware at this point. It’s not like there’s an obvious date they’re waiting for, so you can’t assume it’ll be in June, or whenever. There’s just no clue at all and that’s beginning to seem weird.
Flossy

Never bettered
I didn’t think there could be anything more crazy than the way that Sony has handled Bloodborne, but finding out it’s 10 years old manages to beat it. I guess time flies when you’re having fun, but I would’ve never have put that down as a decade old. It’s not even like it was a launch PlayStation 4 game or anything.

I think that’s because the boundaries between this gen and the last seem so vague. It still feels like this gen hasn’t really started and yet we’re already talking about the next one. It’s all so stressful because for me the PlayStation 4 was pretty much the prefect model console and yet the follow-up has been such a wet fart.

I knew Bloodborne seemed like a high watermark at the time, I didn’t realise that was going to be literally as good as it gets.
Duke Lazer

Travel plans
I’ve been wondering where Assassin’s Creed can go next too, and I agree there’s nothing very obvious. The only one I’ve seen a lot from fans is WW1 or 2, which could be interesting, but it depends where they set it.

Something showing why they’re called world wars would be interesting, so a theatre we don’t usually see maybe, like Africa or China. China is one of the obvious settings left but that’s probably going to seem too similar to Shadows to do straight away, so the country in one of the world wars would be interesting.

India would be another good one, but would Ubisoft really get into the politics of the Raj? And if they did, would they actually manage to be sensitive and accurate enough about it? I have my doubts. They could do it pre-colonialism though, that would be interesting.

I know very little about that, but I’d say one of the flaws of Assassin’s Creed is that it doesn’t really teach you a lot about history that you didn’t already know. They go for obvious settings but they’re obvious because people know them. I’d like to learn about a new place and culture for once, that I didn’t know about before.

Given historical accuracy wasn’t exactly Shadows strong point maybe that’s a bad idea, but then again it could be a chance for them to prove they’re doing things right now.
Station

Nothing inside
So Xbox have decided that you can go to the shop and buy Indiana Jones And The Great Circle but it’s a code that you download. What is the point of that? I was going to buy it but I don’t think I’ll bother now.

Why don’t they just do one or the other? You can either buy it on disc or you can download it, why do it where you can buy it in shops but you have to download it?
David

GC: Codes in a box have been a thing for years now, sadly. If that’s even what this is – it sounds more like there is a disc but it needs additional downloads to work.

Direct Effect
I wonder if we’ll see anything about the new Mass Effect this year? That’s one thing I don’t expect to see at the Nintendo Direct, but I would like it if it turned up at one of the not-E3 events. We really need to know that EA hasn’t canned it, after the failure of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but maybe that’s me being paranoid.

It makes me wonder in general what kind of games will be in the Direct and what won’t. I’m pretty sure there’ll be nothing from Rockstar, for example, but I wouldn’t be surprised at Capcom stuff, up to and including Resident Evil.

Ubisoft is a given, since they’ve always been close with Nintendo, and I think bringing back those MySims games shows that EA are wanting in too. Although EA are getting like Activision nowadays, where they publish fewer and fewer games every year, to the point where I’m not even sure what else they’d put on Switch 2. The current one already has EA Sports FC, so what else is there? A port of Dragon Age?

Literally anything could happen next Wednesday and that’s definitely exciting. I just hope Nintendo make the most of the opportunity and don’t leave us with more questions than answers. People assume they’ll talk about the release date and price but that’s not guaranteed.

We don’t even know if there’ll be any third party games there, but I think there will be. They’ll want to show off that everyone wants to be on Switch 2 and hopefully that’ll involve a lot of surprises… just probably not Mass Effect.
Kris

Inbox also-rans
I’m always shocked that Australia is the most strict country in the West when it comes to ratings and video game content. How can they be so chill about everything else but get worked up over video games?
Algie

A lot of talk about Capcom bringing back old franchises but I’m surprised they’ve never tried to do a new Breath Of Fire. I know role-players aren’t generally their thing, but they made a lot of them back in the day, so they must’ve have been popular at the time.
Pengle

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The small print
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