Ubisoft Brings Out the Big Guns
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/73520/assassins-creed-shadows-first-impressions-nintendo-switch-2
The rumors turned out to be true, when Ubisoft revealed last month that Assassin’s Creed: Shadows would come to Nintendo Switch 2 in early December. This marks the first third-party AAA release on Nintendo's latest console for a game that was released that same year. With the review code coming in hot, we only had the past weekend to go over its performance and graphical adjustments. While it’s too early to give the game a full review, Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a great, but compromised fit on Switch 2.
Shadows marks the first new mainline Assassin’s Creed game running natively on Nintendo hardware. While Odyssey and Origins were available as cloud service games in Japan, the series hasn’t been seen on a Nintendo system outside of the occasional last-gen port, such as Black Flag and the Ezio collection. The gameplay in the series has shifted quite a bit since then, forgoing its static combat system for a more dynamic and immersive style. Set in a gorgeous rendition of feudal Japan, Shadows sees you start the game out as Naoe, a Shinobi who has to watch as her father gets brutally murdered by a group called the Shibakufu. As she sets out on her quest for vengeance, you run into the black samurai Yasuke. The duo form a secret organization to keep Japan safe from the tyranny of the Shogun and try to take out the Shibakufu.
This is a notable shift for the series in that you can choose between two very different styles of gameplay. Naoe is ideal for the stealthy approach. She can grapple up buildings, move quickly through the shadows, and take out enemies from afar with a wide ranging set of tools. Dealing with crowds of enemies becomes a problem, however. That’s where Yasuke comes in. As a big brute with a lot of power in his attacks, you can not only make every slash of your katana hurt, but also storm through enemy gates and throw subtlety to the wind. This dynamic is a lot of fun to experiment with and the quests are often designed to allow for multiple approaches. Will you come knocking down the door with Yasuke or get in and out quickly with Naoe? Their voice performances are stellar in both English and Japanese.
If you’ve played a modern Ubisoft game, most of what Shadows has to offer will be pretty straightforward. You can find quests by roaming around the world, using landmarks and tall towers to scout the areas. There are many branching side-missions and objectives to freely explore the wonderfully designed world of Shadows. The Assassins’s Creed series is most well known for attempting to bring an authentic historical world to life and they’ve excelled here. Japan here isn’t the picturesque parade of forests, mountains and temples you may expect. The villages are dirty, the people rude and more often than not the brutality of the Shogun era is on full display. Take Ghost of Yotei or Tsushima as a point of comparison, with their almost painter-esque and serene approach to what Japan is ‘supposed’ to look and feel like. But here in Shadows the dirt and unpleasantness make those gorgeous vistas, architecture and nature hit all the harder. It is a world that invites you to get lost in. But unlike other Assassins’s Creed games, here it doesn’t feel like a checklist of stuff to do.
I had already put in several hours in Assassin’s Creed Shadows on PlayStation 5. Carrying over my save file through Ubisoft Connect was instantaneous. I could immediately continue where I had left off. That said, the Switch 2 version visually is absolutely a downgrade from the PS5 version. Framerates and loading times can be inconsistent, especially with larger lighting effects and groups of enemies on screen. Yet, I had a fine time playing through the game in docked mode. Most notable are the menus, which take a few seconds to load in, especially when moving between different tabs. I also had a few notable bugs and glitches, resulting in the occasional software crash. Ubisoft is still updating and optimizing the Switch 2 version in the coming months, so I do hope that these kinks can be ironed out. The biggest visual setback is in handheld mode. While the game is playable fine enough and the framerate can be a tad more stable, the resolution drops significantly. I reviewed Star Wars Outlaws a few months back and I can’t say that it looked as rough on Switch 2 as Shadows does here. The scope of Shadows is much larger, but it is a shame that it looks as if someone rubbed vaseline on the lens to get the game running in handheld mode.
Still I will add that it is wonderful to have a ‘next-gen’ assassin’s creed running on a Nintendo Switch 2. Ultimately that choice will come down to what you are looking for. If you have other systems at your disposal, I’d still recommend playing on those if you want to get truly lost in the astonishing world that Ubisoft has presented here. But for those who love to play open-world games like Cyberpunk, Skyrim and the Witcher on the go, Assassin's Creed Shadows lines up pretty well with those expectations. Regardless of performance, I am having a lot of fun with the game overall so far. To me, it is the combination of this particular historical setting and its varied gameplay that is keeping me hooked. This world and its characters feel like the next step for the Assassin’s Creed series. It may have taken a while for the series to get (back) to Nintendo, but what a fun return it has been so far.
Topic: Assassin's Creed Shadows (First Impressions) Nintendo Switch 2 (Read 20 times)
