Ha, that is actually a great question. I’ve played other Assassin’s Creed, but not that one. I loved Ghost of Tsushima, though, probably more than the AC games I’ve played (1, 2, 2.2, 2.3, 4, Odyssey).
Same. I’ve played several of the ACs for a few hours (including a tiny bit of Shadows), but never for very long. I found the VR sci-fi machine thingy they go inside (Animus?) kind of immersion-breaking and hated being taken out of the historical periods. Maybe I just didn’t play them long enough to give them a serious enough chance…? Should I?
I do like other Ubi games (Far Cry, The Division, etc.), so I’m not inherently opposed to the “Ubi formula”. Ghost of Tsushima itself feels like it should be an Ubisoft game anyway.
Story-wise, when I played Shadows, I had just finished (and enjoyed) the TV show Shogun, so the whole “European warrior in Japan” thing seemed a bit derivative (though I think the samurai guy in Shadows is actually more or less historical, some creative liberties notwithstanding). Tsushima’s narrative and characters are more traditional.
But how’s the gameplay? I didn’t play long enough to really find out.
Have you considered Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice? It plays like a tighter version of Ghost of Tsushima, far more linear and focused. It’s definitely got the Fromsoft difficulty you’d expect from a Dark Souls title, and the combat is a terror - until it clicks. Once it does, it’s a phenomenal game.
Hmm, I hadn’t actually, thanks for the suggestion! I’ve traditionally struggled with soulslike games, even on easy. I grew up with PC games, so the whole “real time parry” thing that’s so common in console games is really difficult for me, in any soulslike or ARPG. (It’s trivially easy and mostly optional in Tsushima, especially if you use the accessibility settings and get some parry upgrades.) I just tried Elden Ring again the other day, and couldn’t get past the first half hour or so without constantly dying to the trash mobs. Skill issue 
Still, Sekiro’s setting might just be enough to entice me for a try… I’ll check out some videos and maybe get it on sale. Thanks!
I think it is very hard, though. I’ve avoided it. I need these soulslike games to give me some kind of “wimp mode”.
Me too. There’s a whole group of gamers who love those games for their precision and difficulty. I couldn’t even get past the intro in any of those games.
Oh, and speaking of soulslikes, this isn’t one, but I just recently learned of a “realistic” (European) swordfight/fencing simulator called Hellish Quart: Save 50% on Hellish Quart on Steam
It’s not a traditional fighting game, but a physically-simulated sword simulator where fights can end in a few seconds if you strike a vital part just right or cut something off. Lots of dismemberments and double hits where both combatants die.
I’m replaying Fallout 3 at the moment. It must’ve been a long time since I last played it because I’ve already found locations that I have no memory of.
The last few AC games at least, the VR portions are so brief and infrequent that 95% of the time I forget they’re even part of the game. I see them as a framing device more than anything. Otherwise, you’re an ancient warrior in Egypt, Greece, Norway, Japan, whatever.
AC: Odyssey is probably the most gorgeous game I’ve ever played and I want to see Greece IRL solely because I played that game.
Also, I kid you not, I once had a quest to find a temple in the game, and couldn’t find a guide in the game or even online to tell me where it was. So I looked up info on the real life temple it was based on, found where it was in real Greece, and used that to accurately find it in the game.
What a great game, too. Taking an isometric game series and converting it over to FPS-perspective was such a bold move. I balked when I first saw footage, assuming they had turned the series I enjoyed into a full blown shooter-action game.
I prefer it now, to be honest. I didn’t realize how great it could be as a 3D experience. I probably, at that time, didn’t realize they had done the Elder Scrolls.
New Vegas gets a TON of praise, as it should. But Fallout 3 is also really excellent.
I do love both Fallout III and Fallout: NV.
Fallout III got a lot of undeserved bashing by Fallout I & II fans who were enraged at it not being isometric, I recall. It was very fun from the perspective of someone without that baggage, however.
Heck, I think even Fallout 4 received too much criticism. I liked it quite a bit as well.
I tried it for half an hour and gave up after dying ten times to the first samurai mini-boss, lol. (vs 0 times in Tsushima after 8 hours). Ended up refunding it for being “too difficult”. Shadows and Tsushima are much easier.
I guess dying in 1-2 hits and then having to backtrack through respawned enemies just isn’t my idea of fun… it feels too much like work. Though I can see how some personality types would be drawn to the challenge and satisfaction of overcoming it.
I never played Sekiro but I watch Youtuber NormalAdultLuke and he has his Patreon-only playthrough of Sekiro up on Youtube for January. I normally have no interest in watching playthroughs but he has a good mix of humor, skill and humility that appeals to me, plus they’re edited so you don’t have to watch him try to fight a boss fifty times as though you’re watching it live. Anyway, that series was both my way to experience Sekiro and my way of knowing that I’d never play and stick with Sekiro 
I’ve been playing the remastered version of Resident Evil 4, which was always one of my favorite games. The new version is fantastic and they switched things around just enough to make it familiar and new at the same time. It’s more challenging than I expected and tons of fun.
With my extensive lore knowledge of the first game, I hope this weekend to dive into one of the most cursed games, Fear & Hunger 2: Termina. If anyone is a fan of the manga Berserk then you’d enjoy the world building/story of the first game. The gameplay comes in the form of turned based RPG combat, with the unique ability of limb loss and targeting opponent limbs. The game is brutal and thematically very dark, about old-old gods, new-old gods, heck even old-new, and new-new gods and their vicious cyclic relationship with man.
This Youtube video breaks down the ENTIRE first game really well for anyone interested. [8+ hours long]
I’ve been playing some Star Wars: Outlaws and enjoying it – when it’s not crashing or freezing.
I’m not that great at stealthy games so I have some help with that aspect. The help doesn’t always work and there have been a few times when a questline won’t update with WAND/WeMod enabled. For example: the locations of the Imperial Code Sequencer and the Bev Kranti clam.
Keeper (2025)
Recommended.
I am not done with this game, but I am a good amount in, maybe 75%(?).
This is from the team that made Psychonauts, Psychonauts 2, and many other great games. This is not a platformer, it’s a…well, I’d almost call it a walking simulator. This is wrong, though, as you have numerous puzzles to solve and the game changes quite a bit along the way.
You begin as a, well, Walking Lighthouse. You can walk, focus your light-beam, and actually utilize a friendly bird that nests out on top of you. If this sounds dull, I should really tell you that the game changes a fair bit as you go. Never becoming a wholly new game, but concepts are reinvented and evolved along the way.
Puzzles are relatively simple. And you can not die in the game.
I like it. Steam says I have 5 hours in in the game and I bet I come in under 10 in the end. Find it on sale. It’s fun and pretty original.
I finished Keeper today and let me tell you, the final hour or so are NOT what I was expecting.
In the end, the game was kind of nuts. I loved it. I will emphasize:
THE OPENING COUPLE HOURS AS A LIGHTHOUSE, etc. are NOT THE WHOLE GAME.
My sole purchase during the winter sales was Hades and I’ve been working my way through that. Hades 2 came out recently but all my friends said that the original was well worth playing and there was no reason to skip ahead[1]. After a few days I can fairly reliably beat Meg and make it to the second realm but haven’t reached the end of that world yet. Fun game though and easy to decide to try one more run before calling it a night.
Unlike, say, Borderlands where I’d be hard pressed to recommend anyone slog through the first game versus just jumping into the much superior Borderlands 2. ↩︎