Eurogamer spend an awful lot of words today defending AC Shawows

https://www.eurogamer.net/with-assassins-creed-shadows-ubisoft-remains-the-undisputed-king-of-snackable-open-worlds

Yet after reading all that, still have no incentive to buy this, still burned out on AC games and still have a couple laying around I paid under $10 for 2nd hand to play before this. Plus I can always replay Black Flag when the itch comes back. Exploration was fun in that one.

I might pick it up when I run into it 2nd hand, this isn't convincing me to spend more on Ubisoft again.

(Would love a snackable open world in VR though, Skyrim was so good on PSVR1)

Waiting for 50% discount, as you now, Ubisoft always do that.

Okay. I'm convinced that the casuals are loving this, perhaps the core crowd also. It has 10k reviews now on PSN, 6k of them have been in the last 2 days so they are from people who played the game enough and it has only risen in average score up to 4.72 now which is a really good sign. Steam remains very positive at 81% on Steam and peaked the same as Valhalla. It has passed 2 million sold and it doesn't look like it's legs are breaking, from what I can gauge players are positive and loving the graphics and world and word of mouth is bringing more people in, perhaps the barrage of hate is also increasing interest as people can see that hate is clearly not deserved in this case.

There are such dishonest people out there saying this is a total disaster when it looks to be tracking well above Oddessy and in the direction of Valhalla. It's so weird that people are fighting through a consumer product but seeing them having to lie about it to win is cringe as fuck and now that they can see it is clearly succeeding which is against their narrative they start saying ludicrous shite like the games budget was 900 million.

Only reason I'm not playing this right now is I've been made aware that Ubisoft cuts prices near half price regardless of sales. The game looks so solid and it's main critical fault can be addressed using immersion mode with Japanese and Portugese VA which is probably better anyway even if the VA was good. This isn't a DA VG situation where the writing is dogshit, it's actually really solid and only falters from the way the game is structured. Some of the graphics on base PS5 alone are the best we've seen this gen and comparisons to the games that hold up with 9th gen like RDR2 look next gen, this is the first true next gen game without image quality faults or severe compromises, it looks better consistently unlike games like WuKong or Rebirth that look next gen in tight narrow spaces and then fall apart hard when things open up again and it's fully open world all of the time with draw distances, detail and lighting that beat the UE5 promise. I'm looking forward to this upon first sale, hopefully before GoY comes out but even if so, it's on my list of to buy now for sure. 

Also, yo see it hold up after reviewers and players are coming off of KCD2 and Monster Hunter Wilds is a feat, those titles fresh in people's memory could have destroyed this game had it actually been bad. That is the biggest sign to me that it is at least good.

Just got all the achievements for AC Origins (including all the DLC) and about 20% done with AC Odyssey and they both are pretty similar when it comes to leveling up.  To me the grinding in both games feel natural since I like exploring the whole map and doing side quests.  In Origins I didn't do all the side quests and was way overpowered by the end.

You don't have to justify your purchases to anyone. If you want to play it then play it. Imo it's a great game, I'm enjoying it as much as Origins/Odyssey so far. Also that reception is 82 OpenCritic, 81 MetaCritic, 81% Steam, 4.72 on PlayStation Store, 4.4/5 Stars on Xbox Store. It has received a good reception despite what the rage-baiting bigots like Grummz would desperately want us to believe.

They lost this one, onto the next grift.

Grummz has the strangest case of a messiah complex I've even seen. It used to be fun to see what he railing at but now it's wildly cringe inducing. He genuinely believes himself to be a champion of the people in the culture war, I'd have a bruise from face palming if he posted anymore. 

WOW! GoT artsytyle is better but still, WOW. Next gen is here baby, I was getting concerned we'd have ps4 graphical games with image quality issues for the entire generation. This is what you get when you don't use UE5. I have hope ND will blow the socks off us yet. 

Yeah, it's Assassin's Creed, I never had any doubt it would do well (doing well enough for Yves is another question), I always thought it was a bit silly to think otherwise, it is one of the biggest IPs in the world, Lol. Casuals will like it because casuals largely don't give a shit about all this extra drama surrounding it, nor do they spend 80% of their time watching rage-bait on YouTube instead of actually playing games, Lol.

I think you meant it peaked the same as Odyssey (62k), Valhalla was a delayed release to Steam so it has a much lower peak (15k), Odyssey is their highest ever peak on Steam until Shadows (64k). I believe Assassin's Creed is more popular on consoles than PC. It is also 2m players, not sold, still a strong start though, and it seems to be increasing because I saw just yesterday that it actually went up on the PS Store Top Sellers which implies WoM is strong. I also think that the "hate" campaign is backfiring a little and people are growing sick of the "everything is woke" crowd.

It was funny to see Grummz get ratio'd by the Ubisoft Twitter account, Lol.

I think it's tracking alongside Odyssey/Origins which is great, but I don't think it has a chance of beating or matching Valhalla which is the first ever AC to reach $1bn in revenue, Valhalla had so much going for it, that Shadows cannot replicate, it released during COVID lockdowns when gaming was at its peak, it was cross-gen, it released alongside next-gen consoles, it was a follow-up to the well received Origins and Odyssey, meanwhile I think many were a bit let down by Valhalla so Shadows didn't have the same hype behind it but it is doing great.

Funnily I think one of Ubisoft's bigger problems is exactly in your last paragraph, they've stupidly conditioned people into expecting steep discounts on their games soon after release so a lot of people wait now, that's of course entirely 100% their own fault and I don't blame anyone one bit for waiting for a discount, I still heavily dislike Yves and want changes at Ubisoft even despite me very much enjoying Shadows so far.

I will play it eventually still haven't started Valhalla or Mirage probably wait until is heavily discounted or ends up on Game Pass before I start playing it. Just got all the achievements for AC Origins yesterday (including all the DLC) will probably play some more AC Odyssey before I start AC Valhalla.