Welcome back to The Spotlight, a monthly roundup of insights on games played, to articles worth checking out, and everything in-between. For the month of March, 2025, here’s what I’m shining The Spotlight on.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
I really enjoy the act of playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but I’m finding its scale and progression to be daunting and overwhelming. The good news is that the ninja stuff in Assassin’s Creed Shadows is absolutely on point. They’ve seemingly nailed the power fantasy of being a dope, back-flipping, katana-swinging, kunai-hurling ninja with a kick ass grappling hook. It also looks absolutely stunning, save for some of the modeled clay faces that some of the NPCs have.
Where it kind of falls apart for me, however, is the lame progression system, the stupid loot, and the imposing size of the whole game. The progression is weird because you have to upgrade your tier of available unlocks before you can spend skill points, which means you have to seek out certain side activities in the world in order to actually make your character more capable. It’s an extra road block that felt unnecessary. That pairs well with the classic Ubisoft loot problem where you’re just inundated with marginally better items that clog up your inventory.
But the game itself is just so fucking big. I’ve spent like 6 hours with the game so far and only now have killed one of eleven targets. It paints a pretty laborious picture of what my gameplay experience is going to be like for the next fifty hours. It isn’t helped by the milquetoast story that could be much better if it didn’t need to be stretched out over the entirety of Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ bloated runtime.
I want to play more of it because it’s a lot of fun, but I already feel my will to boot it up starting to dwindle. It also doesn’t help that there’s a ton of other things out there I could be playing instead.
Split Fiction
My biggest complaint with Split Fiction is that I haven’t played nearly as much of it as I want to. The reason for that is because Split Fiction is a much more mechanically demanding experience than its predecessor, It Takes Two, so my partner has been more sparing about when they’re willing to play.
But when we do jump back into the game, we’re having an absolute blast. The constant change in mechanics keeps things fresh and interesting, and the generous respawn mechanics and frequent checkpoints make failure far less punishing than other games we’ve attempted.
I really like Split Fiction and very much want to be playing it more.
Cities: Skylines I&II
I enjoy the Cities: Skylines games a whole lot, or more specifically, I like the first one a lot and wish the second one actually worked well enough for me to devote more play time to. But there’s still a lot of joy in starting a city up and then eventually abandoning it because I fucked up the traffic pattern at the very beginning and fixing it is more daunting of a task than just scuttling the city and starting anew. I’ve basically created and abandoned about 6 cities this month alone.
While Waiting
While Waiting is a game about life and the many times we find ourselves waiting to do things in it. It’s also a truly strange point-and-click adventure game where you can do a bunch of weird stuff while waiting, if you’re quick enough and smart enough. I have been neither of those things, so a lot of these bonus objectives are lost on me. So the experience hasn’t been overly exciting, but it is a nifty little way to kill some time.
The Simpsons
I am now twenty-three seasons into The Simpsons. I’m not sure when it exactly happened, but at some point this went from a show I was engaging with to pure background noise. Sure there will be an occasional goof or even an entire episode that’s really funny, but by and large the show feels kind of soulless.
I don’t know that I’d even call it “bad” at this point though, which is weird because all I’ve ever heard about these seasons were awful things. Twenty-three seasons in, and all I can really say is that The Simpsons got boring. Despite increasingly zany story lines, a glut of guest stars, and the much anticipated shift to HD, none of it really made the case for why the show needed to keep going.
Personally, it’s hard to maintain interest in a show that’s been going for so long and refuses to make any significant changes. Knowing from the start of every episode that nothing I’m going to experience in the next 20 minutes actually matters really sours the experience after so many seasons. You would think after this many seasons and the worsening reception that someone would have suggested the groundbreaking concept of something actually changing.
It’s especially maddening considering that these episodes have run alongside the heyday of Futurama, a show that leaned into having evolving story lines and eventually ended (until it didn’t) on such a wonderful note. Hell, at least let the characters update their wardrobe so they don’t look so out of place in comparison to every other character that strolls into Springfield.
I’m ranting. I’ll continue to watch The Simpsons and get mad about it. It’s just that I really like the old run of the show, and wish that it would either do something fresh for a change, or just end. I don’t know that anyone out there is still holding onto the purity of The Simpsons formula anymore, so why not shake it up a little? Please.
News
Activision uses terrible AI art to promote a Guitar Hero game that might not even exist
A candle still burns for Scalebound
Acclaim is born again for some reason
No release date in sight for Cities: Skylines 2 console ports
Jackbox games to come to televisions in free-to-play app
Next Xbox targets 2027, handheld device on track for this year
Skate gets microtransactions before it actually comes out
CWA builds an industry-wide union
Game Informer rises from the ashes
Ark expansion trailer is full on AI garbage
Thanks for checking out The Spotlight this month. I’ll be back at the end of April with another installment. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.
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