🎮️ I Tried 'Ghost of Yotei'...

Good morning!

It’s your friendly neighborhood samurai nerd, fresh off my week-long obsession with Ghost of Yotei. I’ve been slicing through bandits, petting foxes, and questioning whether I could survive five minutes in feudal Japan (spoiler: absolutely not).

This week, we’re talking:

• My full hands-on with Ghost of Yotei, it’s gorgeous, brutal, and yeah, it totally slaps

• Reddit’s biggest gaming news, from Nintendo’s AI crusade to Assassin’s Creed’s latest cancellation

• Industry chaos galore, including delayed games, new studios, and the Black Ops 7 beta melting COD players’ brains

Grab your coffee (or katana) - Here’s everything you need to know this week in the world of gaming.

TOP STORY

🎮 I Tried Ghost of Yotei, And Yeah, It Slaps

PlayStation slid into my DMs with early access to Ghost of Yotei, and after a week of slicing through bandits and getting emotionally wrecked by the wind, I can confirm: this game is absolutely cracked.

🌄 Looks So Good It’s Basically a Wallpaper Generator

If Ghost of Tsushima made you pause every five minutes for a photo op, Yotei will have you doing it every 30 seconds. It’s stupidly beautiful, rolling hills, god rays, misty mountains, the works. Every scene looks like Sucker Punch hired Mother Nature’s art director.

It runs buttery-smooth on PS5 Pro too (ray tracing + near-60 FPS), which feels like witchcraft in 2025.

⚔️ Gameplay: Same Samurai Soul, New Toys

You play as Atsu, a revenge-fueled warrior hunting down the “Yotei Six”, the folks who ruined her life. It’s your classic “they messed with the wrong person” setup, but it works.

Combat feels tight, fast, and cinematic, that perfect mix of elegant sword ballet and “oops I’m covered in blood.” They’ve kept the wind navigation, bird guides, and minimalist HUD from Tsushima, so you’re constantly getting lost in the best way possible.

Also: yes, you can still follow random birds to treasure. 10/10 mechanic, never remove it.

🌬️ Exploration: Explore in the Best Way

This game is for anyone who sees something shiny in the distance and says, “Yeah, I’m gonna check that out.” Side quests appear naturally, stumble upon a bamboo grove, find a chest, boom, you’re in a new story. It’s organic, not checklist-y, and it makes the world feel alive.

💬 Story: Revenge Served Stylishly, But Not Deeply

The plot hits the classic revenge beats hard, stylish flashbacks, big emotional payoff, but it doesn’t quite hit the moral tension of Tsushima. There’s no “fight with honor or fight dirty” inner turmoil here, just straight-up vengeance. It’s good, just not philosophically spicy.

🧘 Quality of Life & Fast Travel

Fast travel is instantaneous now, like, blink-and-you’re-there fast. Menus are cleaner, upgrades are smarter, and you can actually craft and teleport without hunting down NPCs like a lost courier. It’s a small thing, but it makes a massive difference.

🥋 Verdict

Ghost of Yotei might not hit Tsushima’s narrative highs, but everything else? Better. Faster. Prettier. Meaner.

It’s the open-world samurai dream all over again, just shinier and a little bloodier.

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LATEST NEWS

QUICK LINKS

💼 Industry & Business

• Nintendo Reportedly Lobbying Japanese Government to Push Back Against Generative AI

• Japanese platform DLsite launches its own payment system after Visa and Mastercard suspensions

• First US videogame champion Rebecca Heineman fundraising after aggressive cancer diagnosis

• More than 60% of US gamers buy two games or fewer per year, survey finds

• UK gov brushes off calls to stop payment processors blocking NSFW Steam games

🎮 Game Updates & Development

• Silksong hits 6 million downloads in 4 weeks, 4 million on Steam alone

• ‘There are no easy solutions’: Helldivers 2 dev explains PC version’s triple storage needs

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 celebrates 5M sales with new bosses, areas, and updates

• After indefinite delay, Marathon returns to closed beta testing

• Breakout hit Megabonk sells over 1 million copies on Steam

⚠️ Controversies & Censorship

• Ubisoft reportedly cancelled a post–Civil War Assassin’s Creed due to US politics and Yasuke backlash

• Scoop: Ubisoft quietly canned another Assassin’s Creed last year

• Discord data breach leaks customer info and photo IDs

• Original System Shock 2 to be removed from Steam later this week

• Kingmakers delayed indefinitely as devs “need more time before we feel good about charging money for it”

🧨 Studio Drama & Hot Takes

• Laid-off devs from cancelled ZeniMax MMO form new studio “with no outside investors”, meet Sackbird

• Alien: Isolation writer says the game was “too scary” to sell more, and that’s fine

• Baldur’s Gate 3 lead on Elon Musk’s AI game: “AI won’t solve the industry’s leadership problem”

• Redemption Road delays Kingmakers to “make sure everyone feels their money was well spent”

• The Black Ops 7 beta mode without SBMM has COD fans buzzing, and Battlefield comparisons flying