Assassin's Creed Mirage preview: A throwback in the best of ways

I waved goodbye to Assassin's Creed Valhalla after 12 hours. I took my time to do everything I could in the opening area, then spent a couple of hours in the main part of the game. After yet another side objective that Ubisoft jammed into this bloated game, it dawned on me -- nope, I can't go any further. I could tell early on that the world was too big with too much to do. I had a similar problem with Far Cry 6, another recent open-world Ubisoft game I endured for around the same length of time.