Assassin's Creed Shadows reviews are in but the only thing I care about is all the adorable monkeys you can buy and have live in your hideout

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Who cares about fighting the Templars when you can chill with your monkey buddies?

Assassin's Creed Shadows Naoe and Yasuke outside Hideout
(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Assassin's Creed Shadows reviews are in but the only aspect of the game I actually care about is your ability to collect many, many monkeys. You read that right. Assassin's Creed Shadows has a base-building aspect to it and it lets you populate said base with macaques, adorable little monkeys.

Making a home isn't inherently new to the series. Assassin's Creed 2 lets you rebuild Monteriggioni and in Black Flag you have both your ship and pirate cove to spruce up, but Shadows has my favorite feature of all so far: the ability to collect animal buddies to wander your homestead.

The base-building aspect of Shadows was announced a while ago, and I immediately knew it was something I'd be keen to check out. I love making a nice home for my game characters – it's why I spend so much time hunting to upgrade the camp in Red Dead Redemption 2.

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Chris Person, co-founder of Aftermath, shares some pictures on Twitter about how they're "Macaque-maxing." They write, "I'm trying not to oversell Assassin’s Creed Shadows but I went to a vendor and they had a Macaque that you can just buy and have hang out in your house and I’ve never purchased something faster."

— cantworkitout on March 19, 2025

I count at least 14 macaques in one picture alone, and Person writes, "I have discovered that Assassin’s Creed Shadows allows you to place as many Macaques in your home as you have room for." So, what are you waiting for? As soon as you get the game, get macaque-maxing.

When my girlfriend and I visited her friends in Vietnam, we went to a Buddhist temple that had a bunch of small monkeys scurrying about the grounds, but she wouldn't let me pet them even though they looked very cute, so this is the closest I can get to having my own horde of monkey minions. Check out our Shadows hideout guide so you can see what the best rooms are to build early on.

While you wait for Shadows to come out tomorrow, check out some of the best action games you can play in the meantime.

Issy van der Velde
Issy van der Velde
Contributor

I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.

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