Ghost of Tsushima Catch All

So the Guardian has offered an opinion, and its mixed.

TLDR: Very pretty. Not innovative enough to justify its length.

I will finish The Last of Us 2 now. And I don't think I'll be picking this up until there's a chunky price drop.

It feels like games in this genre are falling neatly into two camps for me:

Brilliant. "I can't wait to explore over there..." - Skyrim, The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, and - to a lesser extent - Shadow of Morder.

Tedious. "I can't believe how many times I'm having to do this side mission/mini-game..." - Watch Dogs, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Assassins Creed...

Increasingly, the ability of an 'open world' game to disguise its length and the amount of repetition are the critical factors for me. Which I think is your point, Stealthpizza.

I try to remember that professional reviewers are going to have a different attitude than most of us. They're forced to play a lot more games, and write reviews on an often tight deadline. As such, they tend to place a higher value on novelty, and will be more worn down by repetition in a game than those of us who likely stretch out our play.

The reviews are interesting and some criticisms seem legit, but this at least seems like it's going to be a pretty good comfort food game. There's a certain satisfaction, when stressed out, in just clearing a bunch of generic POIs off a map. Alternating that with more challenging gameplay works for me. I understand why some people prefer more dense games, though.

ccesarano wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:

I'm so f*cking tired of this criticism for open-world games. Don't they realize that a major component of open-world games is exploration and discovery? Not your jam? No worries! Just DON'T PLAY IT.

Wouldn't being told what is located where get rid of the exploration and discovery?

Diminish the positive effect, yes, absolutely. But in a way that some people care and others don't. They're not asking for a game world devoid of things to find, they just prefer to find the things themselves without a signpost.

Really this ought to be in the options for most of these games, which most Assassins Creedses and the last Red Dead do. In other words, a superior alternative to "DON'T PLAY IT" is "can I turn the map off?" But taking away the sign posts can get rough if the artists think about placing stuff in the world as a grocery store stocker would instead of an good Easter egg hider.

An even better option would be evolving the Breath of Wild map. Let player interaction and observation inform the map more. Extra points for a dev audacious enough to take the magic player icon off the map.

Having reread a bunch of the Hollow Knight thread, I found I was one of the few that liked how that game handled its map. You can't map out an area until you purchase that map, and the map itself is incomplete until you purchase a quill. While you can fill it out, you can only do so at spots where you rest. You can purchase pins that will mark points of interest on your map, but you have to find them on the map first. This effectively means the player must explore and discover before the point has been added.

I also enjoyed Breath of the Wild, where only five marks were laid on the map, each having to do with the main story quest. Every other marker was placed by the player. If you were to combine the Breath of the Wild and Hollow Knight methods, I'd be fine with that as well. I feel like the typical Ubi-style design doesn't actually encourage exploration, making the open-world an artificial loading screen where it can take several minutes to get to where the actual fun is.

So to me, just having map icons isn't discovery or exploration, it's following orders. It's no different than an objective marker telling you where to go in a linear game without any exploration anyway.

Regardless, it seems like Ghost of Tsushima has found itself a middle ground if Skill Up's review is anything to go by. Sounds like there will be markers that tell you where a side quest begins, but after that you'll have to explore and observe the world yourself. I can dig that.

The game being a 30-40 hour experience for main + side quests and not 100%ing the map sounds pretty good, too. He also addresses the concerns people had of the combat being From/Souls-like, making comparisons to Arkham games.

So, yeah, looking forward to starting this up midnight Thursday evening.

The world looks great! I do have some concerns about the AI that Easy Allies brought up so I might wait for a sale on this one.

I love dumb AI. Well not love but I don't think it is possible to have human type realism with that. No one working with 12 other people wouldn't be alarmed when 11 of them are gone. They would be freaking out and raising the alarm.

So they have to fudge it a bit and I like a more relaxed system.

Kotaku review

Ghost of Tsushima is pretty as heck—sporadic capturing left me with almost 50 GB worth of screenshots and short video clips to sift through—but at its core, it’s just another open-world game. I found myself audibly sighing every time I crested a hill towards a mystery objective only to find another fox to follow or another haiku to compose. These diversions, while unique at first glance, proved to just be busy work as time wore on. I was so strong by the end of the game—filling up every skill tree is easy if you ignore the main story and just explore for a bit—that I didn’t even bother using stealth tactics for the last third. I don’t think I even died after the first few hours. There’s so little to get excited about in Tsushima once the initial wonder of the wind physics and lush environments wears off that the only thing that kept me going was my own innate desire to fill out the entire map. And that can only hold someone’s interest for so long.

Eurogamer review

Ghost Of Tsushima Review - I Freakin Loved It (Spoiler Free)

GameRiot

Sounds like a pretty good one of those. It's good to see so many positive impressions about the combat, but I'm disappointed to read that the stealth implementation isn't great.

I'm just trying to decide if I'm in the mood for another big open world game at the moment.

I read the Eurogamer review which has definitely tampered my expectations a good bit. There has been a host of 9/10 scores, a load of 6's & 7's & the reviews with no score seem probably more on the 'its good but not great' train of thought.

The thing that I did want Sucker Punch to avoid was repetition in the tasks. Follow a bird or fox leading to the exact same reward each time. What's novel the first couple of times becomes a known quantity & any unique discovery or reward is completely absent.

In the next 2-3 years I'd like to see open world games get smaller & denser, pack them with unique objectives, secrets, with a more unorthodox structure. Subvert player expectations, don't let them get comfortable & know what's coming. It probably won't happen in the AAA space bar Breath Of The Wild 2 & Cyberpunk 2077.

Spikeout wrote:

In the next 2-3 years I'd like to see open world games get smaller & denser, pack them with unique objectives, secrets, with a more unorthodox structure. Subvert player expectations, don't let them get comfortable & know what's coming. It probably won't happen in the AAA space bar Breath Of The Wild 2 & Cyberpunk 2077.

I would like that too but so much perceived value comes from game length that I think developers are often forced to pad the game.

farley3k wrote:
Spikeout wrote:

In the next 2-3 years I'd like to see open world games get smaller & denser, pack them with unique objectives, secrets, with a more unorthodox structure. Subvert player expectations, don't let them get comfortable & know what's coming. It probably won't happen in the AAA space bar Breath Of The Wild 2 & Cyberpunk 2077.

I would like that too but so much perceived value comes from game length that I think developers are often forced to pad the game.

Unfortunately that's true. Final Fantasy 7 Remake was the most recent game I've played that ultimately suffers from this.

I’m still in the middle of HZD so I think I’ll hold off for now, maybe revisit the stuff in FFVIIR and FFXV that I didn’t get around to after completing the stories.

PaladinTom wrote:

Skimmed a couple of written reviews and two of them already call out a "map full of icons."

I'm so f*cking tired of this criticism for open-world games. Don't they realize that a major component of open-world games is exploration and discovery? Not your jam? No worries! Just DON'T PLAY IT.

"Gee, this platformer would've been great if it didn't have so much jumping."

That's not fair.. at this point this is a mature genre.. it would be just like a reviewer calling out an MMORPG for tired and boring quest design featuring kill X rats.

My real hold up is whether I should wait till PS5. I don't have a Pro so I'm concerned that the experience won't be as good as if I just wait till the end of the year with the new console...

IGN's Beyond! crew seem to feel the game is a bit too shallow in places and almost ridiculously deep in others. It does sounds like the stealth is paper thin and the guards are way too easy to cheese. I'm fine with compromising the AI in stealth so it's fun for the player but it does sound like the guards just do not know how to deal with you, if you do anything but fight, once discovered.

Just about every weapon and stance has a long skill tree (that kind of thing is definitely up Skillup's alley) to the extent where, if you're anything like me, you can quickly loose track of what new button combos you can use. They made the point that you shouldn't put all your points into one stance early on as you might not find yourself sticking with it or using it exclusively.

From the Eurogamer review wrote:

If you just want to don some amazing armour, perform some perfect parries, and live out your dream as a samurai legend, you'll find what you're looking for.

That's enough for me. I wish the reviews were a little more positive but I'm super in the mood for this type of game at the moment, and the samurai setting is the icing on the cake. Now I'm gonna go back to my watch of Seven Samurai to pass the time until I can play.

It sounds like the combat is incredible which is a big point in it's favour for me.

Anyone seen a review that mentions performance on a base PS4?

PaladinTom wrote:

Skimmed a couple of written reviews and two of them already call out a "map full of icons."

I'm so f*cking tired of this criticism for open-world games. Don't they realize that a major component of open-world games is exploration and discovery? Not your jam? No worries! Just DON'T PLAY IT.

"Gee, this platformer would've been great if it didn't have so much jumping."

This reference might not be in your wheelhouse, but do you remember Game Dev Story? It was a neat little simulator from a while back. It was pretty successful for the developer, Kairosoft. They doubled down on that formula and now we have essentially the same game in dozens of “flavors” - water parks, malls, racing teams, ships, ramen stores - you name it. I played one more of them and said you know what? These are all the same.

Open world games sometimes fall into that same feeling. I’ve played more than a few lately so I’m feeling it. Horizon Zero Dawn felt super cool and unique until I climbed a large thing to reveal all the local map icons. It’s still fun, but mostly when I play story missions. And that feeling of checking off the icons, same as I did in FFXV last month, it doesn’t ruin a game, but it can make it feel less special. Occasionally an open world game will transcend the pattern but it seems to happen less often lately.

That's pretty funny considering at least a couple of the negative reviews called it out for feeling like a foreign studio's failed attempt at representing Japanese culture. Nice to hear that they did it well.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Anyone seen a review that mentions performance on a base PS4?

I can't recall the source, but I remember seeing a couple comments indicating that base PS4 performance might not be so great for this one. I believe Digital Foundry plans to post a base PS4 vs. PS4 Pro comparison soon, so it may be wise to wait for that.

Dyni wrote:

That's pretty funny considering at least a couple of the negative reviews called it out for feeling like a foreign studio's failed attempt at representing Japanese culture. Nice to hear that they did it well.

I read the same articles and tweets. For the most part I agree and get what they're arguing but there's a lot of projection and disconnect. Ghost of Tsushima is going for an homage to Kurosawa's samurai movies and is produced by a Japanese company. Suckerpunch isn't going for realism. Very little consumptive media goes for realism.

Dyni wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

Anyone seen a review that mentions performance on a base PS4?

I can't recall the source, but I remember seeing a couple comments indicating that base PS4 performance might not be so great for this one. I believe Digital Foundry plans to post a base PS4 vs. PS4 Pro comparison soon, so it may be wise to wait for that.

I hope it runs at least decent. A base PS4 is all I have. I have an extremely high tolerance for long load times and poor frame-rates, though.

Not Digital Foundry, but the comparison between base PS4 and PS4 Pro by these guys seems to indicate a resolution difference primarily, with better textures or resolution on PS4 Pro. Which is no surprise. Seems that performance doesn't take too huge a hit. About what I expect from modern AAA.

The commentary I can do without.

Hmm, yeah, as an owner of a Base PS4, I think I'm going to wait.

malking wrote:
From the Eurogamer review wrote:

If you just want to don some amazing armour, perform some perfect parries, and live out your dream as a samurai legend, you'll find what you're looking for.

That's enough for me. I wish the reviews were a little more positive but I'm super in the mood for this type of game at the moment, and the samurai setting is the icing on the cake. Now I'm gonna go back to my watch of Seven Samurai to pass the time until I can play. :)

Same here. That description kinda sold it for me. Won’t pick it up yet though as I’m deep into Witcher 3.

So anyone who has played this. How good is the stealth and how forgiving is it? Can I stealth most of the game or is there a lot of forced combat?

I want to be a ninja in this samurai game.

Stealthpizza wrote:

So anyone who has played this.

It's out tomorrow.

Here's a Giant Bomb Quick Look.

Some youtubers are already streaming it as well

theRadBrad has his first part up

Stealthpizza wrote:

So anyone who has played this. How good is the stealth and how forgiving is it? Can I stealth most of the game or is there a lot of forced combat?

I want to be a ninja in this samurai game.

The impressions I’ve read on Twitter indicate that the stealth isn’t a lot of fun because the intelligence of the enemies isn’t up to snuff. Not exactly an answer to your question but it makes me think if you’d prefer to stealth the entire game, it might not be satisfying. Unless you enjoy a walk in the park!