Now Playing: Ghost of Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima is an open world, third person action game in which you play as Jin Sakai, a samurai on a mission to free his home – the island of Tsushima – from Mongol invaders. But to do so, Jin must be willing to break the samurai code and become the Ghost – hero to his people; demon to his enemies, Jin Sakai is . . . Samurai Batman! Or should be, if the game wasn’t dreadfully dull. I hate to say it, but Ghost of Tsushima is one of the most disappointing games I’ve played in a long time.

Ghost of Tsushima is, without a doubt, one of the most visually striking open world games you can play. You’ll have seen the screenshots but they don’t do the game justice – you really need to see it in motion. The swaying grass, the falling leaves, the misty haze, the glow of fireflies and the warm hue of the setting sun – everywhere you go in Tsushima looks beautiful.

But whilst the visuals are lovely they do somewhat lose their lustre as you progress because, yes – you can have too much of a good thing. There’s not a great deal of varied terrain in Tsushima, and once you’ve stood in awe of one field of gently swaying grass, you’ve kind of seen it all. And as gorgeous as the landscape may be, the actual design of the open world in terms of structure and content leaves a lot to be desired.

Whilst the map is broken down into smaller regions marked by natural boundaries (good), significant landmarks or terrain variation are few and far between (bad) making navigating the world purely by visual cues rather difficult. The game eschews a typical map marker for a ‘flowing wind’ effect that’s supposed to guide you to your chosen destination.

And it sort of works – but you’ll still have to stop and check your map regularly. And honestly, I think I would have preferred the option of a more simple and precise – if admittedly intrusive – marker to guide my way.

Not only is the landscape poorly designed from the point of view of navigation, it also doesn’t really encourage exploration with such a repetitive and lacklustre selection of side activities – not to mention the far too frequent enemy encounters that interrupt your travel.

It’s not unusual to encounter several enemy patrols along a single stretch of road. If you try dealing with them all, you’ll never get anywhere fast. The main and side quests of Ghost of Tsushima are already extremely combat focused. There are also numerous enemy outposts to clear and villages to liberate in the open world.

That’s why you need to give the player some space, some time to relax between combat and explore the world without constant interruption. Pacing is important, even if you have a great combat system . . . which Ghost of Tsushima most certainly does not.

The combat – at least initially – is fast, brutal and punishing in a way that really does demand your attention. It’s built around a simple and familiar system of block, dodge, parry and strike – but capped with some satisfying and stylish finishing animations.

The problem is, as you level up and unlock new skills, Jin’s strength snowballs so rapidly that before you even reach the end of Act 1 you feel practically invulnerable and the combat becomes entirely trivial.

Stealth becomes something you do for fun, not out of necessity to even the odds. And the problem only grows worse over time. Once you upgrade your gear and unlock the Ghost Stance ability you can simply walk into enemy camps and slaughter everyone within a matter of seconds.

The game does give you a welcome selection of combat stances and a fine selection of ninja-style tools – but putting aside how fiddly it can be to switch between them in a fight – you don’t actually need any of them. They’re fun to use on occasion, but entirely unnecessary.

Ghost of Tsushima also has a rather wonky auto-lock system that often sees Jin facing entirely the wrong way. You can switch to a manual mode but – like switching between your tools – it’s kind of fiddly to use.

And whilst I welcome those additional tools, you still only have one main weapon – your sword. Given how the plot of the game is about Jin being willing to break his code, I don’t see why we couldn’t have had another weapon type or two to help mix things up – like a spear, or a mongol shield or . . . anything.

Early on in the game you get access to a grappling hook and I thought I really would be like Samurai Batman – swinging across rooftops, using it to grapple enemies from stealth or even within open combat. But no, the game doesn’t let you do anything so fun. The grappling hook is only useful for some basic platforming in the open world or during the scripted story missions.

I wouldn’t say that the combat in Ghost of Tsushima is bad as such – it’s simple and accessible and it makes it very easy for the player to feel like the ultimate samurai killing machine . . . but maybe a little too easy. It just becomes too trivial, too quickly and because it’s such a frequent and significant component of the game, it becomes increasingly dull to engage with. You stop enjoying fights long before the end – you just grind them out as quickly as you can so you can move on to the next.

This certainly isn’t helped by the numerous side quests, nearly all of which – regardless of plot – is a simple matter of ‘go to place, kill mongols’. Sometimes they mix it up with ‘go to place, kill mongols’ and then ‘go to another place, kill more mongols’ but that’s about as exciting as it gets.

And it’s such a shame, because some of these side quests have potentially interesting set ups – such as a quest to save a sake brewery from mongol raiders. I thought it might involve getting the mongols drunk . . . or maybe Jin gets drunk whilst waiting for them to arrive? Or maybe you assassinate them with a barrel of poisoned sake? Maybe you even dress up as a geisha and serve it to them!

I don’t care how stupid that sounds, just give me something fun to do, give me something memorable, something unique. Something more than what you get – you go to the brewery, hide in some grass and then kill the mongols when they arrive. And that’s pretty much all you do for practically every side quest in the game no matter the location or plot.

Ghost of Tsushima is at its best when you’re focusing on the main story but even that’s not without its problems. Act 1 sees you storming a castle to rescue Jin’s Uncle and kill the evil Khotun Khan. But guess what – the Khan’s in another castle! And the exact same thing happens at the end of Act 2. He’s like the mongol warlord equivalent of Princess Peach.

I hoped the third act would provide a suitably exciting conclusion but I hate to say it – the final battle sucks. It’s incredibly rushed, the contribution of your allies is massively glossed over, you only actually fight a couple of small groups of enemies and I defeated the Khan by running in circles and tossing sticky bombs on him. I didn’t really need to – it was just too funny.

It’s not like I hated the story – the story is easily the best part. I liked Jin and Yuna and the little quest chains for the key side characters. I also liked the ‘mythic tales’ quests because they provided slightly more varied quest structures and you can unlock more unique gear and abilities.

I don’t get why they shied away from the obvious romance between Jin and Yuna. I don’t normally give too much of a shit about something like this but come on – why is this game so sexless? It really needed something to spice things up. The story just doesn’t land the emotional beats in the way you feel it should.

And another thing – the plot is all about Jin turning his back on the samurai code and becoming the Ghost, but why couldn’t they have factored that story aspect into player progression in a more meaningful way? Perhaps you could have had different skills and gear for ‘Ghost’ and ‘Samurai’ and each is unlocked depending upon how the player acts – a player who sticks to the code and faces their enemies head on unlocks more samurai abilities, whereas a player who embraces stealth, poison and assassination unlocks more tools and skills along those lines.

It wouldn’t even need to change the story or how things play out, it would just present the player with diverging options on how they want to progress and how they want to develop Jin. But . . . maybe I expect too much. Maybe I’m asking for too much.

I can’t deny how striking the game looks. How polished it is. The visuals, the music, the VA, the animations, the UI – the production value is clear to see. And maybe that’s enough for some – but not for me.

Because I can’t overlook the bland, excessive combat, poor enemy variety, terribly paced player progression, the repetitive and dull side content, the lack of creativity of the missions, the lacklustre conclusion and the absence of emotion in the story. There’s nothing truly challenging or engaging here – neither narratively, nor in terms of gameplay.

That’s not to say I have no hope for the coming sequel – Ghost of Yotei – because the Iki Island DLC included as part of this PC edition does demonstrate some promising improvements to overall quest design. That said, I’ve seen other Sony first-party sequels suffer from a lack of ambition and an unwillingness to break from the tried and tested they believe will lead (usually correctly, sadly) to critical acclaim. Hopefully Ghost of Yotei won’t just offer more of the same.

5/10

Gallery: Indiana Jones & The Great Circle

Now Playing: Frostpunk 2

I’d planned to pick up Frostpunk 2 at release but I simply couldn’t find the time to play it. And with reports of various bugs and balancing issues – that have now been (mostly) ironed out through patches – waiting was probably for the best.

Because I’m now pleased to say that Frostpunk 2 is a worthy sequel, but one that unfortunately lacks the strong narrative hook of its predecessor. As a fan of Frostpunk, I was both wary and excited by the prospect of a sequel – I wasn’t entirely convinced it needed one, to be completely honest.

It was hard to see how they could offer something new, but familiar. Something that retained the spirit of Frostpunk, but wasn’t just a repeat of the previous experience. But having now played it, I think they pulled it off quite successfully, delivering a new experience that – at its core (no pun intended) – is both very similar to the original but also very different.

Like the original game, Frostpunk 2 is about building, expanding and supporting a growing city in a frosty wasteland. It’s about gathering and balancing various resources that your city and its citizens need or desire. It’s about researching new technology, passing various laws and sending courageous expedition teams out into the wasteland in search of vital supplies or fellow survivors.

What’s different in Frostpunk 2 is the scale. Frostpunk 1 was a game of hours and days, of building individual roads and houses. At most, your city might house 600 to 700 citizens, and the notification of even a single death felt like a serious blow and a mistake you should have avoided.

Frostpunk 2, on the other hand, is a game of days and weeks, where you don’t build a single house, but entire housing districts, with your city population growing into the tens of thousands. Where hundreds may freeze to death during an unexpected cold snap and a lack of heat but you don’t even blink because you have another 50,000 more citizens to worry about.

And I think that’s kind of the point. Frostpunk 2, as a sequel, makes sense. The scale had to increase; the population had to increase. This isn’t a game simply about surviving the wasteland, but reclaiming it. And that’s reflected in the new ‘colony’ system that lets you establish new settlements throughout the wasteland, transferring supplies and citizens as needed. Frostpunk 1 was a game of civilisation on the brink of extinction, Frostpunk 2 is civilisation – having survived the storms – pushing back.

And I think that’s why Frostpunk 2 received a somewhat mixed reception at release from fans of the series – because whilst at its core it’s essentially the same game as Frostpunk, the increased scale meant you lost the more intimate, cosy, personal connection that you shared with your city and its citizens in the original game. Frostpunk 2 is a colder (excuse the pun) detached, and less personal experience.

Personally, I think that was the correct approach to take with this sequel. Similar – but different. A new perspective, a new scale and a new challenge. That said, I do agree that Frostpunk 2 lacks the strong narrative hook of the original. Frostpunk was about surviving a coming storm. Everything you did in the game was about preparing for that single event. It was a looming, ticking clock that you couldn’t escape and that forced you to make hard choices or impose tough laws upon your citizens if you wanted to survive. Even once you’d beaten it, you’d want to try it again to see if you could do better. It was a puzzle you wanted to keep solving.

Frostpunk 2 doesn’t have such a strong hook on which to build its campaign. It’s split into five different chapters, each of which presents its own unique goal and choices to the player. There is a storm in an early chapter to overcome, but the ‘whiteouts’ are no longer the threat they once were. Frostpunk 2 is a game that shows society has moved beyond survival and is now looking to reclaim what was lost.

The big focus in Frostpunk 2 is the new political faction system and as your campaign progresses, two factions will rise and enter into conflict. The final challenge of the campaign is dealing with a civil war that threatens to tear your city apart. There are a few ways you can go about resolving this situation, but ultimately, as a hook, it’s no storm to end all storms.

The campaign, overall, is still really good. There’s more variety here than in the original thanks to the separate chapters and their own unique story threads and choices, and the frostland map has far more locations and events to explore in addition to the new colony system.

It does feel a little more scripted than the original and in some ways, more tutorial heavy – like the real point of it is to prepare you for the sandbox Utopia Builder mode. I do like the new additions to the game, but I can’t say I find the faction system all that interesting to play with – it just feels like another ‘resource’ you have to try and balance rather than something that has any meaningful impact upon your city development.

And whilst I do like the new colony system, it does result in a fair amount of bouncing back and forth across the map, adjusting supply quantities and making sure each colony is either self-sufficient, or appropriately supported by or capable of supporting others. With an increased scale comes increased management – perhaps a little too much?

And I can’t say I love the UI – it gets pretty messy once you’ve unlocked more building types and you have to scroll through and then make sure you pick the correct variation you want. The hex based nature of the map also bothered me – but only because I prefer a neat, organised city, and Frostpunk 2 with its expanding districts means your city always looks a little bit of a mess – but I suppose more like a real, massive city actually would.

Overall, Frostpunk 2 is a solid and very enjoyable sequel but it feels like it could use some more refinement and a few more tweaks to its UI and faction system. As a base experience, I’d recommend Frostpunk 2 to any fan of the original, providing they understand that it offers a different experience and focus. But I do feel there’s more work to do here, and perhaps with the upcoming DLC releases, Frostpunk 2 will improve and fulfil its potential.

7/10

Suburban Killbot Year 13

TOO. MANY. GAMES! That’s the theme of this yearly update. Too many games, not enough time. I’m currently playing Ghost of Tsushima (review coming soon) and Tempest Rising (review coming next month) and I still have State of Decay 2 to get stuck into which I picked up back in the Steam Winter Sale.

But what’s this? Oblivion Remastered? Well shit, I got to pick that up. But I’ve still not played STALKER 2. Or Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2! And Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 just released and I’d like to give that a spin. But shit, the new DOOM is out soon too!

And what’s that? A Gears of War remaster? That’s cool, I enjoyed the original a lot back in the day on the 360. But I don’t know why I’ve seen so many people upset that it’s coming to other platforms – it’s a remaster of a 20 year old game. Get the f**k over it.

I also wanted to find time to play South of Midnight. That’s meant to be fairly short, so maybe I can squeeze it in somewhere. Oh, and I’ve still got some free games I claimed on Epic over Christmas to try.

This mosaic is getting too big. I might chop it down next year to just the games I’ve scored 9 or above.