Ghost of Tsushima Review "Buy, Wait for Sale, Never Touch?" - The Ghost is Clear

how yoked would a gorilla be if he chose to lift weights our taquitos just burritos on a hunger strike can a samurai game with action combat steer clear of inevitable Assassin's Creed comparisons and Dark Soul similarities to carve its own niche out of the gaming space without the world leaping to say dirt-eater that looks exactly like this other game you know what at least two of those questions are gonna be answered today in this review when ghosts of Tsushima dropped a trailer in October 2017 it set the world on fire well at least the samurai love an open-world clamaran cherry blossom tree loving worshipping part of the world but apparently they went into full lockdown mode as they work silently on the game thinking you know what people are gonna wait and wait we did other than a couple interviews here and there information wasn't exactly forthcoming but here we are one delay later and ghost is coming out on the 17th of this month thanks to Sony for the very very early review code as you guys know regardless if I get code from a company or not I buy a copy of every single game so that when I do the review my cash is on the line just like yours and I'll be givin that away to somebody watching if you liked the video and maybe subscribe click the notification bell so you get all the notifications also fighting cowboy on YouTube is doing a ton of work for coverage for this game I would suggest you check his stuff out let's begin graphics art first let's get this out of the way aside from some of the issues I am gonna detail here graphically ghosts of sashimi is one of the most beautiful games on console ever and when it comes to art design it is easily one of the most beautiful games this generation across all platforms weaving this intrinsic line between artistic impression of the developers and what they want to show and gameplay mechanisms that I don't think we have seen before or at the very least all put together like this before is that a strong statement yeah maybe let's jump to the heart of this because I think I can back it up today's expected pollen count is all the pollen visually noting is still in ghost this isn't historically accurate in perfect world building it's an almost pseudo fantasy Japan where cherry blossom trees rolled a natural 24 there shitload of leaves skill and just dump out tons of leaves at all times and plants puke pollen into huge gusts of winds 'as Birds flit all around on the same winds diving and climbing to their own tempos it forcibly reminded me of older fantasy movies like legend by Tom Cruise or the more recent Avatar where movement of the world is combined with movement in the game world to create a cohesive environment that seems less like characters running through artificial landscapes and instead like two parts interacting as one and that's what happens in ghosts of Tsushima the duality of this incredibly energetic world set against the stillness of a lot of the activities is almost surreal throughout the entirety of ghosts nature is almost unbound it's reflecting the war that's occurring in the land itself but this is offset by the stillness of nothing more than you on a horse just slowly riding down a Sleepy Hollow looking tunnel made of shadows and tree trunks always wondering what's around the next corner or resting writing a poem or just playing the flute or watching people catch fish or listening to somebody tell a story in a city where many open world craters seem almost frightened of downtime ghost embraces it not by masking it or making you notice it but instead just offering it as organically as it can within the storytelling every activity you can do from writing to walking to taking a bath to write in a haiku it all feels like a natural progression of the samurai character he'll the most action-packed minigame moment in this entire game is cutting through some bamboo stalks to raise your maximum resolve level and even that's just sort of like hey man if you got some time let's go cut the [ __ ] out of some organisms don't have mouths to scream sounds good let's go do it they also nail the feeling of history in the game world where many open-world games feel like they're creating everything around the movements triggering these magical ley lines of AI power around the gamer to cause the enemy to start moving the game's massive draw distance an environmental world building never makes it feel that way in fact you would see it if it actually did even a body filled with arrows on a hill means something you should come down the other side and you see a wagons been tipped over it leads to a payment camp but ghost isn't actually worried if you see everything in a perfect line or in a one-two-three pattern or even if you see one thing before the other it's pretty comfortable and letting you explore this huge landscape at your leisure and pick it apart as you go and graphically attempting to clear it up enough so that you can piece it all together when it comes to attacks and battles in just animation there it's good but it's not perfect you'll sometimes see a stutter here there is two moves animated in a row or a horse plodding off the side of a mountain and suddenly sort of sticking in place and magically hoping you won't notice what gravity was animations on enemies in particular are very cool when you're attacking them you'll bust their guard and watch them sort of flail their arms trying to catch their balance however you will see a couple bugs especially one in particular that I saw a lot which it was two guards were just walking back-to-back and sort of stuck together like some creepy dude had made a two back beast also the game's filtering is pretty rough this is especially noticeable when moving around the landscape across mountainous regions unlike these issues and a few others I'll detail later Ghost Ashima is almost transcendent when everything is hitting on all cylinders much of this is driven by that game engine that pushes out the draw distance as far as it possibly can be in adding an expert level of control on graphical pop up now this lets you have the entire world sink in at one time it's not parsed out in sections of oh I can see this now oh I can look at that now I need to look at the map I need to get closer for it to pop into view none of that happens you can see a bit of fire on a building from miles away or the smoke from a rising battle over to mountains or some movement of a tree and you go over there and it turns out to be a patrol roughing up some villagers sucker-punch has done the work and a lot of this is also because of the one much lauded aspect of the game which I didn't think was gonna work and that's the wind compass what that does is the wind blows to show you the indication of where you need to move instead of putting a visible Waypoint up there's even a subtle reminder this is great detail by the way when you go into and out of the menu the wind kicks up for just a second blowing in the direction very strongly those two things are supremely impactful being able to see everything in the world almost no pop-up and then following the actual visual cues of the world instead of map points now when it comes to fleshing out the feeling of being a samurai you can outfit yourself with a number of customisable as you get as you finish quests or find items in the game world quest detail exactly what the rewards are prior most of the armors have more than one skin available as well with you able to get flowers and crush them up for dyes and change the color of them when it comes to performance the game has a framerate mode in a resolution mode no resolution mode does remove a good amount of the aliasing from the picture makes it a cleaner presentation especially because ghosts likes to blur the image a bit for an almost dreamy look however that does mean that there's an additional bit of blur on the foliage which is sadly pretty noticeable because it hinders what is incredible foliage and density in an awesome-looking so you have to decide on that tip for tap sucker-punch is one of the first devs to release a truly stunning ps4 exclusive at least graphically in second son and now they wind down the console with the same and they do it with a flair that is breathtaking and I would argue easily worth that way and that brings us to sound music and voice but we fight for the same thing to create a legacy that outlives us my legacy and honor to my own justice for people and will do sound first I like it when a dev supports various sound system setups so jumping into the menu and seeing settings for headphones and stop speakers and TV at home theater 3d headphones had me excited for what could possibly be a well-mixed title and luckily it was the audio and the game's fantastic the layering and some of the locations with a creak of trees call a night birds rustling to the grass and other samples crates this blanket of audio that lets the rest of ghosts build on it when action isn't at a fever pitch but even more importantly when it is writing through trees and coming out the other side you can actually hear the stretch of the audio as it reaches out reflects back less to the gamer 3d audio is particularly excellent if set up right resulting in knowing exactly when an enemy is gonna attack and from where if you pay attention to their grunts of effort now one thing to remember the game doesn't have a lock on mode per se so having to control all sides of a battle even with a soft aim-assist can be difficult with six enemies all looking to take you and yet I saved myself multiple times just using the audio this is reflected more directly in moments in battle where arrows are fired and you can actually hear them whistle in and both dodge them but also later on if you get the skill deflect them by sound alone it is rare when audio helps hero moments like that this often but in ghosts it's rare when it doesn't sadly there are some issues here this may not bother people but I found it puzzling if you choose Kurosawa mode which is the black and white grain filter feel like an old movie the audio narrows and construe down to reflect audio in film back in those days here's the issue though it makes plain a bit of a drag it's not really painful after long periods of time but it hurts the experience overall I could not get other audio settings to snag if I was in that mode this sound effects the samples and the processing in ghosts are incredible and if you have it dialed in this experience is heightened dramatically by the good audio good audio is what brings us to music first you know something Wicked's gonna happen when a game announces it's gonna need two composers that's like a frigging car with two gas pedals at first you look at it you're like what and then you're all wait a minute that's awesome and their instrument choice is awesome in blown flute the lute to the O dico drums seriously that name translates to big fat drum basically get a normal drum inflated twice the size of a man smash it with sticks the size of ax handles and take your shirt off before doing it could be because it's a full body workout or just because whoever plays it as a [ __ ] boss as well as other instruments they've even got a B what player in here which is what samurai used to play because I guess run around with swords strapped to your waist and flicking people in half wasn't half as cool as being able to write your own theme music as you rode your horse between blood-letting locations and this also causes the wind to whip up and be like oh man my bad and start whipping the direction of that next Waypoint you can go around the game world collecting crickets as well to get new songs for the flute even if you don't like this kind of music you won't feel awkward if you're let's say a custom larger orchestral pieces from Fantasy titles there's a vital moment here that lets each instrument sort of breathe in its own space in every one of the tracks with each character having their own theme as well and a melody that works now if I have one complaint it's that this game has a bit of an issue like another game has heavy handedness with the hooks alerting you to enemies nearby with a quick up-tempo beat it doesn't happen all the time but a couple times an enemy ambush or at the very least a suspenseful moment was lessened by the music basically pointing into the grass and saying over here dude over here over here except it's more like boom boom boom boom regardless all that easily my favorite soundtrack of the year that brings us to Vice let's get a couple things out of the way the lip-syncing it ain't great if there's one thing I notice it said at times no matter what language you chose they all seem a little bit like they're talking after going to whatever doctor makes the Kardashians look like they tried to eat superglue covered Oscar my hot dogs before getting into Instagram performance-wise though these are not bad at all firstly you can instantly recognize the manga Lord Patrick Gallagher for two reasons one he's almost perfectly one for one with motion capture and two that dude chews up some scenery as a bad guy love him he's excellent he's emotive and makes you hate him for all these subtle different reasons but you also continually wonder is this dude on to something you also have des Katsuji as the evolving samurai the main story now he is noticeably subdued I felt most likely to offer you and he's your way into the skin of someone watching their entire land being torn apart by invaders and face seemed that choice of slow cultural and military invasion or his own moral annihilation it comes across as a character going through their own turmoils without speaking about them while others namely his own teachers and uncle are a bit more emotional I could see some people liking this and some people not liking this I was fine with it and one particular scene resonated with me later on in the game that made that choice makes sense side characters are all done well with an excellent voiceover for one of your own teachers as well as all of the different villagers the processing on the voices especially environmental coming off other titles where characters moving throughout the environment sound weighted and lodged into their locations via really good reverb and refraction and decay over distance and just tonal variants ghost is very wanting there'll be times we'd be running through a canyon or through an open plateau and it sounds like they're in a recording studio especially for a couple of these side quests still I really did like the voices and that brings us to gameplay and a bit about the story you play in 1274 as Jin a samurai watching the island of Shu shimma getting invaded by a Mongol horde led by a strangely charismatic kuda Khan jinn and those who survived the massacre that leaves many samurai dead are all that remains of a last fashioned and a defenders before the horde work towards the mainland of Japan what follows is 30 plus hours of a story and when I mean plus I really mean plus and has you taken the devil's bet trying to save a nation while risking more than just your lives well not necessarily the next big thing when it comes to narrative I do have to say ghosts get some marks for being interesting enough to move me from cutscene to cutscene I was interested in the idiosyncrasies in the secrets and the hidden desires of the characters assistant feeling of questioning exactly what you're being told and what's happening and then that filters out into the longer story that tasks the player with trying to come to grips with someone who has no issue possibly losing themselves to win freedom for everybody else it's not entirely self-sacrificing as a character or completely gray but it's better than the bad guys and good guys that are cut out of molds with training wheels we usually get it's not as interesting as Arthur's descent into failure from Red Dead 2 but it was definitely better than I thought it was gonna be after second son as an open-world game it has you running around through a major story gaining followers and supporters and comrades in your battle against the invaders you take on major quests from major characters leaders themselves with very backgrounds as well as smaller quests and stories for others now every quest tells a story every location every collectible connects a bit more the fiction of the game world together it's one of the better examples of connecting what I would normally consider filler into the main story proper for example you can duel an enemy in some far-off place and you may have already heard of him from locals or later he'd go to those locals and they talk about him no longer being there because you killed him in many of these games question just don't make sense in the larger story you know what I mean when half the world's on fire its apocalypse and some quest givers like hey man I lost my favorite plushie can you go find it another example of them making sure things sort of made sense was the roving bandit Ronin and mongol groups in the game prisoners that they've captured are not just saved they also have information for you meaning the smallest of gestures has this duality of purpose raising the legend of your prowess as a samurai which you get for doing any of the good deeds as well as giving you information about enemy locations and new treasures and forts and items however let's say you don't make it through that engagement and die when you spawn back that character is passed and that patrolling the prison are usually gone and you may find a body later on and look at them and go damn I hope that's not them it makes you want to save them and at the very least it makes you want the information they have combat and stealth are equally viable when facing off against enemies the battle system is not dark souls don't even go in here thinking that Jin is far more able and nimble of a character balancing enemy types and ranges against his own combos with staggering moves as well as special items stances and a resolve eater enemy types range from swordsman to brutes with various subtypes or weapon switch ups to keep it interesting all the way through by the way as well as many boss leaders and many of works on the harder difficulty they will ruthlessly attack you at the same time and can be a handful if they are mixed since the stances you have that you get usually do a great deal of damage to their opposing enemy type but don't do the greatest against others for instance you have a stance that really works well against brutes to the point where you can basically stagger and counter them continually if you don't have that stance chosen they can ruin you additionally while some power attacks can be parried especially as you level up and get those abilities there are a few for each enemy you can't requiring you to dodge so effective use of dodging if you have improper stances chosen as well as pairing and dodging when you do is the key to success to unlock stances you either kill the leaders in the forts or study them from afar now this does bring up an issue I have and I can't seem to turn off the graphical prompts expert mode for the HUD didn't do it hard mode on difficulty didn't do it meaning when you're in the middle of some battle it looks like a dude jumped into the fight with friggin glowing clown hands like you smashed up two shipments of light brights and then dip them into fluorescent paint it hurts it even though making that effect to go away would probably leave no indicator for the player to know that a particular unblockable attack was happening and it seems like the animations would be enough but it's hard to even tell but I did have another issue here quest types in particular any that resolved around stealth being required or enemies trying to kill the prisoners now in the game's defense it actually explains within the narrative why the prisoners would be killed that's a step up that some games wouldn't even take but damn it it's got dogs and then swordsman and shield wielding Mongols sometimes you just want to flip the lid open on a hot case a kick-ass and gut the lot of them like an automated butchering machine you can try that and you can try to kill them before they can kill the villagers but it can be a little bit difficult and it always felt a little forced well there are various ways to go loud you can go in quiet and mix-and-match it as well if you want to go in and assassinate a couple you can do that you can move between the various locations of long grass that we're all accustomed to in stealth games as you level up assassinations can be combo now as you raise your status and gain experience you unlock the ability to upgrade your character from an ability list of over 70 total upgrades across the categories of technique stances and combos as well as some master moves that are locked behind specific quests sadly I can't show those they've asked for those not to be shown but when you're not in combat you've got these sedate moments that the game handles so well when traveling you can listen to some storyteller tell a myth then play a flute kill six people then take a bath and reminisce naked about the grass and write a poem because you know sometimes you just want to scrub them gents and think about your own moral code Jen can also be outfitted with customizations such as memo face masks helmets and armors which all can be upgraded some of the armor sets can be adjusted slightly like removing arms or shoulder guards though it doesn't change the rating of the armor each armor has various abilities and specialties now sucker-punch was also very smart here they don't base the game around negatives and positives armor has positive perks like more damage more health in the ability to hide more easily but it doesn't have anything that it takes away and you outfit yourself and you just go out there and you look badass and none of that would work if control was bad and it's not but I gotta tell you the camera ain't any great shakes here's the problem it moves around like a damn camera on the head of a ten-year-old at a park looking every which way especially when you're in stealth and you're going into tents and you're assassinating people there's no transparencies on any of the locations and so you end up a lot of times just facing a brown wall on hearing as people stab each other I can't say that please me and I did die due to it a couple times it's interesting to sit back and look it goes to sashimi and say this is one of the final big titles for the ps4 and it's from a developer who made one of the big first titles for the ps4 and I have a feeling a lot of people are gonna look at these two and say you guys did some growing up and that brings us to fun factor you know goes to sashimi adds a couple things that I have really been bothered by for years and fixes a number of them once you pick a mission you don't have to go back into your menus and I adore that it feels good it works for me and it's one thing that allows me to more solidify myself in the game world and look around and feel like I'm locked in to me it's also matched up with just a blast of a combat system it's not perfect having to switch out stances to face off against particular guys you just sort of have to buy off on a little bit like a futuristic game facing off against a different shield type and switching out guns to do photon damage that kind of thing but when it comes to the way everything comes together and the way the world solidifies itself it is a fun experience from start to finish additionally the game is huge so as you guys know I rigged matter it's it's definitely worth buying I would say that this is one of the most enjoyable games I've played this year it means a lot of the things that I've always wanted in a HUD and a system that I didn't even know I wanted it pushes out that LOD and that draw distance to insane levels which really does make the world feel completely different graphically it's got some issues it's not exactly perfect but there's this hypnotic quality right now in open-world games and I don't even hate any of them it's just that they all feel pretty samey this one certainly does have a structure that is somewhat the same but a lot of things that tries to do it allows you to at least experience what they want you to experience which is being that character a little easier lots of fun with this game and I will for sure be returning to it so anyway that's it for me I hope you guys like the video if you did give it a thumbs up if you didn't give it a thumbs down please make sure to spread this wherever you can anywhere that good games are talked about Facebook all that kind of stuff follow me on Twitter and of course you can become a patron I would love for you to join YouTube is an absolute disaster right now if you want to come to patron you can always help out the channel and I buy a copy of every single game I get even if the dev gives me a code which I think I'm pretty much the only one who does that peace out and enjoy the rest of your week

Channel: ACG

Views: 1,013,792

Keywords: geek, acgreview, angrycentaurgaming, gameplay, angryreview, ACG, gaming, nerd, review, videogames, gamereviews, ps4, sony, game, reviews, psnow, ps5, Ghost of Tsushima, ghost of tsushima review, ghost of tsushima acg, acg ghost of tsushima review, ghost of tsushima gameplay, ghost of tsushima impressions, ghost of tsushima ps4 review, ghost of tsushima game review, ghost of tsushima ps4 pro review, got review, ghost of tsushima review, sucker punch, games, ghost of tsushima, tsushima gameplay

Id: cxZbY84Fd9I

Length: 21min 29sec (1289 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020