I recommend: Ghost of Tsushima - Director's Cut (Review) [4k]

this video is brought to you by surfsharkvpn ghost of tsushima knocked pretty much everyone on their ass when it came out what on the surface looked like a cool samurai game ended up being one of the most refined open world games to date streamlining a formula that came to define much of the last console generation technically speaking it was also a brilliant swan song for the ps4 showcasing what the console was capable of after studios had seven or eight years worth of practice developing for it commercially and creatively ghost of tsushima was an emphatic reminder of how sony managed to be so successful in the last console generation by investing in talented studios giving them the freedom to make the things they want to make and giving them the time and budget to do it right much like the frozen wilds expansion to horizon zero dawn sucker punch are giving us another bite of the samurai cherry serving up an expansion to the existing game that adds a new explorable area a new story arc for jin and a number of new gameplay mechanics to toy around with separate but in addition to that the director's cut arrives at the same time as the ps5 upgrade for go sushima adding the typical features you've come to expect from a next-gen update i've played through the iki island expansion sampling all of the ps5 improvements as i went i'm pleased to report that yeah the new content is good and the ps5 improvements are nice i recommend this but neither the new content nor the ps5 upgrades are must experience pieces of content they are incremental improvements to what was already a phenomenal game i envy those who have never played ghost sushima before because if you get to experience this game for the first time like this and you my friend are very lucky but for everyone else the ps5 upgrades are minor and while iki island is nice it is perhaps a little too similar to what you've experienced in the rest of the game alright intro block done let's get down to brass tacks and review ghost sushima director's cut okay so let's do some housekeeping first since i know there's a little confusion around what's included in what package and the upgrade parts etc etc goes to sushima director's cut is an expansion to ghost of sushima it adds a new playable space iki island in addition to that there is a free update that is available to all players so with or without the director's cut and it adds new controller mapping options the option to hide your bow and quiver on your character in addition to all of that there are ps5 upgrades being added to the game as well these impact both the base game and the director's cut content but you can only get access to these upgrades by purchasing the director's cut you can purchase the ps4 director's cut upgrade for 20 us dollars which gives you access to ikky island and then you can spend a further ten dollars to upgrade both your base game and the director's cut content to the ps5 version alternatively you can simply purchase a ps5 director's cut upgrade sku for 30 us dollars and it will give you both the new content and the ps5 upgrades finally if you don't already own ghost satsushima you can just buy a copy of ghost trimmer director's cut for ps5 for 70 us dollars pretty simple huh okay so let's talk about these ps5 upgrades what do you get well first of all you get haptic feedback and adaptive triggers both of which i love the feedback kicks in during the opening splash of the playstation logo and the sucker punch logo which dissolves in after that it's small touch but trust me it feels really good you'll feel it a lot when riding your horse since you can feel the beat of every individual hoof as it touches the ground similarly the feedback will change depending on what type of surface your horse is running on when it comes to the adaptive triggers you can certainly feel them when you're using your bow as knocking an arrow will force the right trigger to lock hard requiring you to push down firmly to draw that bowstring back there's a new exploration mechanic at work here as well one where you have to hook your grapple to surfaces to pull them down and the triggers kick in hard there as well giving you a strong pulse on the right trigger when the grapple hits and pushing back hard as you push down that left trigger i know people are divided on the value of this stuff some people love it while others think it's a gimmick i get that personally i really love it and the way this stuff has been implemented here is among the best implementations yet seen on the ps5 though to be fair that is a pretty small sample size one feature that isn't advertised is that your controller speaker gets a real workout here when you call in the wind to help guide you to a destination it will play through the controller speaker as well in some of the game's more dramatic moments when jin is hearing voices in his head those same voices will play through the controller most satisfying though is the implementation during combat when your perfect parries will trigger a clash of steel sound effect from the controller that just totally works when you proc your dance of wrath special attack which zips you around the battlefield the controller will sound out a dramatic gust of wind each time you move and it's just super cool i loved it so yeah sucker punch really put a lot of effort into getting the most out of the ps5 controller and i think their work paid off the ps5 version also comes with 3d audio i do play games with a mix of both headphones and 5.1 surround sound i won't lie i didn't feel the benefits of this as much as i did from other games like return for example in return all there's so much scope to create these dense walls of sound coming at you from every direction here in ghost sashima there's less potential to kind of overwhelm you with sound and i found the original 5.1 mix was already giving me all the information i needed about enemy locations i definitely recall relying on my ears a lot during my original playthrough of the game and that hasn't changed here as a result of the 3d audio but nor does it feel greatly enhanced by it faster loading times are a thing yes uh here's me fast traveling and here's me recovering from a death as you can see load times are pretty much gone thank you very much ps5 ssd the ps5 version does offer dynamic 4k resolution targeting 60fps now as always i'll leave the details on this to digital foundry but i will point out that there was already a 60fps update pushed out for free last year so the director's cut is not the only way to get this game running at 60fps when it comes to the resolution stuff though i don't like talking about that because it's dynamic and i don't have all the tools to properly assess it long story short though goes to sushima always looked incredible no matter what resolution it was running at 60fps is a thing that i really cared about and i already had that last year this update may increase overall visual fidelity but similar to the sound improvements they aren't changes that substantially increase my appreciation for this title this brings us to perhaps the most interesting change offered by the ps5 upgrade japanese lip sync so if you play the original you might remember that the game offered both an english and a japanese voice track but the japanese track was the dub you'd have these characters speaking japanese but their lips would be mouthing english words this rendered that dub basically useless because i just couldn't get past how goofy it was to see japanese people fighting in feudal japan clad in full samurai armor speaking japanese but their mouths were speaking english that was just a little bit too much for me so exclusive to the ps5 upgrade is japanese lip sync it's interesting tech because what the game is doing here is it isn't playing a pre-recorded cutscene saved on the game's client it's actually rendering the cutscene in real time and because of this sucker punch have been able to include this alternative lip syncing without the install size of your game ballooning because otherwise you'd have to upload two copies of every cutscene one with english lip sync and another with japanese so exciting as this is this lip sync isn't great if you go back and watch some of the english lip sync you'll see it's pretty spot on with the japanese lip sync their lips move kind of weirdly a bit over exaggerated and the overall sync doesn't quite match up with what people in short there is a difference in quality between the english lip sync and the japanese lip sync and while i still think the japanese voice track is the best option to use because it feels the most authentic it's a little disappointing that sucker punch weren't able to nail the japanese sync as well as they nailed the english sync so those are all the ps5 upgrades i guess there's a basic question to be asked here is it worth experiencing this game again because of these upgrades do they vastly change or improve the game i'd say no these improvements are generally fairly minor especially considering that the game already looked and sounded phenomenal on the ps4 having said that i think ghost of sushima is just worth playing again in general and these changes are going to make that second or third playthrough more enjoyable they aren't an excuse for another playthrough but they're things you'll appreciate if you do happen to do another playthrough which i think is more than fine okay so that's all the ps5 stuff let's talk about ikky island [Music] your journey to ikki island begins in your menu a new section has been added that tracks your journey you select it and the wind will guide you to your destination a seaside village under attack from supernaturally charged mongols you learn that they've come from nearby iki island a place that jin is intimately familiar with as it was the scene of a traumatic moment in his past forced to confront both the external threat and his internal demons jin hops aboard a boat to begin his odyssey to ikky upon arriving you're informed by in-game prompts that the progression here is separate from the rest of the game some of the exploration based unlocks you've acquired don't work here meaning that you'll need to repurchase the nodes that will guide you to things like the haiku spots there's also a new combat technique that's been added that is particularly awesome [Applause] yes your horse can now charge things and i can assure you that with the haptic feedback it is a very satisfying collision beyond that you keep all of your existing gear your upgrades your combat techniques all of that stays with you that's good because ikki island is definitely among the most challenging content you'll find in go sushima so much so that the game explicitly warns you about that just before you get on that boat so just to be clear you can access ikky island at any time after you've reached act 2 in the game and if you have a ps4 save you can upload that to the cloud and then download that to your ps5 so you can go straight there even though you can access all of this from act two i was really glad that i did the story arc after having completed the game and that was for two reasons firstly as i said earlier iki island is definitely a step up in terms of combat not a massive step but it is noticeable i can't show you a lot of the larger battles here because sterny has asked us to avoid spoilers but i have no problem telling you that these battles fought on ikky island are the most populated and most relentless there's just so many combatants in the field and you move from stage to stage with very little downtime it's great i love it but it will push you especially if you've forgotten how to play the game which is what happened to me since it'd been a long time since i'd finished the original game combat difficulty isn't just about numbers though there's a new enemy type added to the field who also ups the ante the shaman enemy positions himself at the back of the field and begins chanting his haunting dirge that will buff his allies the troops under the effect of this buff will spam their most challenging attacks and will recover from your attacks more quickly forcing you to locate this shaman and take him out first less the rest of the encounter becomes significantly more difficult outside of the new enemy type and the horse charge ikky island doesn't offer up much in the way of new combat experiences there are no new weapons no new fighting techniques there weren't any encounters which felt fundamentally different to the encounters i'd played through in the main game i was a little disappointed by this as i'd spend a fair chunk of time playing the legends multiplayer mode which adds substantially more variation to the combat formula there are entirely new combat abilities new gear sets that greatly augment your play style a lot of new enemy types new traversal challenges new combat based puzzles there's a lot there and by the way that game mode is just awesome and if you haven't you should totally play it it's it's yeah it's fantastic with so much new stuff added to the combat experience in legends i had really high hopes for what sucker punch would add here in ikky the answer is not much and i get why that's the case because it has to fit within the structure of the existing game but at the very start of the experience it does make clear that this is separate with separate abilities and separate progression i think sucker punch could have taken a lot more creative license with that sort of setup so the other reason i was glad i played this after finishing the main game is that its story arc feels best resolved after gin has defeated the mongols on his home island of tsushima this is a very introspective chapter in jin saga one where he confronts his previous trauma and his inner demons the catalyst for that is the eagle a shamanistic witch who finds a way into jin's head and is able to communicate with him throughout his journey jin regularly tumbles into delirious visions the world shifting beneath his feet as imaginary foes fade in and out of view visually tonally narratively this chapter has its own identity quite separate to the rest of the game and yet it still feels connected to the central saga of jin's life this story is an essential element of his legend not a random side quest for sidequest's sake that makes it very worth experiencing if you're someone that's invested in jin's story but less essential if you're just there to give your katana arm a good workout iki island is very similar to sushima which again i was a little bit bummed out by one of the defining aspects of the original game was how different its biomes could be with its use of color in particular creating such a clear dividing line between one area and the next this pronounced visual identity was buttressed by the multiplayer mode which served up a radically different take on sushima's spaces while still remaining wholly consistent with the source material ikki is positioned as this other place a land of dark magics and the occult i went there expecting to see dark fortresses and nightmarish bandit camps but none of that was there it was the same color palette the same geography and the same architecture the multiplayer mode showed us how far the world of tsushima could be stretched without breaking and i think there was more room for sucker punches artists to flex their muscle here to create an identity that ikki island just never ends up achieving structurally icky is also similar to what you've experienced earlier albeit with some nice new experiences there's an archery challenge now [Applause] there's an enemy-based sparring tournament which is nice since each combatant is their own unique puzzle that needs to be solved and best of all there is a new guitar hero style minigame where you have to tilt your controller to keep the little green ball in place so you can play the flute and get the animals to be your friend this was awesome [Music] but yeah beyond that it's more haiku spots and climbing challenges and all the stuff you've seen before and that's not a bad thing one of the things i love most about go sashimo was how inviting all of that stuff was i really tried to focus on completing the main story arc quickly but i'd always find myself getting sidetracked by some bird inviting me to follow or a side quest i'd stumble upon the effortless sense of discovery that incentivized wandering aimlessness is still firmly at work here and it remains one of the best parts of the game if you're wondering how long that main story arc is it's not long i think you'd be able to get through it in maybe three hours tops i don't know exactly i took some detours along the way so don't quote me on that but it's in that ballpark on top of that there's also a handful of side quests which will run you a few hours as well and then there's all the completionist map marker stuff which you know i didn't clear every map marker but they're there rough number i think this is about a five hour experience for most people and it's probably a 10 hour experience for completionists give or take again don't quote me as much as i enjoyed icky island i can't help but feel as though it's been a little upstaged by the multiplayer mode which is about to get even more free content soon by the way and its own standalone version which you'll be able to purchase without having to purchase the single player game at all that game mode is so bursting with new enemies new gear new progression new combat mechanics new areas this striking visual presence and that game mode is totally free ironically ghost of sushima's paid expansion is a lot less ambitious than its multiplayer counterpart it's still good it's still worth playing i still recommend it but it's definitely not an essential must play experience like i think the multiplayer is i really really love that game mode anyway that's my review for ghost of sushima director's cut i'm looking forward to go sashimi too guys let's be real here we're nerds we're cool nerds but we're nerds nonetheless we play video games we know what hdr means sort of we watch loki and invincible and the boys and downton abbey wait what how'd that last one get in there point is we live much of our lives online and that means our data is just hanging out there our passwords our ip address our personal information it's all over the world wide web and in 2021 we can't just not think about that we have to take steps to protect our data enter surfsharkvpn the single best means of protecting your online security surfsharkvpn encrypts your online data protecting you from identity thefts and hacks and their clean web feature automatically blocks over 1 million known malicious websites phishing methods and other threats but if the security aspect doesn't hook you it also lets you access geo-blocked content 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Channel: Skill Up

Views: 305,700

Keywords: skill up, skill, up, gameplay, games, guide, ghost of tsushima, ghost of tsushima iki island, ghost of tsushima directors cut, ghost of tsushima legends, ghost of tsushima 2021, ghost of tsushima free dlc, ghost of tsushima iki island expansion, ghost of tsushima ps5 upgrade, iki island, ps5, Ghost of tsushima review, ghost of tsushima director's cut review, ghost of tsushima director's cut changes, ghost of tsushima director's cut gameplay, ghost of tsushima director's cut comparison

Id: q5sC5YWIdeA

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021