Game Commentary: Ghost of Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima is an open world action adventure game by Sucker Punch, infamous for creating Infamous. I'm just going to come out and say that this game is great fun. It's the Japanese Assassin's Creed we never got created by the team that is neither the creators of AC nor Japanese. It's a weird world we live in.

Ghost of Tsushima is set during the (real life!) historical invasion of Japan by the Mongolians. Basically, 10,000 samurais defending the oncoming Mongols at the beach in which they are all slain. Except in this version, we play as Jin Sakai, one of the few surviving samurais of the initial onslaught and his journey of revenge to take back his island. Jin soon learns that the Mongols are neither honorable nor weak and his honorable samurai ways are ineffective by itself. He must employ tactics he had previously shunned to take down this monstrous foe. He has to go against everything he has believed in to attack from the shadow and strike where they least expect. He must become the Ghost of Tsushima.

And my God is it fun to kill Mongols in this game. Jin has a wide arsenal to pull from with a large skill tree to boot which means you can play the game in whatever style fits you best.

Want to confront the Mongols the honorable way? Challenge them to a samurai stand off and slaughter them with honour. Utilise different stances to take down special enemy types, employ deadly samurai skills only known to those who have searched hard enough, scare your foes through the meticulous butchering of their kin.

Or take them down from the shadows. Lure and assassinate enemies in seclusion, snipe them from rooftops, destroy them with bombs or bring them to their knees with the clearly overpowered kunais. You can choose to never be seen and clear out a camp completely undetected.

The combination of these two play styles make up the flow of the game. What I'd usually do is sneak in, eliminate as many as I can and if I'm ever discovered, I'd charge in and engage in a bloody melee where I'll rack up enough kills to send my enemies fleeing and I can snipe them from the back and leave no stone unturned. Rinse repeat. Or not. Sometimes I just wanna charge in for a no holds barred sword fight or I might just wanna bomb the enemies to oblivion.

The bread and butter of Ghost of Tsushima comes from this flow. You have typical open world gameplay elements too which I'm sure you might have seen from the reviews out there. Collectibles, enhancements, 'towers', etc. The usual. I don't quite mind them being as typical as they come but it did get a bit tedious to aim for the platinum trophy towards the end when all I could do was rush from fox den to fox den. It's a complaint but I'm not going to fault the game too much for it.

To complement the gameplay comes the beauty of this game. The game is absolutely stunning even when you're running it in performance mode. It's as beautiful as God of War or Horizon Zero Dawn and sure, we've seen that before but seeing semi-realistic classic Japan as beautiful as this and being able to live in that world just brings about an immersion beyond the norm. Also, the idea to use the wind to guide you as opposed to cluttering the screen with UI is smart. You even get to see the beautifully done wind physics whenever you want. What's not to like?

I should mention the music because some tracks really get you into the samurai mood but not all of it lands for me. I'm not one for slow music and considering the setting of this game, you can expect quite a few slow tracks strewn about. The best track in my opinion isn't even used very often. Quite a disappointment but nothing to really complain about to be honest.

Now the slight downfall comes from the story. The story is simplistic, straightforward and consistent. It talks about the honour of the samurai and how going against the code, even for your country, should not be entertained. I mean, it's a typical romanticist telling regarding the samurai 'code of honour' even though reality clearly disproves this. I don't mind it but it felt like a missed opportunity in my opinion. They could have touched on other aspects of Japanese culture during that time period but what they chose to do felt safe and, in all honesty, very representative of the current American culture; romanticism of violence, perversion of Asian culture and an overall directive to please everyone rather than actually critiquing anything.

The game still deserves high praise however, on the sole reason that it's really freakin' fun to play as a samurai going against the Mongol invasion. Again, it's the Assassin's Creed in Japan that we never got. They're also apparently implementing a free multiplayer mode so it'll be interesting to see what Sucker Punch can come up with next time.