An estimated 8,000 games were released on Steam alone in 2019, representing a more than 1,300% increase from the generation's beginning in 2013. From Twitch to Steam Switch to mobile, games are everywhere. Ultimately, I think this generation's defining characteristic is gaming's new ubiquity. That brings me back to the question that opened this piece: What was this generation really all about? Was it really just service games and open-world games? Just a pure, cynical attempt to make game development a sure thing? You could almost call it a time capsule in the way that it gathers together elements from both the beginning of the generation and the end, providing clues for future generations about what it meant to be a triple-A PlayStation 4 game. Maybe it's the sheer weirdness of a western studio making a game about Japanese culture in an era where representation has progressively grown in importance.Įither way, Ghost of Tsushima feels like an anachronism, both embodying what this generation is all about and feeling like a throwback to another era. Maybe it's the naked power fantasy at the center of mechanics like "Ghost Stance," where the screen grows black and white as you slice through cowering enemies. Nevertheless, it feels somehow dated, like it should have been released in 2014 instead of 2020. It also features an incredible photo mode-one of the very best of the generation. Ghost of Tsushima is among the games following the recent trend of removing as many on-screen elements as possible, replacing the ubiquitous waypoint marker with a gust of wind. People will buy Sucker Punch's multi-million dollar tribute to the samurai film genre, and they will probably even like it. With development budgets higher than ever, it's tempting for developers to stick with what can reasonably be considered a "sure thing." Yeah, Ghost of Tsushima is derivative, and it's not going to win any awards. Even if it's not all that good, there's a decent chance that it'll move units given enough of a marketing campaign. The surest way to get eyeballs these days is to craft an attractive open-world with enough content to provide some nebulous sense of value. It's not hard to understand why Sucker Punch followed in the footsteps of Rockstar, Bend Studio, and Ubisoft in building a game like this: they sell. What kept me going, ultimately, were the graphics-shallow, I know, but it really was an experience galloping across Tsushima on my horse, Kage. There were points where I asked myself "Am I really going to finish this game?" as I carefully tailed an enemy through a Mongol camp, as I have through a hundred other games. It's the reason that I wound up labeling Ghost of Tsushima a junk food game on Twitter, calling it an experience that's tasty but not all that nourishing. It's one big cliche-serviceable but deeply boring. Even its extended multi-part side quests have a whiff of The Witcher 3 to them, though Ghost of Tsushima doesn't come close to matching them for sheer quality. It borrows heavily from last generation's Assassin's Creed games, but it also layers in an RPG skill tree like that of Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War. It has a huge open-world to explore, a horse to ride, and a checklist of items to complete. Ghost of Tsushima encompasses many of the elements that have come to define blockbuster games on this generation of consoles. And now we have Ghost of Tsushima, which pretty much sums up a generation in which big-budget games were frequently about size, but not necessarily about substance. Heck, even Nintendo has jumped on the train with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. GAMES LIKE GHOST OF TSUSHIMA SERIESBut when I actually think back on it, it's hard not to see an endless series of open-world games.Īssassin's Creed Origins. At the very least, they're more colorful. bigger? More refined? Destiny exists? Truthfully, I think games as a whole are better than they were in the previous generation. The question left me fumbling for an answer, because it's hard to put this generation into concrete terms. What about the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One era, though? What is there to commend this generation? The previous generation introduced high-definition graphics and downloadable games the generation before that offered both a measurable graphics bump and online play. A few weeks ago, I was asked how exactly this generation pushed games to evolve.
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