Ghost of Tsushima: A Cinematic Clunk | Green Ornstein

Ah, Akira Kurosawa.

As the director of Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952) and of course, Seven Samurai (1954), he stands proud as a filmmaker that non-film students such as myself pretend to know.

I wonder what he’d think about his influence today. I mean after he’d finish weeping at the shoddy state of contemporary cinema, but at some point he would catch wind of Sucker Punch, and their new game Ghost of Tsushima (2020).

This game was always in the background for me. I knew of it but it likely got pushed behind the warring factions arguing over The Last Of Us 2 (2020). However I was hyped as Sucker Punch are known for the Infamous (2009-) franchise, with Infamous 2 (2011) being one of my favourite games. So it’s fair to say expectations were high. There was a part of me that wanted to blow up Mongols with lightning powers, but a more realistic side of me wanted something innovative.

I got neither.

But damn did it look nice.

Ghost of Tsushima takes place on the island of Tsushima (a real place) during the late 13th century. T’is the age of honour, tradition and samurai. That is until those rowdy Mongolians show up with their anarchy, barbarism and general disregard for the cultural norms.

You are Jin Sakai, samurai and nephew of a prestigious general. However, after your uncle gets captured and you’re near-fatally wounded trying to save him, you start to learn that honourable duels are but a dying fad. Now you must embrace the taboo concepts of stealth, trickery and dishonour to defeat the Mongols. 

Right off the bat, the game makes some interesting choices, in that you have the option to play in English or Japanese with subtitles. That’s right, the sub vs dub war has now come to video games. You can also play it in what is dubbed “Kurosawa mode,” which shows the entire game in black and white with film grain.

Now that sounds like a really neat idea, but I question if emulating a vintage style goes well for a game like this. Similar things have been done before with games like Cuphead (2017) but that could pull it off because it was an indie platformer and did literally everything it could to feel authentic to the time period it was emulating.

For an HD high resolution PS4 game, it ends up feeling strange like you’re watching Citizen Kane (1941) in 3D. I do appreciate the attempts at authenticity, but it feels like something that should have been a post-game reward or an achievement like it was in Cuphead. Having it from the start just makes me think Sucker Punch wants to break their artist’s spirits by invalidating their colour grading.

Regardless of your colour preferences, it’s undoubtedly a gorgeous game, and it makes the most of its setting and time period. It’s used beneficially in the story too, making it feel like a tale that could only be told in this time. 

As unconventional fighting is considered blasphemous by samurai, the stealth mechanics and assassinations of the game have more impact on Jin as a character. Stealth takedowns and sneaky base liberation that’s become commonplace through series like Far Cry (2004-) and Assassin's Creed (2007-), but here, it's integrated into Jin's character arc.

You get the sense that each time he does it, he moves further away from everything he and his family believe in. It’s things like that which give the setup of your standard open-world that much more potency. 

And this is a standard open-world game. In fact, it’s probably as close as we’ll get to an Assassin's Creed game in Feudal Japan. 

Though credit where credit is due, they have some minor innovations. 

There are of course bases to liberate scattered across the map, but rather than copy-pasting them like in Spider-Man (2018), they’ve got some variety to them. Some are hostage situations, some require specific objectives to be completed (e.g. destroy ammo stash) and some require that you take on a warlord general in a 1v1 duel. 

There are occasions where you can perform a standoff with one enemy, waiting for the right moment to strike, which is awesome and classic Kurosawa, but it’s rather redundant as there are 10 other guys with him afterwards. When you’re about to be swarmed, it doesn’t feel like the duel contributed to the grand scheme of things, not unless everyone wants to form a queue.

It also has the Hollow Knight (2017) mechanic where you must hit enemies to gather up your ‘resolve bars,’ which are used to restore health. This works well as it encourages combat and means you can’t just stick up on health potions. Because as we all know, nothing fixes a clean slice through the chest like a hint of determination.

You’ve also got the wind on your side. Instead of arrows or signposts, the wind blows in the direction of your objective and you simply follow it until you’ve reached your marked destination. It is a nice approach, allowing a better relationship between the player and the scenery - watching trees, leaves and snow blow in a particular direction as opposed to a giant arrow marker is rather scenic. It’s certainly preferable to having the path literally marked out for you like Ubisoft does. 

Though fair warning, you will have times when you are 20m away from your destination but you can’t pinpoint the actual location or person you need to talk to. The wind just assures you they’re vaguely in that direction. It’s a change that looks nice but is less practical. It’s basically the same mechanic we’ve seen before but vaguer and with extra steps.

The wind also doesn’t help you find specific people like a nearby swordsmith so you spend most of the time running around aggravated and wanting to trade the wind in for a mini-map. Yeah, it wouldn’t have been realistic or artistic but neither is sensing every Mongol in a 10m radius with the feudal equivalent of detective vision.

I don’t believe authenticity or realism work for video games because the novelty of the high quality textures or environments wear off over time and all you are left with are the core mechanics and gameplay. 

Let me give you an example: 

I remember being blown away with Uncharted 3 (2011) when I first played it. Its graphics, and detail captivated me into thinking how malleable the environments were. It made me think I could climb on anything and that everything was of use. Then a few hours later I’m going “Where the hell is the yellow brick to climb on?” 

Having realism as a selling point also means that when the AI messes up, it’s more detrimental to the immersion. For instance...

My point is that I’d rather have flawed graphics with great gameplay than great graphics and flawed gameplay. An example of the former is Infamous, an example of the latter is Ghost of Tsushima.

Innovations to gameplay include ‘samurai stances.’ You can switch between 4 different stances, each of them have heavy attacks effective against a certain type of enemy. 

Fine so far, but keep in mind you have to essentially pause the game each time you want to change stance. Now imagine that while surrounded by 8 guys with different weapons. 

Actually don’t imagine, here’s what will happen:

1. You pause and change your stance to fight the shield guy.
2. The spear guy charges at you.
3. You pause and swap stance to fight the spear guy.
4. Now the shield guy’s charging at you.
5. You pause and swap stance to fi…
6. A dude with dual swords stabs you from behind.
7. You pause and sw…
8. Oh you died.

This will happen a lot. So often I turned it down to easy mode to get through it. The game could have benefitted from 5 difficulties instead of 3. Easy is a piece of piss and Normal is unrelenting. I imagine Hard mode is just a 10 second clip of Jin committing seppuku.

Maybe you’ll get the hang of it with experience, but it fundamentally feels like a fast-paced game using slow-paced mechanics. Also it won’t stop you getting fucked by the same 3 enemies that fuck you in every game:

1. The Archers
2. The Heavies
3. The Goddamn Dogs 

You have some tools at your disposal like kunai and smoke bombs but they’re incredibly limited and the game suffers a lot from “wrong button syndrome.” You try to change stance or parry in a pinch but you accidentally end up using your only smoke bomb instead. 

This leads us into the game’s stealth. For a game called Ghost of Tsushima, with a story focussing around using deception and more cunning tactics, the stealth is rather lacklustre and adds nothing new. In fact, there’s even less variety than there are in similar games.

You can’t even do window takedowns. A Mongol poked his head out a window, not knowing I was right below him, and I couldn’t do anything. I could hear Ezio Auditore shouting at Jin “For God’s sake! Pull him out then stab! Mamma Mia!”

Again, it suffers from having mechanics that are nicer but less practical. Distraction objects can’t just be stones or whistling, they now have to be constructed chimes. I feel like a rock would be a better starting point than a chime for an amateur ninja. 

It made me yearn for games Horizon: Zero Dawn (2017) where you could whistle to gain one enemy’s attention then give them a cheeky slit in the bushes. And when a game about robot dinosaurs does stealth better than you, something has gone wrong. There also isn’t much you can do to improve at the game’s stealth. You can upgrade your insta-kill stealth dagger for all the good that will do. It says it makes it quicker and quieter. I can say with certainty it did neither.

The core problem of Ghost of Tsushima’s gameplay is, much like Jin, you’re trying to be a samurai and a ninja at the same time. Those are VERY different things. Except rather than swapping from one or the other, you’re always half-and-half, meaning neither can flourish. I legitimately thought there’d be much more innovation, especially on the stealth mechanics, since this setting and story are ideal for it. But currently the mesh of the two is like sneaking in a first-person shooter with an LMG.

Overall, I did enjoy my time with Ghost of Tsushima. It is a beautiful looking game and I would unironically call its ending purely cinematic. 

Seriously, it’s legitimately incredible. I wept and wanted to applaud it just for that alone.

But I was disappointed it started to feel like a chore to get through, especially when Sucker Punch have succeeded at great gameplay before. 

If it still sounds like something you’d enjoy, and maybe you value the world and story over gameplay, then Ghost of Tsushima is for you. For me, as someone who sees gameplay as the king of a video game’s hierarchy of needs, it left much to be desired.

Ghost of Tsushima’s story and world are swift as a coursing river, but it’s gameplay is clunky as a ravine with a beaver dam and a bicycle in it.

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