Tag Archives: Ghost of Tsushima

Game of the Year 2020: Bottom 5

This year has seen its fair share of great video game experiences worthy of both praise and recommendation, but it’s also seen plenty of stinkers too. Now this list isn’t meant to imply that these games are the worst games of the year, because they simply aren’t. These are just some games that I happened to play this year that I really did not enjoy for one reason or another. A lot of the games in this list either already have or will eventually see significant fixes and updates that can technically fix a game I had issues with, but some of the games on this list are beyond what a bug fix can rectify.

GHOST OF TSUSHIMA

Ghost of Tsushima isn’t a bad game, but it definitely left me wanting something more engaging and technically proficient than what I played back when it launched. I wrote about my issues with the game back when it released, focusing on a bevy of story issues and just the mechanical weirdness I had encountered during my truncated play time. I found the camera to be the most formidable foe in the game because I would die more often than not due to its ineptitude.

But that was all back in July. I would imagine that after several months of existence some of the rougher edges of Ghost of Tsushima would have been ironed out through patches and updates, ultimately leaving the game in a much better place. This could very well be the best time to jump back in, especially considering that there’s a new cooperative mode where you and 3 other friends fight demons and stuff. That alone kind of makes me kind of want to boot it back up, but considering I lack any friends who have any interest in doing that, I don’t know that I’ll be able to enjoy that particular aspect of the game.

While that all sounds cool, it doesn’t change the fact that I was deeply underwhelmed by Ghost of Tsushima upon release. Unlike most of the other games on this list however, I do think that with a lot of the technical jank fixed Ghost of Tsushima could be a really fun stealth/action title. It’s one of the few games here that I would actually consider revisiting, and that’s kind of the highest honor one can achieve on this list.

CYBERPUNK 2077

Where do you even start when talking about Cyberpunk 2077? I tried to capture as much as I could in a short post a few weeks back, but there’s so much to take issue with in that just thinking about all of my grievances is exhausting. What I will say is that it’s a buggy mess of a game that falls apart the second you look too closely at anything, boasts a introductory sequence that’s just a real slog, contains an abundance of convoluted and confusing menus, and doesn’t even feel especially fun to play. I don’t see the silver lining around Cyberpunk 2077, and I don’t think I ever will.

From lying about mandated crunch for their employees, lying and misleading investors, getting pulled from the PlayStation store, and having a couple of retailers issue refunds for the game, Cyberpunk 2077 has destroyed the goodwill that CD Projekt Red earned throughout their time working on the Witcher series and the GOG platform. It’s absolutely nuts to see how hard everyone turned on the company for their unfinished and unpolished game in just like two weeks, although it seems entirely justified.

The worst part is that even if the game worked perfectly, I still don’t think it would be very fun. People have told me that the game doesn’t really get going until about 8 hours in, which is an insane requirement for someone to endure in the hopes that they might be interested in a game. Aside from that, I don’t think the combat, driving or conversational stuff is that good, at least from the little of it that I saw. Truth be told, I think Cyberpunk 2077 fails to encourage players to stick it out for 30 or 40 hours of gameplay, and it doesn’t sound like that argument ever really gets made.

WATCH DOGS LEGION

It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that I had some issues with Watch Dogs Legion. From its nonexistent story and its horrendous performance on PC, I found that Watch Dogs Legion felt like an afterthought rather than sequel to a very positively received game. Watch Dogs Legion‘s failings are only exacerbated when compared to the previous game in the franchise, Watch Dogs 2, a title that had its fair share of issues but was way more of a cohesive and complete product than this latest release.

I’ll stand by the assertion that the core gameplay mechanics are still solid and rewarding, but outside of that, Watch Dogs Legion offers nothing new or interesting aside from the incredibly lame ability to “recruit anyone” in London to fight alongside you. The mechanic sure sounds nifty, but in practice it’s an incredibly tedious element of the game that I eventually abandoned because you would just get cooler playable characters after completing story missions anyway. The incentive to hunt for NPCs with unique and helpful characteristics and abilities vanishes under the weight of being upstaged by story progression unlocks, and by how monotonous it really is. It also feels so firmly rooted in the traditional “Ubisoft open world formula,” that it’s just a complete bore to progress through.

Watch Dogs Legion just feels like a complete misfire of game that failed to not only capitalize on what made Watch Dogs 2 so successful, but completely abandoned any attempt at providing a cool story or characters in favor of a stupid mechanic that wears out its welcome after a few hours. If I haven’t made it obvious enough yet, I really did not enjoy Watch Dogs Legion. It’s yet another example of a game that even if it was technically solid, it would still be an absolute slog to play through.

MARVEL’S AVENGERS

Unlike my severe distaste for Watch Dogs Legion, I don’t actively dislike Marvel’s Avengers. In fact, I’m not even that disappointed with the game because I never really had any expectations for it. For as long as I’ve wanted a good, big-budget Avengers game, when the news came out that it would be a live service game I kind of just wrote it off.

The weirdest part is that it’s a pretty decent game, but by being shoehorned into this business model that just didn’t make sense for the license, it just felt overly convoluted and messy. Unlike other games on this list, I can’t really point to one aspect of the game that’s particularly bad. The issue is that there’s nothing particularly good or bad about Marvel’s Avengers aside from being a really weird and oddly dated feeling live game. I would love a great Avengers game, but this isn’t it.

The main issue is that the game is constantly undermined by being a live service product. With an abundance of tiered gear and currencies, Marvel’s Avengers, despite having a decently interesting superhero story, was diluted by being a licensed game that tried to offer a lasting live experience for players without being able to get too wacky with the property. None of your gear was visually represented thanks to Marvel being overly precious about their characters, which led to a bunch of invisible items that just made numbers in the background go up. The whole game just seems like it was designed by committee, which left it feeling bland and forgettable.

SKATER XL

I was so excited for the return of skateboarding games, especially when you had some of them trying to illicit the same warm feelings people got from the Skate series. Skater XL seemed like the game that would bring that pseudo-realistic style of skateboarding game back from the dead, but it was more of a wet fart than anything else.

Skater XL allows you to ride a skateboard and do all sorts of tricks and grinds, albeit in a messier way than expected. The thing that made the Skate series so approachable was the way it made you feel like you were being technically adept while not having to really do that much. All of your tricks were done with the right analog stick and maybe another button for a grab or spin. It was simple but required a level of competency to pull off more advanced tricks and lines.

Skater XL on the other hand ditches that approachability in favor of turning your controller into a game of Twister for your fingers. The controls are overly complex and require you to do unnatural things like steer with the triggers. It never felt intuitive or satisfying because for every successful trick I managed to pull off, there was a trail of blood and viscera behind me that chronicled my failure. Also, there’s not a game in Skater XL. There’s no story or challenges or anything that could qualify as connective tissue. It’s just a level select with some overly convoluted controls at this point.

To be fair though, it’s been a while since I’ve actually checked in with the game, so maybe they’ve incorporated more usable control schemes or some sort of progression system. But I genuinely have no interest in returning to the game after the bad taste it left in my mouth when it launched.

DISHONORABLE MENTION: SHITTY CONSOLE LAUNCHES

That’s right motherfuckers, I took some time off of complaining about this, but by far it’s my least favorite trend of 2020. I have been inducted into a miserable realm of the internet where I’m following people who track the stock of consoles in several different retailers. You might be thinking, “Ari, that sounds insane,” and you’d be absolutely correct in that thought. It’s beyond wild that I’ve had to invite a bevy of Twitter notifications to light up my phone whenever they please just for the opportunity to spend $500. It’s maddening.

Overpriced bundles, terrible website infrastructures, scalpers and bots, all of it is absolutely infuriating on its own, but nothing is more annoying than these Twitter accounts trying to capitalize on this sudden surge in followers by constantly trying to build a community around people who are being fucked over by retailers. I don’t want to watch a live stream of you checking retailer websites so you can announce a stock drop. I get it, you gotta capitalize on whatever little slice of fame you can get, but when all I want is to know when I can be disappointed by Best Buy, getting notifications for YouTube videos, shouting out other people who are tracking the same shit, and the really bad memes, are all things I could do without.

I don’t mean to go so hard at these people who are just trying to help, cause I do appreciate their efforts. But every tweet that isn’t about stock availability is just another reminder that what I am doing is crazy, and it didn’t need to happen. Look, I know that COVID went and fucked up everything this year, especially manufacturing and shipment lines, but despite knowing how constrained stock was going to be, neither Microsoft or Sony did anything about it. Because at the end of the day, seeing an entire company’s stock of their console vanish with seconds is great news for them.

You could write this off as me being salty about not being able to get my hands on one of these new funny looking boxes, but it’s been genuinely demoralizing to finally be in a position in my life where I can actually afford to drop half a grand on console, but I just don’t have the chance to. Every logical part of my brain screams at me when I feverishly click on links to retailers because deep down I know that there isn’t really anything to play on these boxes. I also know that eventually I will be able to get my hands on one of these things, but that’s the power of consumerism I suppose. I don’t need this thing, I just really want it. Unfortunately the whole release of these consoles has been a colossal shit-show from top to bottom, which is hands down my least favorite gaming trend of 2020.

This has been day 3 of The Bonus World’s Game of the Year 2020 coverage. Check back tomorrow for our final list about video games from this year.

Gut Check: Ghost of Tsushima

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I went into Ghost of Tsushima knowing very little about what the game was outside of it being an open world action-adventure game set during a Mongol invasion of Japan during the 1270’s. A cool premise to be sure, but a cool premise alone wasn’t able to change the fact that I wasn’t having much fun with the game itself.

I really wanted to like Ghost of Tsushima. From its initial pitch to the various trailers and snippets of news that led up to its release, I was under the impression that this would be something I could sink a lot of time into. By all accounts, there was a lot of the game to experience, but the general consensus was that very little of it was worth the time investment. But I wanted to experience it for myself because I was very much in the mood for a big and bombastic action game. Instead I got Ghost of Tsushima, a sigh in video game form.

You might look at screenshots or trailers for the game and think, “wow, that’s a beautiful game,” and you wouldn’t be wrong. Riding through a field of flowers and over the rolling hills of cherry blossom trees is objectively beautiful in Ghost of Tsushima. The art direction is fantastic and deserves to be applauded without a doubt. But once you start moving around and interacting with the world, that’s when you see the cracks start to show.

Standing in stark contrast to the beauty of the world were the rough and jagged animations in Ghost of Tsushima. Nothing seems to flow together in a natural way, ultimately making navigating the world look and feel clunkier than you’d like. Multiple times I found myself getting caught up on walls, being slid across the ground by roving NPCs, and unnaturally snapping into static animations while trying to climb or duck under obstacles.

But janky animation isn’t the end of the world. The real issues crop up in the playing of the game itself, particularly when using the camera. Now there are bad cameras that fail to adjust to a player’s position, or a broken one that just doesn’t follow the action when you need it to, but I’ve never had a camera in an open world game vehemently disregard my inputs in the brazen way that the one in Ghost of Tsushima does. The camera often tries to force a cinematic angle that isn’t particularly helpful when you’re barreling down the road on your horse and just want to see what’s ahead of you. While annoying, it isn’t the end of the world.

However, the camera exhibits borderline game-breaking behavior during combat encounters, when you’re desperately trying to create space between you and the ever charging hordes of enemies. The camera will often rotate into awkward angles if you happen to back into an object, making the concept of keeping your enemies on screen more of a chore than it needs to be. This could all be alleviated to some extend with a competent lock-on mechanic, but Ghost of Tsushima lacks a functional targeting system.

You are regularly surrounded by groups of enemies, something that other games might use as an opportunity to let you hit a button or click a stick so you can individually lock-on to an opponent. Ghost of Tsushima opts for something slightly different and objectively worse. You have a sort of soft lock-on where you gently nudge the camera to focus on an enemy, and that will “lock-on” to them. Except it doesn’t work and you’ll just end up swinging wildly at nothing until some dick with a spear stabs you through your sternum. I hate this camera with a passion, and it’s one of the main reasons I don’t like Ghost of Tsushima.

I can’t really talk about too much of what to expect from the later hours of Ghost of Tsushima considering I’ve only played maybe two hours of it, but I feel like I’ve already hit my limit with it. A lot of people have said the the opening hour or so is by far the weakest portion of the game, but that fact is usually followed up with the revelation that very little of the game’s content is interesting or unique. While I don’t have first hand experience to speak on it definitively, based on what I’ve played thus far, neither the gameplay, missions, nor story have been particularly engaging or worth returning to.

Early in the game almost every action you take is interrupted by a cut-scene that goes on way too long, or a flashback training sequence that also overstays its welcome. The story seems fine so far, but it has had no emotional weight or impact on me at all, which ultimately seems to be the overarching theme with Ghost of Tsushima. It doesn’t really excel at anything, and more often than not it just feels deflating and disappointing.

That being said, it’s a lot of fun to get into sword fights with people in Ghost of Tsushima. The combat is deliberate in a way that can feel incredibly rewarding when executed correctly, and utterly deflating when you mistime something. It would be a lot better if it had a traditional lock-on mechanic, but as it stands it’s rewarding when you aren’t overcome with frustration from the incompetent camera. There’s also a “standoff” mechanic which, while not revolutionary, is certainly interesting. It’s basically the “anti-stealth” mechanic, where you march right up to a group of bad guys and challenge them to a duel. What happens next is you basically have to time a button release to one-hit kill your opponent, but I still thought it was pretty cool the few times I did it.

I can’t really speak to the stealth aspects of the game though, because you’re severely limited in the early hours of the game with what you can actually do. It seemed okay I suppose, but it wasn’t anything worth gushing over. Coincidentally that’s exactly how I feel about the everything in Ghost of Tsushima.

But that’s Ghost of Tsushima in a nutshell. It’s an okay game that has some pretty rough edges. It’s one of those games that I couldn’t recommend anyone rush out and buy at full price, but on a big enough discount I might. Maybe Ghost of Tsushima just makes a really miserable first impression and needs more time to really be appreciated. But I just don’t think I have that kind of patience in me for a game that just feels sloppy.

Blog: A Waiting Week – 07/15/20

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You might have noticed that things have been a little light around here in the past week in terms of new content, but I assure you that it’s mostly due to unfortunate timing and there’s a slight bit of apathy on my part if I’m being perfectly honest.

This week sees a few of my most anticipated releases of the year which is very exciting for me, but as of this being posted only one of them has come out. The three games in question are Ooblets, a mix between farming styled life simulation games and Pokemon which releases today, Paper Mario: The Origami King and Ghost of Tsushima which are both dropping on Friday.

All three of these games are pretty big blips on my radar and the wait for them has felt fairly excruciating since I’ve run out of things to do in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Unfortunately I won’t be able to give my thoughts about any of these games until next week at the earliest, but I assure you that they’re coming.

The other problem that I’ve run into is just general apathy for everything, including my own hobbies. I’m sure everyone has felt the crushing anxiety of the world weighing down on them lately, and I’m no different. It’s been really hard to muster any enthusiasm for anything in the past few months, and finding joy in playing and writing about video games has gotten harder and harder.

I’m hoping that these games spark something in me that can ignite my fire once more because I truly love what I do. It’s just a hard time in general, and I’ve felt like my hobbies aren’t bringing me the satisfaction that they once did. It mirrors my relationship with Netflix, where I have nearly infinite choices of things to watch but I’d rather just watch the entirety of The Office again.

I don’t know how everyone else is dealing with this situation, but I know that I’m having a harder and harder time as days go on. I honestly miss working and being able to decompress with my hobbies when I come home. But now that I’ve got endless access to the things that i like doing, I find myself doing nothing at all more often than not.

Blog: Games of July 2020 – 07/01/20

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As cautious as I am about celebrating a new month in this disastrous year that is 2020, I feel like it’s worth mentioning that there are some games due out in July that I’m excited for and might possibly stave off the encroaching sadness inside me. Granted, there’s always the possibility that a spectacular game could release out of nowhere, but as far as the planned releases for this month, this is what I’ve got my eye on.

TRACKMANIA (07/01/20)

I don’t actually know if I like Trackmania as a game, or if I just enjoy the videos and gifs that come out of each release. Whatever the case might be, a new Trackmania is out today. For those who don’t know, Trackmania is a series of racing games that are less about battling for prime position, and more about just getting the best time on a track. It’s a game about time trials and nailing the perfect run of a course that involves crazy jumps and loops. I don’t think anyone really cares about the content that’s included in the game, rather the excitement seems to center around the community servers where creativity runs wild. Below is a video from an older entry in the series, Trackmania Caynon, and it’s the thing I saw a few years ago that got me into the games in the first place. Not every track is like this one, but I think it’s just so dang cool.

GHOST OF TSUSHIMA (07/17/20)

I’ve inadvertently kept some sort of media blackout with the upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive Ghost of Tsushima, a stealth-action game set during the first Mongol invasion of Japan in the 1270s. Aside from just looking incredible, it’s been a while since I’ve gotten to play a good stealth-action game, and this one looks incredibly promising. I also can’t remember the last time I played a game that took place in a similar setting, so I’m excited to see how the story and setting manage to come together. Honestly, everything about Ghost of Tsushima looks great, but only time will tell if looks end up being deceiving.

PAPER MARIO: THE ORIGAMI KING (07/17/20)

Paper Mario as a series has kind of felt a lot like Star Wars in that while most of the entries aren’t spectacular, the earliest entries were so good that I’ll be excited every time a new one comes out. That’s where Paper Mario: The Origami King sits with me right now. I’m tentatively excited for this new game, but am still a little weary based off of the last few. Paper Mario lives and dies by the strength of its characters, stories, and combat mechanics, and is one of the few turn-based RPGs that I’ve ever enjoyed. Paper Mario: The Origami King looks like it’s hitting all the right notes in trailers, but time will tell if this is truly a return to form or another lifeless release. Hopefully this one can recapture the whimsy and fun that the originals did, but I’m still going to proceed with caution.

ROGUE LEGACY 2 (07/17/20)

Speaking of games that are exceptions to my genre tastes, Rogue Legacy is one of the few rouge-like games that I’ve actually enjoyed. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I perceived the original as a simpler game than the rogue-likes that have released since 2013, but I remember it fondly. Surprisingly, there’s a sequel coming out later this month that, like every other game on this list, I’m cautiously looking forward to. I doubt it will be able to grab me like the first one was able to, just because my tastes in games have shifted so much in the past 7 years but I hope to be proven wrong.

The offerings this month might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think that this is a pretty good July for game releases. If Paper Mario and Ghost of Tsushima alone stick the landing, then I’ll be a happy camper. Besides, I need a good reason to boot up my PlayStation and Switch again.

Blog: Me3 – 06/13/18

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There is so much other stuff that didn’t make conference stages that I’m sure will be in my lane, and I can’t wait to hear about them. But from what I saw over the past few days, these were some of the notable games that caught my eye at E3 2018.

Battlefield V

I’ve had a weird relationship with Battlefield over the years. I really enjoy it conceptually, but the actual playing it part usually is hit or miss for me. Part of why I enjoy it so much has to do with the memories I have of playing past entries with my friends. Having reconnected with one of my old Battlefield 3 buddies might be the reason why Battlefield V is so enticing to me, but I hope that game itself can stand on its own merits.

Halo Infinite

I have no idea what this game is going to be or why it isn’t called Halo 6, but I do know that as a long time fan of the Halo franchise, I’m excited to see what this one does differently. I personally wouldn’t mind if this turned out to be an evolving platform for the Halo series going forward, but I’m curious either way.

The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit

I really, really enjoyed Life is Strange and am onboard for anything that expands that universe. I felt that way even before I learned that it was a prequel to the upcoming Life is Strange 2, so knowing that all of these games weave into each other is just icing on the cake. And honestly, this game looks whimsical as hell and evokes a weird Calvin and Hobbes vibe with the main character losing himself in these imaginary worlds he’s conjuring. Also it’s free.

After Party

The people behind Oxenfree are making a game about having to out drink the devil to regain their mortality and be returned to the world of the living. I can’t wait to see more of it and eventually play it next year.

Tunic

I written about Tunic before, and all of my feeling about it then still ring true. It’s adorable, it has an awesome aesthetic, and it looks like the combat is going to be challenging and rewarding enough to pull me through the entirety of it.

Dying Light 2

I loved the first Dying Light and seeing the systemic changes they’re making to that game gets me even more excited. I love concept of being able to shape the world and story based on your decisions, and mixing that with the already great mechanics of the first Dying Light is a home run. The only thing I wish I could change about these games is the zombies. I would love this exact game even more if no zombies were involved. But hey, I’ll take this either way.

Cyberpunk 2077

The reveal trailer alone was enough to solidify my excitement, but the additional details that came afterwards make it all the more tantalizing for me. CD Projekt Red confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 is a first person RPG that allows you to customize a character with various stats, “Cool” being one of them. It’s an open world where you drive around (I’m assuming exclusively in a DeLorean) and shoot people. There’s more details here that should get you just as pumped as I am.

Starfield

I don’t know what it is, or when it’s coming, but the concept of a big Bethesda RPG in a sci-fi setting that doesn’t suck (Fallout) is something I’m interested in.

The Quiet Man

I’ll be real here, I mostly included this because the name is so dumb, but the little tiny glimpse of combat we saw was pretty captivating for me. I’m always down for some good punching and kicking in games.

Beyond Good & Evil 2

Another one of those “what even is this game” games, BG&E2 looks impressive visually and mechanically, I just want to know what I’m doing and what the structure is. But that world seems pretty cool to me and that’s enough to keep this game on my radar.

Trials Rising

Trials is fun, you should play a Trials game. That is until you reach the last few levels where the impossible is asked of you. With alleged better tutorialization, maybe I can finally beat the final levels of a Trials game. Probably not though.

The Last of Us II

Games are too happy these days. I need a good ol’ fashioned romp through the morose to bring me back down to Earth. Nothing like a sequel to the heart-wrenching Last of Us to fill that void. Seriously, fuck this game for looking so amazing and making me want to play it. I know how this ends, and it most certainly is in tears.

Ghosts Of Tsushima

Just watch the trailer Sony showed off for Ghosts of Tsushima. That should be all you need to know about why I want to play this game so badly.

Spiderman

I feel like with the popularity of the Marvel movies over the past few years, I should be up to my ears in good superhero games to play. Unfortunately, since the Arkham games wrapped up, I’ve only been left with Lego-based options. Then you got Spiderman over here, shooting his hot webs all over the place, and I’ll admit it – I’m impressed.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

I think what I enjoy most about Smash Bros. isn’t the actual gameplay, but the absurdity of its roster. Seeing shit like Solid Snake punching Sonic in the mouth, or Ryu uppercutting Cloud into space just fills me with a joy that I had long forgotten. Smash Bros. just seems like Nintendo got a hold of a bunch of 80’s and 90’s kids and asked them who would win a fight, over and over.

We Watched The Sony Press Briefing | E3 2018

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Hideo Kojima presents: The Sony 2018 E3 Press Briefing.

The Last of Us II

We open on the composer of The Last of Us sitting in the corner of the stage and playing some very somber tunes on his banjo. Without any gameplay happening. Just him playing the banjo. In this very small church themed venue.

Once he finishes, the lights fade and the footage begins. We open on some people having a party in the exact same venue the conference is happening in, which is weird but cool. We get some context to our main character, Ellie as she’s slow dancing with another woman and eventually kisses her. Then we get a fade to black and reemerge on her slitting a dudes fucking throat in the woods. Very romantic.

It’s all gameplay from here as we see Ellie creeping through the jungle and sneaking around enemy encampments. We come to a scene of some people simultaneously hanging and stabbing another dude which is insanely brutal and inefficient. Through a combination of using a bow and arrow as well as a hammer, she’s taking down her enemies. She eventually is shot at by a gunman which understandably, makes her start running away. She manages to get far enough away and hide under a truck, but eventually is found.

Here we get to see some of the more frantic gunplay and action. Everything seems incredibly dynamic in the way she seamlessly switches from firing a gun to picking up and throwing a brick at a dude to taking a human shield. She eventually ducks into a shop where the stealth elements make their return. While hiding, she crafts an explosive arrow which shes uses exactly how you’d expect. She finishes the last bad guy off and we get a wonderful transition back into the party where this all started.

It’s here I want to emphasize that all of this looks amazing. The animations, the art, all of it is fantastic. It blends from cutscene to gameplay and back and it does it flawlessly. I still don’t know much of anything about the story, but this segment has done enough to pique my interest.

Intermission

Yeah, so it’s here that I realized that they’re moving the audience of the venue into the main theater where the rest of the conference will take place. During this time we have a round table discussion about the current state of Sony and how it’s more recent successes are effecting new games and future decisions. Here they confirmed a new game plus mode for God of War.

They appear to be using this transitional moment to also showcase some trailers for other games. One of these was an ad for classic Black Ops maps available in the upcoming Black Ops IIII. We also learn that as of tonight, Call of Duty Black Ops III will be free for Playstation Plus members.

Ghosts of Tsushima

Here is a man playing an instrument I cannot name, but he blows into it and cool music comes out of the other end. The music stops and the footage starts rolling.

We see a Japanese warrior of some sort walking through a pretty fucked up battlefield with some mourning people crouched up and down the side of the road. He walks up to the top of a hill so we can admire the beauty of the world Sucker Punch has built. He calls for his horse, climbs aboard and sets off through the field and into the forest. Eventually we reach a clearing where some bad guys are executing another man. I’d say we were hacking and slashing through these dudes, but it’s way more deliberate and way more brutal.

We meet up with a companion of ours and run up to an enemy occupied temple. It looks like we’ve entered to stealth portion of this game. Our character climbs onto a roof and makes his way to an opening in the temple. He jumps down into the room and slow-mo murders 3 enemies before stabbing a guy through a door who attempts to sound the alarm.

Upon exiting the temple, our companion tries to pull some shit and challenges us in battle. It basically turns into a Soul Calibur/Bushido Blade game and it looks fucking mind blowing. Suddenly someone shoots fire arrows into the fray the entire field starts burning around them. Our companion and us stop fighting to team up against the incoming horde where it cuts to black and we see the logo.

I am in love with this game.

Control

What if Psy-Ops met Quantum Break? You’d get the latest Remedy game. A woman used psychic powers and guns to fuck people up in this Escher-ass looking game. It looks like a game that is aiming to mess with your mind and the trailer does a good job at establishing that. It’s slated for 2019, and I am onboard.

Death Stranding

So here we are, a Hideo Kojima game is being “shown” at E3. I’m surprised this isn’t just a big slide that just says “FUCK KONAMI.” We see gameplay of Norman Reedus and another guy trudging through various terrains while carrying cargo on their backs. Then, instead of carrying just cargo, we see a guy carrying what looks like a mummy around. At this point I think this is a weird moving and/or hiking simulator, until a guy pulls out a gun.

It’s right here that I realize that I’m trying to describe a Hideo Kojima trailer and I probably just sound like I’ve lost my mind. Invisible hand-footed monsters roam the land and Norman Reedus can’t be bothered to wear a shirt. I still have no idea what this game is about or how it plays but I didn’t expect that I’d find out tonight.

My guess he’s carrying a clone of himself around with him in the form of a baby in a jar. Then he did a sneaking bit past some floating ghost demons or something. I genuinely have no clue what I’m looking at. But Reedus gets swallowed up by the ground and we cut to a woman eating something followed by a cut to another woman standing on a beach dramatically.

I do not know what it is I just watched, nor do I know how I feel about it. Death Stranding ostensibly is a game that one day you might be able to buy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsviir16Ri0

Spiderman

We open with a crashing helicopter in which Spiderman, does Spiderman things with his spider webs to avoid any injuries. After the crash we get to see some awesome looking combat that reminds me of the Arkham games, but even faster and with some neat special moves sprinkled in.

The Sinister Six are on the loose and they’re all trying to fuck Spiderman up. They all go ahead and leave so Spiderman can fight some goons, which looks just as fun as it did a few seconds ago. After dispatching them, Electro taunts Spidey and starts fleeing. We get to see some real good looking web swinging which ends in Spiderman running up what looks like a massive elevator shaft so he can meet Electro and the gang on the roof.

At this point it’s just a cutscene where several baddies all team up on Spiderman and beat the living shit out of him. It ends with a cliffhanger of Spiderman on the ground in pain, looking up and saying something to the effect of “you?!” Then a quick fade to black and that’s it.

The show is now over and we cut back to the place where the intermission took place. Cool.

Overall, this was a bizarre conference that didn’t really surprise me that much outside of seeing some of that Ghosts of Tsushima.