Game Log Archive
Game Log is dedicated to the games I've been playing recently that encourage some degree of thought that I'd like to share. I cover games by their mechanics, narrative, and all other manner in which a game evokes emotion and engagement from the player.
Between crazy enemy combos and broken builds, the late game of Elden Ring is the most susceptible to balance issues.
This article is the fifth in a series exploring the game Elden Ring and its design. You can read the prior entry on the game’s many dungeons and bosses here.
Starting this piece I realized I may need to give myself a break before working on any further Piece-by-Piece follow-up series, writing them in full or mostly full before posting them onto the website. It’s not because keeping up with the weekly pace has been surprisingly difficult – though a sudden medical disruption threw me completely off track. I’ve otherwise been surprisingly more capable of keeping this up than any prior attempts at regular columns and series on this website! No, it’s more that my initial outline has not gone precisely where I first had anticipated it. I should have known this would happen, as it’s the same issue I frequently ran into when writing scripts for my video essays.
I emphatically agreed with Joseph Anderson when I watched his feature-length video essay on Elden Ring and declared the “final stretch” to be unreasonable. He had effectively illustrated how multiple later-game bosses were designed not for the combat stylings of Dark Souls, but Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I had also found other videos with similar titles and emphasis on the imperfection of the game. I had seen others express identical feelings regarding late stage bosses, and then would witness the mockery of these opinions in meme format on the game’s subreddit.
I would have kept on insisting that the game’s latter third or fourth is horrifically balanced, but at the same time I’ve admitted within this series that my Dex-build was an awful one. Just by swapping out to a strength build I’ve found much more success in damage scaling and poise-breaking with little adjustment to my overall playstyle and strategy. My knowledge has certainly deepened, turning a pair of once troublesome burial watchdogs into a piece of cake by disrupting one with crystal darts and turning them against one another. It’s an example of using a subtle and surprising game mechanic to make my second run through the game even “easier”, though I’m still primarily relying on basic melee attacks and spirit ashes in order to take out my foes.
Then, the Friday before this post is scheduled to go up, YouTuber NeverKnowsBest posted his Elden Ring analysis. Needless to say, it got me thinking, and it got me thinking a lot.
An examination of the most recycled content in all of Elden Ring, and whether From Software ought to get a pass for it or not.
This article is the fourth in a series exploring the game Elden Ring and its design. You can read the prior entry on the adjustments made to combat here.
We’ve now approached the most mixed-of-bags in all of Elden Ring: not just the bosses, but the dungeons that house the majority of them. While there’s enough material to discuss both in isolation, I struggle to separate one from the other. They are where the greatest joy is to be had while also some of the greatest frustration. So many are uniquely designed and crafted and yet they are also incessantly repeated. They are what leave me asking if Elden Ring is, perhaps, too big of a game.
It was impactful to cross over into the rotted land of Caelid and see monstrous and mutated canines scattered across the landscape, overseen by uncomfortably disproportionate crows perched atop the trees. The overwhelming atmosphere indicates to the player that life is unwelcome there, and what creatures exist have been mutated into a grotesque new evolution whose only intent is to annihilate that which does not belong in those rotted plains and lakes. No corner of the land feels as unquestionably hostile as Caelid, and such unique creatures are essential to that identity.
Only you will see them again in later regions, one of which is completely blanketed in snow. Yes, the chill cold of the frozen north, white plains devoid of trees or grass, are often seen as regions hostile to life as well, but there’s also a serene beauty to them. A transcendent peace that contrasts greatly with the shape of a horrific, malformed, oversized dog. While I am certain fans can dig up some lore reason that these creatures prowl such different environments, I would argue that such lore exists solely to give context to recycled content that should have remained unique.
Perhaps, if From Software had allowed Elden Ring to be a bit smaller, they could have crafted more unique foes, dungeons, bosses, and locations. Would it have been an improvement? As all things discussed thus far, it depends on your perspective.
In the third installment of the Elden Ring Piece by Piece series, I take a closer look at adjustments From Software has made to the game's combat and how effectively they build on the established mechanics of the Soulsborne selection of titles.
This article is the third in a series exploring the game Elden Ring and its design. You can read the prior entry on the freedom of the open world here.
Unfortunately I cannot be as thorough as I’d like to be regarding Elden Ring’s combat. I’ve barely experimented with magic, whose reputation of being overpowered has been betrayed by my difficulty to construct a satisfying build of the mystical arts early on. I stubbornly insisted on playing a dex-based warrior on my first playthrough, which in hindsight seems to be the least efficient type of character unless you possess magical back-up abilities. In the end, I simply don’t have enough experience to thoroughly discuss the balance of classes, techniques, and spells towards particular playstyles, or which ones the game itself seems to best accommodate.
I must also confess doubt as to whether anyone could experiment with so many builds in such a span of time whilst maintaining objectivity over the game’s quality. Such players are likely already experienced in playing around with From’s systems from prior games, and therefore they are less likely to perceive potential flaws as anything but a feature. When it comes to proper, in-depth analysis of the intricacies of class builds and viable play styles, we’ll likely not see anything with depth or value for another year or two.
Despite my inability to examine Elden Ring’s combat to the most minute detail, I can still look at many of its mechanical additions and what benefit they offer to the game’s combat. In fact, I’ve already learned how difficult it can be to go back to their prior titles, having started a new game in Dark Souls 3 and fought through a few bosses. I would definitely say that, for many players, Elden Ring could be the most enjoyable Soulsborne title to be developed by From Software due to how many dynamic options are now available.
One of the most important elements of Elden Ring's success is also its most advertised feature: the open world.
This article is the second in a series exploring the game Elden Ring and its design. You can read the prior entry here.
Ever since The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild released I’ve found myself debating what makes a “good” open-world with my friend and titular podcast cohort Steve. After five years and an additional one-hundred and fifty hours in Elden Ring, I think I’ve come to recognize just how much of that debate is over the unimportant specifics. While icons on a map are a part of the problem to someone such as myself, it does not get to the heart of what I enjoy about an open-world. Towards the end of our ninth conversational grab bag, I asked a simple question:
What is the point of a giant, open world if you don’t even engage with it?
Of course, this question itself could easily lead to more semantics and unimportant bickering over minor details. From my perspective, however, if I’m following the GPS on the mini-map or looking for icons rather than topography, then I’m not actually engaging with the world. It simply exists to look good on screenshots and pad time between linear missions or mini-game style activities.
Again, this is from my perspective, and I’m not even sure what forms the foundation of that perspective. All I know is there are some activities that exhaust me when exploring an open-world, and others that do not. When I played Breath of the Wild, I found it refreshing to explore a mountain range only to discover a hidden shrine or, even better, a dragon roosting upon its peak. There was no icon on the map saying to go there for that thing specifically. It was… well, it was a discovery, and it was driven purely by my own curiosity. When there’s an objective marker present, I tend to look at the mini-map more than the environment around me. When no such marker is present, my eyes are instead scanning every bit of the world, and this activity allows me to appreciate the world even more.
It is this same sense of discovery that embodies Elden Ring, but unlike Breath of the Wild, the Lands Between are far less accommodating than even the harshest corners of Hyrule.
First impressions of how Exoprimal felt to play, as well as its potential based on the game mode available.
Exoprimal is a childhood dream game made real. It’s the figurative mashing together of plastic power armor against mouth breathing dinosaur models whose joints lack proper flexibility. The very premise is ripped right out of B-movie havens such as The Asylum, distributor of the intentionally bad Sharknado, but executed with a decently budgeted spit-shine polish that can only come out of a video game studio like Capcom. The network test’s introductory news reels and exposition indicate that the developers are self-aware enough regarding their silly, stupid, and ridiculous premise, but they execute upon it with a straight face.
It’s that Venn Diagram of dumb and cool, where a concept is so bizarre or implausible yet captures our very fantasies like no other. The sight of raptors literally raining from the sky, smashing and splashing onto the hard ground only to stand back up and charge forward in a flood of gnashing teeth and slashing claws, is simultaneously funny and yet wonderful. Despite the impossibility of a Tyrannosaurus Rex leaping into the air and performing a flying kick, the very animation and depiction activates just the right neurons in the brain to generate excitement. The logical parts of our brain clash with our most primal or childish, and in the end, it’s that youthful exuberance that wins out. Reject reality and accept the fantasy of robots fighting dinosaurs as the jovial dream that it is.
Despite this overwhelming sense of joy that the test delivered, there are still plenty of question marks left hanging over one’s head. Just how diverse will the final game modes be on release? Prior trailers, interviews, and marketing materials insinuated that there will be a story mode that follows some uniquely designed characters, but how exactly will they pull it off? Will it be a lengthy tutorial for the multiplayer disguised as a single-player campaign, or will it be a unique experience all its own? Does every game mode have a competitive element to it? What sort of monetization can players come to expect? Does Capcom plan on providing regular content updates to keep the community coming back?
There’s no doubt that Exoprimal made for a fantastic two hours of gameplay, but does it stand a chance of lasting for two-hundred hours?
The first in a series of posts analyzing Elden Ring, why it works, and where it falters, beginning with the strong foundation it has From Software's Souls lineage.
Back towards the end of March I wrote some glowing thoughts on the quality of Elden Ring. It was planned to be the first of at least two pieces, expecting to have at least a bit more to say once I had finished the game. The thoughts and opinions expressed in that post are, admittedly, a bit dishonest. They were rationalizations of things I recognized as flaws for other games, but twisted around to sound like compliments.
In other words, I wanted to try and convince myself why I’d been so light on this game despite committing crimes I’d otherwise be critical of elsewhere. The box art for Elden Ring might as well have the emblem of a recycling bin on it given just how much content is rehashed. Even Godrick, a unique character and the first of the Rune Bearers most players will likely face off against, has a clone locked away within one of the Evergaols.
There is a lot of recycled content in Elden Ring, but to simply point that out as a criticism is, I think, doing the game a disservice. This is partially due to the nature in which other games littered with recycled content are built, and by more closely looking at the manner in which Elden Ring is designed, I hope to highlight why so many more players are willing to tolerate it from From Software than they are the likes of Ubisoft or Activision.
Before we get that deep, however, we need to look at one of the earliest mixtures of praise and critique from the From Software fans themselves: core mechanics that are over a decade old.
A look at the final four games I tried out for Steam Next Fest 2022.
There Is No Light
I’m not sure the top-down hack-and-slash is quite for me. Perhaps if they took greater inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but these games tend to go for something else (and, more often than not, it’s that “Souls-like” tag on Steam). I cannot say that There Is No Light is without promise, but there’s just something about it that failed to hook me.
The narrative establishes plenty of intrigue and curiosity, for sure. There’s something going on in this post-apocalyptic world where humans live underground, an oppressive theocracy enforces its rules, and children are gladly offered up to a faceless, hand-shaped creature revered as a god. A horrific creature resembling a reaper and plague doctor combined has saved our protagonist and given him powers to combat this supposed god, though this supernatural Industrial Metal mascot keeps his reasons closely guarded. Narratively, there’s definitely a hook.
The combat is what gives me pause. It seems the primary gimmick is to wait until an enemy is preparing an attack before striking out and interrupting them while they’re vulnerable. The nature of enemy mobs makes such a strategy more difficult to pull off than I’m sure is intended, and as such it’s easier to just dodge, strike once, dodge away again, strike once more, and so on. Guerilla-style hit-and-run tactics are far more effective than attempting the game’s far more risky mechanics. There’s also a meter you can build up to unleash an ability, potentially releasing a health gem that will heal the player once shattered. The problem is that, even with a successful interruption, foes rarely seem vulnerable enough to make filling up that bar and unleashing an ability possible without suffering even more damage. The timing is incredibly tight and the risk-reward balances far more on the “risk” category.
Or, perhaps, I’m just not very good at the game. The top down nature also made it difficult to determine where certain hit boxes were, whether they were based on the x-axis or y. Nonetheless, it was still an enjoyable enough experience with an intriguing narrative hook. It would not be the worst of the demos I’ve played, for certain. When surrounded by the promising games that had a far more enthusiastic response, however, it suffers the misfortune of seeming to lack the special ingredient each of those titles possessed.
Nonetheless, I may keep an eye out to see what shape the finished product is in. If another demo is released, I would likely check it out and see if they managed to tweak or polish the mechanics a bit further.
The impressions and thoughts on various Steam Next Fest continues with five more titles I played.
Ghost Song
There are a lot of game comparisons that came to mind when I booted up Ghost Song, each of them undoubtedly a source of inspiration. Metroid, Dark Souls, Hollow Knight; be it mechanically or atmospherically, I could tell each of these titles was informing the design of Ghost Song. However, it is the best kind of influence, for while I was reminded of each of those games, the mechanics and gameplay possess their own unique feel and atmosphere. It feels more unique and individualistic despite that combination of familiar inspirations.
I think much of this comes from the game’s combat, which is more slow and methodical due to both the enemy health pools and the protagonist’s arm cannon overheating. While the player’s rate of fire is at first rapid, it slows down as the cannon grows hot. However, that smoldering red gun barrel becomes a more powerful melee weapon, applying greater damage when striking a close-quarters blow. This developed a sort of careful rhythm to the game’s combat, where you’d focus your rapid fire on one or two enemies before carefully beating another one or two to death with the sizzling hot metal of your gun.
Checking the current feedback for the demo, it seems there are a number of complaints regarding how long it takes to kill foes. I have mixed feelings, as I am certainly not a fan of damage sponges soaking up so much weapons fire. At the same time, without those sponges, there would be no need to vary up your tactics between projectile and close-quarters melee. The demo also barely gives a taste of the modules scattered about the game world, providing the player with additional secondary fire and other boons and bonuses to customize their play style. Perhaps it would be more prudent to modify some enemy health pools while leaving others as they are, working with a scalpel instead of a chainsaw.
My only complaint was getting stuck at one point, though it’s partially my own fault for not experimenting. The dash ability the player unlocks can also be used in mid-air, though I never thought to attempt such a thing. For some reason I had assumed I could only use it while grounded, and thus found myself wandering around for several minutes without a sense of where to go. A single, additional line of information being added to the in-game explanation of the upgrade could fix any potential confusion, however.
Otherwise, Ghost Song is currently one of my favorite games to have played this Next Fest, and I was eager to venture deeper into its depths when I had reached the demo’s end.
A look at the first five games I played during the Steam Next Fest in 2022.
Last year I did not get to properly take part in Steam Next Fest, a veritable buffet of in-development indie games featuring a slew of playable demos. Part of the problem was my lacking awareness of the time limit; you only have so long before the demos become inaccessible. As a result, I have endeavored this year to set time aside to try over a dozen demos that captured my interest. Over the next few days I’ll be writing my impressions of each demo I played within the available time frame.
Note that this is not necessarily a recommendations list. While I came away feeling positive about most of the games I played, there were a few I bounced off of pretty quickly. The interest here is more in sharing my experiences with the different games I tried so that you, personally, can decide if you’d like to keep your eye on that particular title or not.
As can be expected, this series will be divided across several posts throughout this week. Please look forward to following along, and feel free to leave a comment beneath if you happened to try one of these games out yourself.
The concluding round-up of games that personally interested me in the week-long celebration of Summer Game Fest 2022.
Read previous round-up impressions.
The Last Case of Benedict Fox
Like 9 Years of Shadows, I found myself immediately curious about The Last Case of Benedict Fox because it was a Metroidvania doing something a bit different. This game stands much further apart due to being a Cthulu-inspired period piece, of course, and is largely why I remember it more than many of the games I had seen at Microsoft’s showcase.
I must also admit that it feels a bit more fresh for an obviously Lovecraftian narrative. Our protagonist seems to have a voice haunting and guiding him through the adventure, immediately breaking from proper convention by allowing him to communicate with the unknowable. It feels far more interested in the aesthetic of Lovecraft than the actual descent into madness, though obviously it’s too early to tell either way.
Regardless, it looks to be a Metroidvania focused more on narrative and exploration than combat, and every so often those can be refreshing. I do wish I had more to say about the gameplay demonstrated, which looks to be some decently polished platforming over action. In the end, though, I’m afraid it’s the game’s style that wins me over more than the mechanics. I look forward to spinning it up on Game Pass early next year.
A glimpse at the first group of games that made some degree of impact on me during the week-long Summer Game Fest period.
Read previous round-up impressions.
It’s difficult to determine what games to outline as highlights of the show given how many of them were known quantities. Many of the unreleased games living rent free in my mind, such as Crimson Desert, DokeV, and Lies of P, were nowhere to be found. Microsoft’s first-party games in development such as Hellblade: Senua’s Saga and Avowed were also absent from the publisher’s showcase. As a result, most of the games that have stood out are primarily games I already knew about and have been following for some time.
Additionally, I was not capable of following all the showcases as they streamed this year. This left me scrambling to see what they revealed, the majority of which were outside of my wheelhouse. There are plenty of games that certainly look interesting, such as Nivalis, but I have no real interest in playing a cyberpunk-themed slice-of-life. Not outside of VA-11 Hall-A, at least.
It also doesn’t help that I’ve grown more picky as time progresses. While a game like Morbid Metal checks all the right boxes on paper, the lack of enemy flinch or proper feedback gives it a tedious, damage-sponge look. Those that read my Beta impressions of Marvel’s Avengers know that the feel of combat and tactile feedback in an action game are very important to me, and it is the one crucial ingredient this upcoming game seems to be lacking. My impressions are similar for Elsie, a Mega Man styled action platformer whose mechanics look just a tad jankier than Smelter, an indie game I overall enjoyed but found lacking in tightness of control.
This leaves me with a lot of games that caught my interest or had me curious, but aren’t really generating excitement or a desire to add to the wishlist. Nevertheless, I have been able to sift through enough trailers to pick out some highlights of this year’s Game Fest.
Our first glimpse at this year's Summer Game Fest focuses primarily on how effective the event is, whether it truly serves a purpose, analyzing the current strategies of Microsoft and Sony, and doing our best to keep our expectations of Capcom's output tempered.
It is the morning of Monday, June 6th, as I begin to cobble together these thoughts and drafts. There is a headline in which Geoff Keighly, host of Summer Games Fest and The Game Awards, warns viewers that the event will focus primarily on announced games. It is an understandable word of caution, with crazy and unfounded rumors flying left and right as eager consumers hope for some slew of colossal surprises.
This has generally been the state of things for several years now, and was something I had picked up on in Sony’s State of Play. Aside from the opening trailer for a Resident Evil 4 remake – long-rumored but never officially addressed by Capcom – every game showcased was a known quantity. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as last year’s Elden Ring reveal was for a previously announced title and yet managed to be the talk of the summer. Sometimes, the best source of marketing available is to answer a question, and for many games this year, that question is simply “what will it be like?”
It is now Monday, June 13th, a week after having written the above two paragraphs. I have deleted a page and a half of text I had written a week ago, abandoned after having been inspired to declare E3 dead. The majority of the Game Fest has concluded. Unlike last year, I’ve missed approximately half of the shows. I have not seen the Guerilla Collective showcase nor have I consciously seen anything aside from the PalWorld trailer from the Future Games Showcase. Capcom’s stream begins in less than two hours, Microsoft has an extension planned for tomorrow, Ubisoft has just scheduled a live stream focused on the Assassin’s Creed franchise, Square Enix and Blizzard aim to have streams focused on Final Fantasy VII and Overwatch 2 on Thursday, respectively, and Focus Entertainment has also just announced today that A Plague Tale: Requiem won’t be getting a release date until their own stream on June 23rd.
E3 is most certainly dead, and Summer Games Fest is no festival of games.
My love for Nintendo's competitive shooter has been rekindled after some time away.
I’m not the most competitive of gamers. I enjoy going head-to-head with friends and strangers in competition to an extent, but I’ve never been skilled enough to regularly be a “top gamer”. The closest was during my teenage years where my brother and his friends from College would invite me to play some fighting games with them. I came off like some sort of prodigy, adapting to any new game’s systems within a few matches and becoming a top contender. I thought I was “skilled” until I began attending a university filled with fighting game fanatics that lived, ate, and breathed joysticks, frame counts, and combos. Simultaneously, my favorite modes during LAN parties of Unreal Tournament 2K4 were the PvE focused Invasion and the objective-driven Assault. Anything that counted on twitchy reflexes to stack on the kills was far less enjoyable because I would rarely break into the middle rankings.
I think Destiny 2’s competitive Crucible mode had left me feeling bitter towards any player-versus-player activity altogether. Games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe notwithstanding, I was sick of going toe-to-toe with players far more obsessed with Destiny 2 and its systems than I was, all while chasing bounties and quests that required me to stack up kills. It’s bad enough that I knew I wasn’t on top of the rankings, but to demand a specific kill-count with specific weapons is to effectively punish anyone that fails to measure up with the wannabe digital athletes that live on those maps. Crucible effectively killed my interest in anything that wasn’t player-versus-environment.
Then, on a whim, I decided to start playing Splatoon 2 on Saturday mornings. I wasn’t quite feeling the hype for its upcoming sequel yet, and I had long since abandoned it as my friends were all gaming elsewhere. Nonetheless, I wanted to brush my skills up a bit for the sequel and so decided to dip myself back into its reservoir of chromatic ink.
I can’t believe I had forgotten how much I loved this game.
A look back at what I've been playing, the benefits and detriments to pile management, and why the blog has been a bit silent.
My self-deprecating brain would most likely describe myself as a poor excuse for an adult, pointing to my history of irresponsible purchasing habits as Exhibit A. Nonetheless, by taking on the impossible task of “pile management”, I have successfully learned to stop buying as many games as when I first entered the full-time work force. I no longer purchase a game just because it looked somewhat interesting, because it has been increasingly hyped by the games press and feels “necessary” to play, or because I know I want to play it, even if I cannot play it now.
...well, most of the time. Deeply discounted sale items are still an achilles’ heel of mine.
After being burned by so many of these “prestigious” or “highly regarded” titles and finding myself with too many titles and not enough time, I’ve finally begun to purchase more responsibly and better tackle the “pile”. However, in order to tackle this “pile” I had begun to meticulously track what games I was playing, which I had beaten, and listing out all the unplayed or incomplete titles that I now wanted to “schedule” time for. It was its own form of stress, and only a few months ago did I finally break free of its hold.
In other words, my gaming time has been determined by some self-imposed sense of pressure or duty rather than my wants or mood for far too long. While it has gradually been giving way to more impulsively following desire, such as my now thoroughly developed love of replaying great titles, it is only recently that I’ve thrown any sort of pressure or schedule to the wind for the sake of playing what I want in the moment. Unfortunately for the content mill, this means there are gaps where I may not have something stirring up a desire to write or discuss it (though, to be fair, this was true even when I was intentionally trying to play nothing but games new to me). Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that I have not completed something and therefore felt comfortable discussing. While Elden Ring and Ghostwire: Tokyo were strong enough contenders to fill multiple blog posts regardless of whether they were finished or not, anything else I’ve recently played has failed to make the same impact.
As such, I have decided to put together a sort of “catch-up” entry, with little mini-discussions about what I’ve played the past couple of months. Hopefully I’ll have items of greater substance for you in the near future.
I certainly enjoyed Ghostwire: Tokyo more than the review scores would suggest I might have. However, I can't say everyone else will enjoy it as much as I had.
I can now confirm that the combat to Ghostwire: Tokyo is not as shallow as many reviewers claim it to be. The problem, as I had suspected, is that there’s not enough incentive to make use of protagonist Akito’s full suite of abilities. It is not unlike the original Assassin’s Creed, where any player could rely upon Altair’s counterattack to progress through any combat scenario. It did not matter that there were a slew of other offensive or defensive abilities the player could learn to more efficiently slaughter a group of guards. Why would it? The bare minimum skill was good enough, and therefore the critics – all of whom are theoretically paid to explore what a game is capable of – called it shallow.
It’s not fair for me to push all the blame on writers and reviewers, for they did what most players would do: rely on the most simple, basic strategy necessary for a positive outcome. The blame I lay is for the critics’ failure to fully explore the game and give a more informed opinion than your average poster on Reddit. The problem with Assassin’s Creed is the emphasis on broad appeal, designing a game so that the less skillful players could still complete it with minimal resistance. Ghostwire: Tokyo has done the very same.
I believe it was Steve, my podcast co-host, that was trying to coin a term regarding “minimal viable strategy”; a concept executed to varying degrees throughout games of the past. Do you know how many people can beat Bloodborne, any of the Dark Souls entries, or Elden Ring without capitalizing on status ailments or equipment resistance? Though punishing, From Software specializes in a difficult combat design that makes minimum viable strategies possible. There are also a slew of more complex, highly skill-based tactics, strategies, and builds available, but you do not need them to complete their games. What’s more, the minimal viable strategy still involves studying the enemy’s behavior, dodging, guarding, or parrying at opportune times, calmly striking only when the opponent is vulnerable. This is still more complex than the “wait to press the Y button” minimum viable strategy of Assassin’s Creed, and as a result is perceived as being more deep and rewarding. Despite this minimum viable strategy, however, the game is still difficult enough to incentivize players to explore the deeper mechanics in order to better combat and outsmart their foes.
Ghostwire: Tokyo is not as easy as Assassin’s Creed, but it’s also not as difficult as a From Software game. It sits in this strange limbo where a player must consciously ask themselves if it’s worth exploring those additional yet unnecessary combat options.
If they do, then many of the tasks throughout the rest of the game will prove more rewarding… but is it still enough to make the game worthy of recommendation? That’s a difficult question to answer.
