I would only expect that kind of parsing from a console warrior.
FWIW, I’m pretty sure they changed the name of PC Game Pass for that reason.
So what happens when you play God of War on PC? Just genuinely curious
Step away for a couple of days and come back to some of the dumbest (and verifiably wrong) takes… I’ll add this to the feature requests with Discourse. Preach Mort!
MS love the one show format they have now. Maybe eventually they will bring back the X events in December, but for now, I think its just the one 90 min show.
On PC it’s considered a spin-off from the Fortnite character Kratos.
I picked up Ghostwire: Tokyo a few days back, and after about 10 hours with the game, just finished the main path, a decent number of side missions and cleared all the “Ubisoft Towers”. Here are my thoughts on the game overall (minor spoilers)
Summary
The Good
- Ghostwire is a stunner of a game. In terms of graphics, lighting, etc. this is undeniably a next-gen game.
- It’s damn nice to see a spell-based FPS back on the market. These are a dying breed, and so seeing one of its type is always a good treat.
- The audio (in terms of audio design, music, and the Japanese VA which I used for my playthrough) is all really top-notch.
- There are a ton of really neat references to Japanese spirituality here.
- You can pet the doggos and kitties!!!
- The opening few hours of this game, as you find your bearings, are consistently exciting and invigorating.
- There is a loop of collecting spirits hidden around the city that reminded me a lot of Crackdown’s agility orbs. They can be definitely fun to collect.
- There are a couple moments in the game that play into Tango’s horror roots that are exciting, scary and fun.
- A few really fun sidequests.
The Mixed:
- The story itself is bizarrely convoluted, but the character arcs are strong and worth connecting with.
- The skill trees are lacking compared to a typical RPG/Imm Sim, but are definitely on par with the Borderlands of the world.
- The performance, for the most part, is very good in performance mode, but it does dip from time to time notably (PS5)
The Bad:
- Ghostwire’s gameplay loop runs quick… fast. There are a limited number of abilities, all of which you unlock in the first 2 hours, with effectively 3 weapons for most of the game that are largely uninspired. It’s like playing an FPS with just a pistol, a grenade launcher and a shotgun. Does it work? Sure. Is it a fun way to play? No, not really.
- The abilities in general look cool but feel super generic in practice.
- Ghostwire’s open world is a lot of window dressing. It looks amazing, but is largely bland, empty and filled with a ton of asset reuse.
- Many of the sidequests are just quick, repetitive fetch-quest timewasters.
- The controls here are really clunky.
- The aiming “down sites” is lock-on. Reminds me of Crackdown, not in a good way.
- Stealth feels underbaked.
- Ghostwire does a poor job explaining mechanics like food.
- The enemies are largely divided into 4 types, all of which are largely fought the same. They get really old, really fast.
- The critpath itself is super short and the open world doesn’t do enough to compensate for this.
- The bosses are way too bloody easy on Normal. The final boss felt like the first boss I’d face in something like Doom.
- However, without doubt, the biggest issue with Ghostwire is how on-rails and uninspired it can feel. Clearing Ubisoft towers, collecting currency and XP that has no tangible impact on the game, no choice or consequence, limited environmental storytelling. It feels like a 360-PS3 era open-world checklist game, and not a particularly great one at that. When all the other Bethesda sister studios are pushing real boundaries in immersion and gameplay loops, this stands out all the more.
In the end, do I recommend you buy Ghostwire? No, not really unless you really like checklist games or the tone. It basically feels like a first-person Crackdown game with less world reactivity, less emergent gameplay, worse controls, significantly less weapon variety, significantly worse traversal and a decent story and great presentation. When Tango’s roots shine through, it’s really exciting and fun, but these moments are rather fleeting. It is worth a try on Game Pass when it hits it, but on the whole, I’m rather let down. I think Tango over-extended themselves here and I hope their smaller project-oriented approach works well for their games, as well as being divorced from the profit motive in favour of engagement and MS’s extra resources. Because Ghostwire feels incredibly safe and bland for a premise this exciting. It’s decently well made, it has great presentation, but it feels largely like a bunt single. 6/10
Can a Moderator please sticky this topic. Thanks.
Done, see what happens when I take a couple days off?
Tag any one of us next time in case we don’t notice.
Grounded 1.0, Motorsport, Forza Expansion, AoE4 console edition, literally any game releasing next year. They have plenty
Hahaha. True. And next time, I will. Thanks.
People also always forget As Dusk Falls which is being published by Xbox Games Studios.
It recently got rated.
Plus Xbox will likely show some 2023 games like Contraband and Avowed. It’s not only games for 2022.
This but I would change the name to the normal Xbox Game Showcase, then just do the usual spam after each game saying it’s on game pass, that really gets people going because they wait for the end to see if it’s on game pass and are like “YEP GAME PASS TOO” haha.
Not gonna lie that’s not very exciting for me, I already played both AoE and Grounded, I am looking forward to Motorsport but yeah if it was just those games and stuff like as dusk falls I would be pretty disappointed. I watch E3 for games I get to play this year mostly with having a nice tease of what’s to come in the next, so if there isn’t much there that I’ll enjoy or already played this year then I would probably feel disappointed.
Pretty much my entire hype this year is surrounded Starfield and honestly if we don’t see it there that’ll be dumb imo even if there is a Bethesda show, I want to see it at the Xbox show too with all the other games. I’m fine with there being like a 10 minute demo of Starfield at the Xbox show and then a 30-60 minute extended demo at a Bethesda showcase, super fine with that and same thing with Redfall.
Last year, Bethesda wanted to be part of the Xbox show so they didn’t have to announce things that weren’t ready to fill out a whole conference by themselves. They could just focus on Redfall and Starfield rather than having to show things too early just for the sake of it.
I would imagine the same is true this year and for every year going forward.
Edit: I’m not personally expecting any other Bethesda projects (besides TESO and 76) to be shown at this year’s event other than Starfield and Redfall. MAYBE Indiana Jones/Wolfenstein 3 or MAYBE Roundhouse Studios or MAYBE the ZOS new IP but I really doubt it.
It is a nice way forward - if they don’t have enough content, they can go as a part of Xbox show, if they have enough - content they can make a separate show.
There are different dynamics in play between games released Day 1 on PC and days released later.
We can even see it even with DF when they reference the games as ports from consoles or when they don’t reference them as such. For example God of War of FF7R are considered the ports from Playstation. While Dying Light 2 is not considered the port from consoles and so on.
It was the same when Halo 2 was released on PC - it was a port from Xbox. While Halo Infinite is not considered a port from Xbox, but rather PC game (though certain franchises have a strong association with consoles).
Xbox is the publisher, which means that even on PC, they are Xbox games.
Don’t forget modern warfare 2.
Do we have any leaks or rumours about Arkane’s “Codename: Blacksky” project? Could this be another Prey?