Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: Director’s Cut

My final post on Ghost of Tsushima–for now

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I’m…maybe close to the end of the DLC for Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions), and I will say that I hope so because I’m so wiped out. I want to go back to the–oh yeah.

*SPOILER WARNING*

fight with the Khan. I mentioned in my last post that my uncle ostensibly helped me with the Khan fight (by bringing his samurai to the stronghold). Why do I say ostensibly? Beccause I didn’t really see him or his samurai doing jackshit. And, as I mentioned, I had to kep an eye on my allies because if they fell, then I had to revive them.

Back to the DLC. I have included Skill Up’s video on the Director’s Cut edition below. He talks about the improvements which did not matter to me because I play on the PC and I hate haptics. He’s right on the content, though. It’s thin  on the ground and very similar to the main game. I’m glad I waited until after the main game to play it because while I could have played it at any point…I want to say as soon as I got into the second act–but definitely before I got into the third act.

I’m not into the story of the DLC, but at least I get to see bits of the main story in a different way. But, yes, there are references to my duel with my uncle and other late-game happenings. I do wonder if they simply don’t show up if you haven’t done them yet. They aren’t cutscenes or anything like that. You find different dead bodies around the island and when you examine them, the antagonist taunts you and shows you scenes from your past, but superimposed with them saying negative things to you (or the antagonist saying negative things about you).

My irritation with the DLC continued with a scrpited death–er capture. I knew the enemies were harder in the DLC than in the main game so when I went to Camp Sakai and had to take on the enemy, I wasn’t surprised that I couldn’t get them in one or two hits. I was surprised, though, that I could not get any block. I’m not trying to get parries even though they are easier than in From games, but I could at least block. I don’t think I could use my ghost tricks, either. after I kept losing health and could not actually block for the fifth or sixth time, I realized that I was supposed to die or be captured. I gave up and just let them do their thing.


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More thoughts on Ghost of Tsushima

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I have more in me to say about Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions), apparently. This is not part of the A Quick Look series, though the last post of that is here. This is more a post about–well, you’ll see. I’m pushing on in the main story, and the seams are starting to show. Now let’s be clear. I’m not talking about the story, which is pretty bog -standard save your country, honor, do I want to do the thing with honor or do I just want to shank everyone along the way kind of thing.

Here’s my issue. Well, issues. Part of it is on me and part of it is the game. Another part is a combo of both. The part that is on me is how I try to do everything but the main mission before doing the main mission. I’m currently working on the story mission because I was getting a bit fatigued and because I wanted to get into Act II. I mistakingly thought that the story mission I was doing was the last one I needed to do, but it wasn’t even close.

What I was slow to grasp was that the story mission had a million billions parts to it, so each mini-mission led to another. What I thought was the last mission of the first act, was actually just the first mini-mission of several in the story mission. I’ve done about half-a-dozen of them, and I have no idea how many more I need to do. I thought

*SPOILER WARNING*

freeing my uncle and taking back his castle would be the end of the first act, but it is not.

Let me digress for a moment.

Part of the story mission is to help Yuna, the woman who saved me at the beginning. Her brother has been captured by the Mongols, and if we save him, he can make a tool that will help me go rescue my uncle. Now that I’ve finally done  it, it’s the sigh grappling hook. Every game seems to have a grappling hook. I fucking hate it. With my spatial issues, traversing through the air in any given direction is hellish.

I have to press A to jump and then Y at the right time to grapple. And then,  I have to hit A again to jump down, or Y again to hit the next grapple point. While traversing and spinning the camera around to see where the next grapple point is. Which is frustrating as fuck for me. I can’t tell you how many times I fell because I could not hit the Y in time (and they give a generous amount of time. My brain just can’t). Oh, and there are times when you have to grapple to a ledge and then jump up to another ledge and then grapple. Ugh. I hate the ledge climbing by itself. You’re supposed to be able to just move the left stick in the direction you want to go, but it rarely works on the first go for me. EIther I’m not pushing it in exactly the right direction or I’m not pushing it hard enough or whatever.


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Ghost of Tsushima–A Quick Look, part five

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And we’re back to the fifth post of A Quick Look at Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions), which I promise will be the last one (probably). When I said in the last post that I had not done the first story mission, I mispoke. I have. I just have not done the story mission that is needed to be done to move onto the story arc that finishes the first act. This is how I play these kinds of games, and I know I’m not the only one.  The games are made to keep you in an endless loop because they want you to stay with their game, obviously. Many execs have said that this was the ideal behind their online multi games–you keep coming back for more.

When I played Monster Hunter World (Capcom), they had a daily quest you could do. It gave you some free stuff, most of it that you could get in-game. Some of the stuff was unique to the daily challenge, but those was few and far between (if I remember correctly). I got sucked into doing it becasue it became a habit/ritual, and I had to consciously walk away from it when I did not want to do it any longer. Otherwise, I would have passively continued to do it, even if I did not really want to do it.

I feel the same with this game. What I mean is that I keep meaning to do the story mission I need to do to end the first act, but then I fall into the rhythm of investigating any foggy area near me until I’m three hours in deep and have forgotten what I planned on doing.

Let me touch on the issue I was having with the standoffs. I think I’ve figured it out. I have the holds toggled off, so in theory, I should not have to hold down the RT while waiting for the enemy to attack in the standoff. But, the game did not tell me that it would take away the prompt to hold RT and then let go to get the death blow. What I figured out was that I just had to wait until the enemy attacked and tap RT. Then I would get the decapitation. And, by the way, the game is incredibly generous with the timing–at least in Medium mode. It slows down the attack so even someone with shitty reflexes like me can get the timing.

As for the attack buttons suddenly not working, well, I figured that out as well. When you switch stances, you have to hit Y to bring up the menu. Then you choose which stance you want (or which ranged you want). Then, you have to hit Y again to close the menu. It was the last bit that I had not remembered (or been told), so the menu was staying open, even though it disappeared from the screen. Once I figured that out, it made much more sense. Before a few days ago, I rarely switched stances during combat so it would not have occurred to me that this was the issue.


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Ghost of Tsushima–A Quick Look, part four

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This is my fourth post on Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions). I know that seems like a lot for a quick look, but it’s not–at least not for me. Also, I’ve put in over 16 hours of gameplay, so four post doesn’t seem like that many. In the last post, I mostly talked about combat–which I’ll get back to in this post, but not until later.

I was talking to Ian about the game. He’s finished the first region, which, at least by the looks of it on the map, is the biggest of the three areas. I have liberated roughly 1/4th of the Mongol-occupied territories, and it seems like the more I do, the more there is. I asked Ian how long it took him to do the first area, and he said roughly 20 hours. It’s going to take me at least 30 if not more. I haven’t even done the first story mission yet–which, I mean, I probably should do it sometime soon.

I’m in that sweet place (for me) of being OP for the earlier areas so combat is manageable. And, in some cases, dare I say it–easy? I have said repeatedly that when I don’t play FromSoft games, I am not about dying repeatedly. Hell, I don’t even really like it in my From games, but I put up with it because that’s the only way I’ll get to exporience the incredible worlds that Miyazaki has created. And beacuse in most of the games, he gives me plenty of ways to cheese battle the bosses who would break me otherwise. Mostly.

Ghost of Tsushima is both absorbing and completely a video game-ass video game. What do I mean by that? I mean that whenever I play it, I’m into whatever I’m doing .Whether it’s exploring and finding the hidden fox dens, shrines, and springs or fighting Mongols. And, in fact, I am much more into the former than the latter. I’ll get to that later as well.

In some way,s this is just how I play open world games (when I actually play them). I wander about, going from undiscovered location to undiscovered location. I may have every intention of doing the main mission, but then I get distracted by something on the map and do that instead. This happens time and time again. As I said, I still haven’t finished the first main story mission. Well, not completely. I’ve done bits of it, but not the one that is showing in gold.

By the way, that’s another way in which this is a video game-ass video game. Everything is spelled out for you (well, almost everything) and you can always refer to it in your journal if you can’t remember things. When you get new upgrades, they appear in gold on your map. The game will tell you what you get when you visit different areas, and then urge you to press menu to see more details. Or whatever the three line symbol is.


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Ghost of Tsushima–A Quick Look, part three

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I’m on part three of my ‘quick look’ at Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions). In yesterday’s post, I talked about my difficulty with the combat. Before I go on with that, I want to acknowledge that there is an accessibility tab in the options menu. I said yesterday that Sucker Punch doesn’t seem to care about accessibility, and I…think it’s still somewhat true. Or rather, I’ll say that they tried, but they fell short. At least for me.

I appreciate the visual aids like putting the subtitles on a different color background, and the fact that you can choose the font color for the subtitles. I have subtitles on because I have the spoken language in Japanese. I will make that choice whenever I can (as long as I don’t have to pay a lot of attention to the dialogue whilst fighting). I like the guiding winds because it helps with my lack of direction.

Let’s get to combat. I appreciate aim assist and simplified mini-game controls. Also, changing holding down the button to toggling, which, unfortunately, brings up a problem. Or rather, a bug. I’m pretty sure it’s a bug because I’ve Googled extensively to try to figure out how to fix it. I may have mentioned it in past posts, but it’s still happening, and it’s really immersion-breaking.

There’s a thing called a standoff when you come upon a group of enemies. I have to press the up button on the D-pad, and one of the Mongols will come up to me. Then, I have to hold down RT (the game tells me it every time) before releasing when twhe Mongol strikes. Except, half the time, the RT prompt would not pop up, and I’d get my face sliced off. It got worse and worse until I got the standoff maybe 1 in 10 times. Which meant I was at a distinct disadvantage doing things the samurai way.

I Googled it and found out a roundabout solution to it. Maybe. It was to go into options before each combat situation and flip hold to toggle and then back off again. (In the accessibility tab.) It seemed to have worked, but as I said, it’s immersion-breaking.

In addition, the attack buttons randomly stop working during combat. At first, I thought it was because I wasn’t facing the enemy (lock-off), but that wasn’t it. And with the lock-off, when I run backwards, my character doesn’t automatically turn around so I’m literally running backwards.

I talked with Ian about the issue and said that another suggestion was capping the framerate, but I could not find that anywhere. He said to check Display and flip vsync. If it’s on, turn it off. if it’s off, turn it on. I did not find framerate, but I did find vsync. It was on, so I turned it off. Then I saw that it had five settings. On, off, half-rate, third-rate, and quarter-rate. I just turned it off, and it seems to have done the trick!


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Ghost of Tsushima–A Quick Look, part two

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I have more to say about Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions). Here is my last (first) post about the game. I was musing about the combat when I wrapped up the first post on this game. I don’t love it, but I know that is me rather than the game. Or rather, it’s my ability issues. And this game is so not accessibility-accommodating. As I read it, when it first came out, there was no lock-on. After a big outcry, they slapped one into the game, but made it as unintuitive and terrible as possible. Yes, I talked about it in yesterday’s post, but I have to say it again: You have to flick up on the D-pad (which is also the way to call for a standoff) and then it automatically locks on whatever enemy it wants to lock on. And, yes, you can flick between enemies, but they’re often clustered so tightly, the lock-on won’t go to the one I want.

This was so frustrating, I gave up on lock-on. Lock-off is going ok except I can’t get the hang of moving the camera as Iym trynig to battle. And having a fucking archer in every mini-group is annoying as fuck. I cannot react to the whistle in time, not when I’m doing a million other things simultaneously. It’s roughly two seconds before my brain actually registers that there has been a noise and by then, it’s too late to crouch. Also, as I said in the last post, I can’t get used to crouch being on the right stick instead of the left.

The combat looks flashy and as slick as hell. When it actually works, it feels–eh. Because, and this is my problem with many action games, I am pretty much guessing on the timing. Will I get it right? Maybe! Will I ever be able to figure out why or how I got it right? Nope! I spent hours trying to parry the Silver Knights of Anor Londo in Dark Souls, and by the end, I was able to do it correctly roughly 75% of the time. Oh, and that was only the Silver Knights with the swords, not the spears.

That’s one enemy. Every group of enemies has a different parry window, as does different categories of shields. That meant that I had mastered (kinda) one enemy. After hours of practice.

I gave up on it and I rarely parry in FromSoft games. If I managed to get a parry, it’s usually by accident. Sekiro was bad times for me, and now after my medical crisis, I doubt I could ever finish it again. In fact, I tried to battle my nemesis for an hour or so about a year after I got out of the hospital; I didn’t even get close. Well, I did make it to the second phase once, but then quickly died.


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Ghost of Tsushima–A Quick Look

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Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions) has been on my radar for quite some time. It was a Sony/Playstation exclusive, so of course I was not going to be playing it for as long as it was locked off from the PC. Now, it’s on the PC. Nixxes Software did the port, and, apparently, they do good ports. I didn’t know that, but I knew that PC ports in general have not been great. Looking at you, FromSoft. 

Steam had its autumn sale and this game was 20% off. I wasn’t feeling it, but then Ian told me it was 30% off on Fantastical so I decided to give it a go. I have heard so many good things about it, and it looks gorgeous. I installed it and was ready to go.

First of all, it really does look good. Hell, it looks great. One of my favorite things is riding around on my black horse named Shadow (Kage), marveling at the scenery around me. The golds, the reds, the greens, the blues, and more. My favorite part is just thinking, “Hm. I wonder what’s over there?” And then I go there, completely forgetting what I had planned on doing.

Full disclosure. I don’t like open world games as a whole because they overwhelm me. I get panicky when I open a may and see all the highlighted things you can do. One of my favorite things about Elden Ring was how unobtrusive the map was. Instead of having everything listed and telling you a million things you can do in each area a la Assassins Creed Syndicate (Ubisoft) or have icons popping up everywhere in the way of so many open world games.

In Elden Ring (FromSoft, obvs), the map is fogged out until you get the map fragment for an area. Then, that area is there in color, but there are no icons, no instructions, no points of interest, nothing. There are faint structures, but you won’t know what they are until you’ve gone by a few and they fill themeslevse in. It feels very organic and does not intrude upon my exploration.

Ghost of Tsushima also does it well. The map is blank until you go by a place, and then it’s filled in. It doesn’t pop you in the face with all the things you can do on the map, though you can see all your objectives in your journal. I know some people don’t like the gusting winds that point where you’re supposed to go with your pinned objective, but as someone with absolutely no sense of direction, I really appreciated it. And, I think you can turn it off if you want. That’s what is most important to me–that you have a choice.


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