Ghost of Tsushima was one of the great surprises in the summer of 2020 and at the Tokyo Game Show, that success has paid off. Ghost of Tsushima took home the vaunted Game of the Year award alongside Monster Hunter Rise and it’s a nice badge of honor to add to its considerable list of awards already.
Looked at as one of the last true PS4 exclusives, Ghost of Tsushima had a ton riding on it as not only was it a Sony exclusive, but it was one of the first realistic samurai games to release in a very long time, so fans of historical fiction action games got their hopes up in a big way following some incredibly slick trailers that mostly wowed with its visuals. When looking at a title like Cyberpunk 2077, you can see how hype can often be misleading, but with Ghost of Tsushima, it had none of those issues.
Ghost of Tsushima managed to live up to the hype and then some last year as it sold over 6.5 million copies. It has gotten a solid resurgence lately as well with an enhanced director’s cut edition releasing in August. Ghost of Tsushima is one of the few games that aimed to stay as historically accurate as it could with the time period it was dealing with and although there are certainly mystical features to the game that are obviously fiction, there is a ton of attention to detail that shows the care that went into creating a very authentic experience.
With that authenticity came a focus on combat and as far as samurai games go, Ghost of Tsushima delivered one of the most incredible combat systems ever and the moment to moment action was nothing short of hypnotic, with animations all flowing into each other while brutal executions and carefully timed parries and dodges determined if you came out on top or not. The stealth action was solid too, giving you a myriad of ways to go about a fighting scenario. The developers at Sucker Punch also added a higher difficulty shortly after release, creating an incredibly realistic and difficult version of the game that had you and your enemies dying after just a couple of hits, making the already intense gameplay that much more intriguing.
As if that wasn’t enough, Ghost of Tsushima got an online mode added onto it for free shortly after its release, and with it came an entirely new way to play and made for an amazing extension of what was already the best game of 2020. With its recent DLC of Iki Island, Ghost of Tsushima again managed to up the ante when it comes to a Triple-A experience in the world of gaming as the DLC managed to give us more of what we already loved while exploring an intriguing story thread that sheds some light on Jin’s past and also brings him face to face with some difficult realities such as if the idea of his father really being a hero was true or not.
To say the award is deserved is an understatement. Ghost of Tsushima did everything you could possibly want in a release of that magnitude and continues to do it with the recent DLC and consistent updates via the developer.
Ghost of Tsushima is available now on PS4 and PS5.
