I wasn’t going to get into this, but people keep talking about it. Ever since Ghost of Yotei launched, there has been this argument on how much it has sold, and they also talked about a boycott. But this has brought up another issue we wanted to discuss.

You have one side making all these videos and post saying it was a flop. Was it a flop? No, but if this had been Ghost of Tsushima 2, it would’ve sold more. The game rode off the success of the first one, and studios expect sequels to sell more than the first.

People are calling these guys grifters because all they do is talk about the game. They’re not totally wrong, you have the guy that blew the budget at his old studio, has been working on a game for 10 years and it just got to closed beta. The problem I have with certain people calling them out is they are also grifters. These guys are always saying every game is amazing, they have no opinion or they flip flop with pushback.  Why can one grift while the other can’t? One of the issues we see is toxic positivity and how it has harmed gaming.

There’s another side of the situation. The gaming journalists have come in and used it to go after people they don’t like. These people are trying to get brownie points with a fellow journalist. This journalist is suing a guy because he used her words and videos against her, and made memes. The suit is an attempt to intimidate and shutdown his free speech.  Him and his lawyer have pointed out her hypocrisy, lies and she also doxed him. Several journalists have been arguing with this guy she is suing, and one brought her up in a rebuttal to him when they were talking about Ghost.

A game dev turned social media critic, also has joined in on this. He knows her and had her on his show. He was criticizing the guy, but he has made bad takes and has taken many losses himself. He said gamepass would be great and create a great place for Indies. This would allow smaller devs to make shorter games for it.

We finally got around to playing Ghost of Yotei. People argued for this boring game? Atsu isn’t likable and I don’t care about her backstory, just seems like a basic revenge plot. The voice performance is one note and comes off as phoned in. The writing is a step back from the first one. They tried to make Atsu seem like this hardened mercenary and it’s just meh.  Even when it comes to side activities, I don’t care. I just want to get in the story and get why I’m here.

Gameplay wise they took out the stances when that was a unique feature. The whole game seems more actiony than the first. The visuals are a mix with some beautiful vistas and scenery, but the colors don’t pop or contrast as much as in the first. It’s like the lighting has been changed for realism. The ray tracing didn’t seem that big of a step or change either.

Then there’s the game being woke. Anytime people have said a game is woke, I’ve noticed several things. The game will just be boring and characters are one note with simple motivations. Writing will be a regression from the first one. Yotei, Spiderman 2, and The Last of Us 2 all did this. I don’t have an issue if a game has woke elements. Watch Dogs 2 was good and I didn’t care for it in there, but it didn’t get in the way of the story.

I am more annoyed with the popular accounts praising the game. They praise anything and send bad signals to companies. I have never seen negativity about a game make a worse sequel, but unanimous praise has. They justify bad business practices and make excuses for companies. When you point out issues with games, they will show you reviews that say its good, or tell you it’s not bad just not for you. They also hype a game up based on how many people are playing it. You don’t even have to pay them to be influencers. Even on the anti woke they praised bad games for no reason.