Andre M. reviewed Ghost of Tsushima

It is the most beautiful open world ever made and underneath the beauty it is the most conventional one I've played in years.

Strip the colour grading and the wind and the leaves, and what's left is a 2014 checklist map. Camps, side quests that are three fetches with a sword fight, a skill tree of percentages, collectibles by category. The samurai cinema framing is a very expensive coat of paint over a structure that was already tired when Far Cry 4 shipped it.

I dropped it around 18 hours, in Act 2, when I realised I was clearing the map on autopilot while a genuinely interesting story about collaboration and honour happened somewhere off to the side.

A C because I think 'stunning' has been allowed to substitute for 'interesting' in the conversation about this game, and the parts that are actually interesting are the parts it spends the least time on.