It borrows heavily from last generation's Assassin's Creed games, but it also layers in an RPG skill tree like that of Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War. It has a huge open-world to explore, a horse to ride, and a checklist of items to complete. Ghost of Tsushima encompasses many of the elements that have come to define blockbuster games on this generation of consoles.

And now we have Ghost of Tsushima, which pretty much sums up a generation in which big-budget games were frequently about size, but not necessarily about substance. Heck, even Nintendo has jumped on the train with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But when I actually think back on it, it's hard not to see an endless series of open-world games.Īssassin's Creed Origins.

At the very least, they're more colorful. bigger? More refined? Destiny exists? Truthfully, I think games as a whole are better than they were in the previous generation. The question left me fumbling for an answer, because it's hard to put this generation into concrete terms.

What about the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One era, though? What is there to commend this generation? The previous generation introduced high-definition graphics and downloadable games the generation before that offered both a measurable graphics bump and online play. A few weeks ago, I was asked how exactly this generation pushed games to evolve.

Witcher 3 vs shadow of mordor