Shinji Mikami fell to the altar, such a good subject, how did it suck?

As Shinji Mikami's latest work, Ghost Line: Tokyo has always been highly anticipated by players, and although its label is written as a horror game, it seems to be a little bit less interesting, and it should be a first-person action shooter adventure game strictly speaking. In addition to the main open world maps, there are additional mini-maps such as hospitals, subways, garages, houses, etc., but these places are usually only accessible when running missions, and can be treated as small quests or mission maps.

After the release of this work, it was also controversial. The focus of these controversies is naturally around the quality of the game and the level of the producer Shinji Mikami, which is always 8 words: Shinji Mikami falls on the altar. But is Ghost Line Tokyo really that bad? This time we're going to talk a little bit about this particular piece.

Synopsis

At the beginning of the game, the male protagonist Xiaoren wakes up in a car accident, and suddenly has the voice of a supernatural detective KK in his mind. At the same time, Tokyo is surrounded by an unknown fog, people have disappeared into this strange fog, Tokyo has become a ghost town in the blink of an eye, and then a group of unknown creatures slowly emerge from the fog, KK called the visitor, as a man with a mask appears on the TV wall, the unknown person is officially involved in a mysterious conspiracy.

The main plot is actually decent, and it is easy to guess the kind of subsequent development, but it is worth mentioning that the length of the main line plot is very short, and the process of removing side quests, collecting enhanced items and collecting various achievement props is about 7 to 8 hours to complete the level. Also because of the compact plot, the production team gives people a feeling of wanting to put a lot of information into it, resulting in some segments that obviously want to bring up the player's emotions but become very weak, but the more interesting plots are almost all placed in a part of the side lines.

Interesting yokai culture

The side parts are some of the more interesting parts that I personally find "slightly", of course, not all of them, and some of the side plots are also super wordless. And these interesting plots mention the most are various urban legends about Japan, such as the rift girl, kappa, Tang umbrella monk, Zashiki boy, cat and so on, as well as the more niche ones like a wooden sponge and the tubi that may be less known. Although the theme is good, but the content does not mention the cultural meaning of each yokai in depth, it is a pity, and the fog in the game also brings out the Japanese legend of the hundred ghosts night, and the performance of the hundred ghosts night is a bit unsatisfactory, have you ever seen three kinds of yokai night walk?

Gameplay

The gameplay is biased towards atypical first-person action shooting, the operation part, Xiaoren mainly has 2 attack methods, namely elemental attack and bow and arrow, which is mainly based on the three elements of wind, water and fire held by KK, which can be understood as pistols, shotguns, and bazookas in FPS games. The number of attacks in the lower right corner is equivalent to the amount of ammunition for firearms and weapons, which can be obtained by dropping monsters or destroying special items around them, and there are normal shots that are divided into light left button and long left button charge shooting.

The bow and arrow is because in some occasions it is impossible to use KK's elemental attack, or when the elemental spiritual power is exhausted, it can be taken out to replace another attack method, Xiaoren will use the demon-breaking bow and arrow in his hand to fight, but in fact, the gameplay is not much worse. After inflicting a certain amount of damage with any attack, the enemy's core will be exposed, at which point you can press and hold the right button to destroy the core kill, which is equivalent to a low-health slash effect.

Gameplay issues

Having said all the basic combat operations, let's talk about the problems. Elemental attacks have a charge shooting damage that is about 1.5 times that of normal shots, and it should not be difficult to understand here that the game is designed with a lot of emphasis on charge shooting, because ammo is limited, so it is necessary to consume as little ammunition as possible to cause a lot of damage. However, the slot point is unusually long in charge time, and it will be forcibly interrupted by the enemy's attack, which leads to a lot of reluctance to use charge shooting at the beginning of the game, but the amount of ammunition in the early stage is very small, and it is difficult to fight to the end with only ordinary shooting, which is very uncomfortable.

Then there is the destruction of the core part, the problem is also similar, the initial destruction process is very long, the movement speed will be greatly reduced in the process, and the action will be interrupted by the enemy, and the exposed core will be directly restored, especially when encountering a bunch of enemies, this way of fighting will give people an inexplicable sense of irritability, and these shortcomings bring out another problem, that is, the part of the skill tree.

The gameplay derived from the skill tree is monotonous

The game provides a skill tree system to enhance the player's playing experience, but to be honest, the signs of rushing this skill tree system are very serious, and the effects it provides are usually the effect number increase of some basic abilities, such as the increase in the shooting speed of the wind element, the increase in the range of the water element and the fire elemental attack, or the increase in the charge speed, the speed of destroying the core, the increase in the time of air gliding, etc. That's right, it's almost all a simple stack of numbers, no change in nature, no special attack modes or actions unlocked, and basically any enemy you encounter can use the kite flying to grind them to death. This is also why the player feels that the whole combat process is very monotonous, combined with many of the actions mentioned earlier, the process is very long, and it is easy to interrupt the action when it is beaten.

The argument for other games is that the opening white is even if it is white, plus a bunch of Debuffs, and the skill tree is only to cancel out the Debuffs, giving people a kind of "Aren't these abilities supposed to have?" "The feeling, because the point skill tree just makes the pace of the battle faster, that's all, it won't make your combat mode change because of which skill you order." However, later I looked at the data and found that the combat system was the responsibility of Shinichiro Hara, who had made the "Doom" battle system, and it seemed that it was not difficult to understand why there were these designs after understanding, but compared with "Doom", the latter's mobility and fast pace were less, which caused the combat process to look protracted.

The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment

Probably because we saw The Daimyo of Shinji Mikami and the more special game theme, we were all a little over-expected. Although the overall gameplay is a bit unbearable, but to say that the advantages of "Ghost Line: Tokyo" are still there, such as the display of Tokyo street scenes, exquisite screen performance, urban legend of the monster setting, that is, in terms of gameplay, there is really no way to say that it is worth looking forward to, can only say that another idea to play this game, may make themselves a little better. As for players who are really interested in this game, it is recommended that you wait and see for a period of time and wait for special prices before starting, such a quality, indeed some are not worth the price of 200 yuan.

Overall, Ghost Line: Tokyo is still a work that can be tried, but it is not a game that meets the high expectations of players, I wonder what everyone thinks about this work?