The RLLMUK Game of the Year Awards 2020 - Currently Showing: The Game of the Year!

[keptbybees]

22 hours ago, Thor said:

Hark at Arnold fucking Schwarzenegger over here. Those black headcrabs or fucking horrifying. 

One of my main memories from the first Half-Life is a bit fairly early one where there is a flooded room conducting electricity that you need to go through. You turn off the power and get to a vent in the dark where a head-crab jumps at you as you go through the vent. I have played Half Life many times and I still jump at that bastard crab every time. I'm going no where near that experience in VR!

[Wiper]

10. Cyberpunk 2077

 

 

A lot has already been said about CD Projekt Red’s working culture in recent months. So let’s go over it again! They promised not to crunch, then crunched, postponed, crunched some more, released an unfinished product, crunched to bugfix, then threw QA under the bus to explain how the game was released in its broken state on last-gen consoles. A class act from management and their comms department.

 

Of course, what the vast majority of players focussed on, and the actual source of widespread outcry, wasn’t the abuse of staff, but the fact that a Game you could Pay Money For was Quite Buggy. So that was a nice demonstration of the average gamer’s sense of proportion.

 

Still, Cyberpunk 2077 has scraped into the top 10, so let’s consider what people may have liked about it.

 

Perhaps the voters were enamoured with the sprawling urban nightmare of Night City; a grimly varied dystopia, with distinct cultural sectors established through careful architectural design and set dressing. A place of misery for its denizens that provides an evocative cityscape around which to cruise, your radio pumping out jazz as you meander the rain-slick streets. A dystopia whose shadow is quite literally brought into relief by astonishing ray-tracing throughout – at least, assuming the player has a beefy enough machine.

 

Or maybe the story engaged them. Pre-release, there was some worry that Cyberpunk wouldn’t be, well, cyberpunk enough. Happy, then, the genre fans, who received a game that doesn't just wear the neon trappings but commits to the full ‘underdogs struggling to survive in hellish corporate futurescape’ structure that underlines cyberpunk. Using open RPG design to bring its lens to the downtrodden of all backgrounds, it provides breadth to the genre-favourite rags-to-rags trope, really giving you the chance to explore the underbelly of Night City.

 

By the same stroke it gives the player a wide range of characters to interact with and become attached to; something assisted by the quality of the script throughout, and the excellent voice acting and animation work. This isn’t a game which goes heavy on uncanny-valley lip-synching, but rather hones in on body language and, simply, eyes. It’s assuredly the most believable cast of characters, in terms of the way they speak, move and behave in conversation, that I’ve encountered in an RPG. And yes, I’m even including Johnny Silverhand in that, who I thought was brilliantly performed, despite many reports to the contrary.

 

Maybe voters simply welcomed the pleasant return to the ‘choose your own approach’ RPG, which takes the increasingly rare approach of having a meaningfully limited amount of points to spend in a wide variety of branches, leading to naturally specialised builds; do you want to be a netrunner, a ghost, a street samurai, a demolitions expert? Well, you’ll not be able to invest significant points in every skill type, so you’re going to have to choose, and then base your approach to missions around those skills.

 

Despite that, it’s unlikely anyone voted for it because of its level-up options. A cataclysmic number of choices, most of which amount to ‘increment a stat by a trivial percentage’, plus the occasional ‘sounds good, will actually bankrupt you by auto-destroying expensive items for you’ should-have-been-rebalanced-pre-release perk, do not an inspiring spec tree make.

 

It also probably wasn’t for the combat, which never threatens to pass the ‘competent’ mark. Nor, for that matter, the stealth. And let’s not even talk about the undercooked hacking mechanic. In terms of moment-to-moment ‘action’ gameplay, Cyberpunk is never unpleasant, but it doesn’t come close to inspiring.

 

It certainly wasn’t for the driving. Even beyond the mediocre handling of the vehicles (and the incredibly boring ‘races’), any enjoyment to be had from that is completely undermined by the completely rigid AI: drivers who can’t move around obstacles (and frequently stop for no obstacle at all); traffic lights which turn green on the player’s approach in an attempt to mask the fact that the AI is entirely unaware of them; police who ignore or forget your every infraction.

 

Indeed, it assuredly isn’t for the dynamism of the open world; they may have nailed the city as a set, but the actors leave something to be desired, vehicular or otherwise. A half-baked police response system, mindless civilians, atrocious pathfinding; all things the Witcher games managed to get away with thanks to their tiny urban centres and limited in-settlement interactions, but Cyberpunk’s heavy focus on inner-city gameplay leads to its veneer of a world packed with life quickly chipping away. Every crime you commit in plain sight, every enemy outwitted the moment they have to leave their predefined patrol area, every minor NPC interaction (whether triggered by violence or more simply attempting to talk to them) whittles away at the suspension of disbelief.

 

The thing is, Cyberpunk is a game undone by its ambition. It strives to be a bit of everything – a GTA style open-world! A choose-your-own-adventure! An RPG where you can take whatever approach you want! A lavish, cinematic experience! And, in the end, its over-stretched developers were able to absolutely nail some aspects of the experience, and completely flub the others.

 

The result is a game which can delight certain players. Those who go in wanting The Witcher 3 - but cyberpunk! - are pretty well served. Those who simply wanted a cyberpunk adventure and/or city to explore – this is the game for you. But for anyone expecting a dynamic open world, a high quality action game, or who deigned to expect the omega-game that CDPR tried to convince the world was on its way – well, it’s not quite that.

 

(also, anyone expecting a game that isn't somewhat broken are probably going to be left a little disappointed at the moment)

 

It's not the disaster some have painted it as. But it also comes nowhere near the game CDPR were threatening to deliver. Game of the year? Not a chance. But probably worth playing if you want to enjoy a cyberpunk setting and, you know, contribute to the real world cyberpunk experience of rewarding a company for working its staff to the bone and releasing a buggy mess of an experience in order to line its billionaire owners' pockets.

 

(actually, thinking about it, everyone who voted for this probably just liked the soundtrack. Which would make sense, because it’s fucking great)

 

 

Qazimod:

 

The tone is set – a vibrant city backdrop. Trouble waiting around every corner. A game that thrusts you into a modern setting and lets you loose amongst the miscreants and weirdos. Various distractions are peppered around the world and exist to be discovered outside of the core storyline – intriguing side jobs and minigames that you can check out and a character that can be developed to suit the way the player wishes to play, with a suite of skills that need to be mastered if you wish to make progress. It's undoubtedly one of the more ambitious RPGs we've seen in 2020, but unfortunately we already covered Yakuza: Like A Dragon earlier in the thread, so now's not the time. Oho!

 

It's not easy to separate Cyberpunk from its troubled launch, but the game offers opportunities for you to try. When you see the elements of the game that are working as intended, you can still appreciate how much care and effort has been put into this experience. Night City is a striking environment, and the sheer amount of writing helps to ensure that there are still memorable moments within the quests on offer, even if they are often narrative decorations around a generic open-world mission template. The backdrop also makes a decent attempt at instilling unease in a player, although maybe that's the point – with a much harsher approach to authority than GTA's Wanted system and the anti-establishment Johnny Silverhand acting as a keen influence in the world, there's an obvious effort to create a tension in Night City that encourages you to disrupt the system but (at the same time) isn't afraid to remind you of potential consequences.

 

Of course the game took a lot of heat because it released in a buggy state and it probably needs a bit more time to realise its true potential, but apparently a lot of people who bought Cyberpunk don't mind unfinished content, and to them I can only say lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Kidding aside, it's an incredibly ambitious game, and that ambition will continue to be seen long after it's been patched to something more presentable. Night City is already an interesting and captivating location, and it's almost a shame when it has to serve as a vessel for disposable energetic action. Dialling the spectacle down a notch could have led to more focus and polish, and a more thoughtful experience… and to be fair Cyberpunk does offer moments of reflection in its narrative. A character may share their thoughts with the player but leave enough wiggle room for that player to reach their own point of view – in contrast, there isn't much room for contemplation during a gunfight. Even so, the game should be commended for attempting to meet such monumental expectations; before the Keanu moment on stage, this game was just some curious RPG from those Witcher guys that people hadn't heard from for a while. It quickly became one of the most anticipated future releases, and yet we probably still won't know if it was worth all of the hype until several more patches and updates and inevitable re-releases. Modern videogames, eh?

 

And now, the complete selection of inspirational quotes from people who voted for it:

 

Opinionated Ham Scarecrow:

Quote

I've enjoyed this enough for it to make the list, but it's rough man. If it had a few more rounds of polish it'd honestly be pushing top spot as I really do love the game, but man, rough. Rough rough rough. It got beat by two Ubi games lol.

 

[Qazimod]

I had to go through a few rewrites of my own text when I read them back and thought they were a bit too sassy. Not all of us have played everything on this list so we kind of have to go by general feel... but if it's any consolation, the above is an improvement over the first drafts I had.  

[Isaac]

Genuinely think Cyberpunk might be the game of 2021 for more people once they actually fix the major issies and push the next gen patches out this year.

[Alex W.]

Yeah, shame that by rushing it out for the 2020 holidays they basically excluded it from possibly appearing in anyone’s 2021 awards. Except maybe it’ll get some “most improved”.

[ZOK]

2 hours ago, Isaac said:

Genuinely think Cyberpunk might be the game of 2021 for more people once they actually fix the major issies and push the next gen patches out this year.

Easily. It’s Game of 2020 too, I can only assume people who vote in these things haven’t played it.

 

Although the only other games I played from 2020 were Hades and A Short Hike, so there may be others that beat it I suppose.

[BadgerFarmer]

Yeah, maybe.

 

Anyway, it probably will be eligible for 2021 awards in various places because a lot of them have a cut off point around the beginning of December. Whether it improves enough is another matter - there's a ton to do.

[ZOK]

Is there? It’s mostly niggles that I’ve experienced, nothing game breaking - although this is on Stadia so it’s decent, I imagine I might feel differently if I’d played it on XBox One / PS4.

 

But considering the breadth and scope of what they have achieved, which is peerless in my view, it doesn’t seem like they have that much to fix to me.

[Mr. Gerbik]

Cyberpunk will release on Series X and PS5 in 2021 and is therefore eligible in the 2021 Rllmuk GotY awards.

[Isaac]

51 minutes ago, ZOK said:

Easily. It’s Game of 2020 too, I can only assume people who vote in these things haven’t played it.

 

Although the only other games I played from 2020 were Hades and A Short Hike, so there may be others that beat it I suppose.

 

Yup, it was by far my game of the year, and I played quite a lot in 2020.

 

Although I loved the Witcher 3, and love Cyberpunk as a setting.

 

Playing it on PC with a bit of grunt definitely helped too.

[ZOK]

I’ve put 90 hours I to it so far, and I can’t remember playing a game as compelling as this - everything is just so nicely done.

 

In many ways I put it up right there with Far Cry 2 - and there really is no higher praise.

[smac]

Playing it on base PS4 was hugely enjoyable. Better after the patch, but fun>jank before it, too.

 

PS4 post-patch managed some stunning scenes - if they do the PS5 justice, it's going to be hard to beat.

[Wiper]

1 hour ago, ZOK said:

Easily. It’s Game of 2020 too, I can only assume people who vote in these things haven’t played it.

 

Although the only other games I played from 2020 were Hades and A Short Hike, so there may be others that beat it I suppose.

 

I mean, admittedly, if I had only played those three games this year, Cyberpunk would probably have squeaked in at number three.

[ZOK]

Don’t get me started!

[Wiper]

A heads up that this is the second of five games in a row I've accidentally ended up being the reviewer for, so you're only getting one update a day for a bit, you reprobates.

 

9. Demon's Souls

 

 

TLDR: if you liked Demon’s Souls (2009), then you’ll love Demon’s Souls (2020)! If you didn’t like Demon’s Souls (2009)? Well, it’s a bit more complicated.

 

Long version:

 

Demon’s Souls was one of three games I bought a PS3 for, way back in the annals of history. Though it didn’t live down to the entirely vacuous Uncharted 2, it did leave me disappointed. I just never clicked with it and, after spending maybe a ten hour with the game, gave up on it, leaving the areas beyond its hub barely charted, its story untouched. I vowed not to make the same mistake again.

 

And so, naturally enough, in the 2020th year of the common era Demon’s Souls was one of two games I bought a PS5 for.

 

The thing with Demon’s Souls (2009) was that I found myself with very little urge to press on; I struggled with its murky (read: piss-hued) visuals, and just never felt compelled by the game to keep going: I had no interest in seeing what came next, so why would I struggle? Aesthetic quality might not be enough to compel me alone (I refer the honourable reader once more to Uncharted 2), but if I don’t click with its looks, then any game faces an uphill battle to keep my attention.

 

Demon’s Souls (2020) bypasses this issue entirely. Now, putting myself in the boots of a fan of the original, I’m not sure I’d entirely approve of the liberties Bluepoint took with the game’s looks; things like moving away from medieval to gothic architecture; the ‘grossing up’ of certain character models with gore when Miyazaki has been quite explicit in his rejection of such approaches (“grotesque or splatter type designs will not get past me”); and, yes, the change in base colour filter seem pretty significant aesthetic changes, and ones I imagine I’d be less sanguine about were the original a game whose looks I loved.

 

But, for someone who struggled with the original’s presentation, they make all the difference. No longer the ennui-triggering colour scheme! No more the sense of wading through treacle! At 60fps, with sumptuous lighting, crystal clear visuals and a glorious soundscape (which even puts the DualSense speaker to good use), the game is a pleasure for the senses. Combine that with near-instant reloading, and the die-learn-repeat cycle which underpins the game becomes all the more engaging.

 

It also helps that, going in with some prior experience, I had a slightly better idea of how to build a character in a way to not spend the early game playing in a virtual hard[er] mode. The opacity of Dark Souls’ systems, along with its level grinding risk-reward, can make it particularly unwelcoming to the naïve newcomer, so returning with a little knowledge made for a significant bump in my enjoyment.

 

And that's an important advantage the remake possesses: naïve newcomers are few and far between. Those who come to it know what to expect; they’re also, if they own a PS5, rather less likely than I was, way back when, to have to play the game offline, and so benefit from the game’s famed system of player communication and cooperation, giving a little more notice on the less foreseeable traps the game likes to throw your way and the opportunity to call for aid if needed.

 

With all of these changes, to both design and in context, Demon’s Souls is in the best position it’s ever been to reach its audience. And Bluepoint deliver on every front. While the aesthetic changes may subjective, the increased responsiveness of the game, the slightly more generous approach to shortcuts in certain stages, the improved visual and audio fidelity – all work together to make this the most comfortable Souls game to play, bar none. All of which has been enough for it to establish itself as my firm favourite of its series – even outshining Bloodborne and Sekiro which, on the face of it, are far more My Thing (being as they are fast-paced and largely grind-free, respectively).

 

Honestly, it’s the first game in the series I would describe as being a pleasure to play. Deaths always feel like my fault,* the beautifully broken world intrigues me, the combat is blood-pumping despite – or perhaps thanks to - being methodical. In short, the changes mean I can finally enjoy all of the qualities that those who love the series have seen since the beginning. For me it’s been a little bit revelatory, and I can only consider its placing in the top 10, despite 'only' being a remake, despite only being available to those lucky enough to own a PS5, to be well-deserved.

 

Obvious caveats: I don’t think this remake will convince anyone for whom the core design is of no interest. If you don’t want to play a game where you will die, where you have to learn your enemies and level layouts, where risk-reward is the name of the game, then the improved visuals, slight tweaks to level design and snappier controls aren’t going to convert you. Basically, if you’ve played Hollow Knight and didn’t enjoy even that, then don’t expect the Demon’s Souls remaster to convert you.

 

But if you’ve played the original (and/or later Souls/Souls-adjacent games), enjoyed the concept, but didn’t quite click with it? Well, maybe this will be enough. It was for me.

 

(I probably wouldn’t recommend buying a PS5 on the off-chance, mind, unless you too are desperate to own a console whose controller looks quite a lot like the space ship from a classic Saturn shmup)

 

 

*except when a mine clips through the floor to kill me, that can sod right off

 

Benny:

Quote

As a massive Souls fan who couldn't buy a PS5 right now even if they wanted one, all I can say is I hope you're all pleased with yourselves playing an expensive, obviously inferior and disrespectful of the original art remake. No, I'm not bitter. How dare you.

 

Hewson:

Quote

I’m not great at Soulsbornes but I couldn’t resist this and I’m glad I didn’t. The speed of loading and 60fps transformed it from an exercise in superfrustration into something I could genuinely learn and improve at. And while visuals aren’t everything, my god there’s something to be said for them when they go so far in evoking environments and atmosphere like this.

 

Vemsie:

Quote

In terms of atmosphere and level design, only Bloodborne tops it. Bluepoints technical chops deliver the best-looking game of 2020 and perhaps the best-sounding as well. Umbasa.

 

[Thor]

@Benny 

[Wiper]

1 hour ago, ZOK said:

Don’t get me started!

 

To be fair, that wasn't intended to be quite as dismissive as it sounded - I thought Hades and A Short Hike were both fantastic, and they barely avoided my top 5.

[Marlew]

5 hours ago, ZOK said:

Easily. It’s Game of 2020 too, I can only assume people who vote in these things haven’t played it.

 

Although the only other games I played from 2020 were Hades and A Short Hike, so there may be others that beat it I suppose.

 

I think you might have forgotten about the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo Switch which did all right in 2020. 

[ZOK]

I played both Hades and Short Hike on Switch, thank goodness.

[joffocakes]

I didn't get around to A Short Hike until last week and I absolutely adored it. I expected a quaint wee wander, and it absolutely delivered that, but I didn't expect it to absolutely nail the feel of gliding as well as it does. It's perfect.

[deerokus]

Most of us did play Cyberpunk, it's just not that great in a strong year!

[ZOK]

5 hours ago, deerokus said:

Most of us did play Cyberpunk, it's just not that great in a strong year!

Mate, it is Game of the Year. If you don’t agree you’re wrong, and I don’t need to have played any of the others to know this for a fact.

[Marlew]

It wouldn't be game of the year in literally any year since the existence of videogames.

[ZOK]

23 minutes ago, Marlew said:

It wouldn't be game of the year in literally any year since the existence of videogames.

 

Why are you so wrong?

[ImmaculateClump]

That's the thing with these lists. None of us have played ALL the games that came out so we're just posting our favourites of the small selection of games we did play.

 

If you're a basic bitch and you just play whatever AAA gruel you're served up, then aye, I can well believe that shitforcunts 2077 is the best game you've played all year.

 

As with any community voted "best of the year" list, unless it's a community of maverick free thinking studs, you may as well just look at a list of the years best selling games.

 

If everyone thought like me, played only the games that I liked and voted accordingly, there wouldn't be any of this arguing.

 

Ugh, I done a gamerbants, I feel dirty.

[ZOK]

3 minutes ago, ImmaculateClump said:

That's the thing with these lists. None of us have played ALL the games that came out so we're just posting our favourites of the small selection of games we did play.

 

If you're a basic bitch and you just play whatever AAA gruel you're served up, then aye, I can well believe that shitforcunts 2077 is the best game you've played all year.

 

As with any community voted "best of the year" list, unless it's a community of maverick free thinking studs, you may as well just look at a list of the years best selling games.

 

If everyone thought like me, played only the games that I liked and voted accordingly, there wouldn't be any of this arguing.

 

Ugh, I done a gamerbants, I feel dirty.

Yeah, except we’re talking about me, the forum’s recognised tastemaker, who doesn’t play any ‘AAA gruel’.

 

I am however playing Cyberpunk 2077, GOTY 2020 (& 2021, awarded in advance).

[Alex W.]

I don’t think I’ve seen someone called a basic bitch on Rllmuk before.  

[ZOK]

Oh I did play Chicken Police this year too, so I played 4 games from 2020 (if that is from 2020).

[Wiper]

8. Ghost of Tsushima

 

 

Ghost of Tsushima is a game which can be entirely enjoyable, so long as you’re able to switch your mind off and chill.

 

It features perfectly fun combat; highly lethal (in both directions), but never frustrating – not least as the controls are responsive, battles are quick, approaches you can take varied and the punishment for dying is slight. Oh, and the stand-offs are fun.

 

It’s a game of great technical prowess, offering visually splendid environments to traipse through (particularly on PS5), used continually to evoke the response ‘cool! Japan!’ from the player. It has a good photo mode, too.

 

It’s a game whose story has been written by people who have spent an awful lot of time thinking about how cool and honourable samurai are, but also about how cool and dishonourable ninja are, and want you to enjoy being cool and honourable and dishonourable too, like the coolest character in the coolest action movie/anime/manga ever.

 

Which, you know, can be cool.

 

And all that is, well, kind of endearing, actually? It's the kind of game you can just shut down and relax to, a weirdly restful game of murder and meander. It’s refreshing, and if the studio had the confidence to present the game as it is, as an unabashed computer game version of the most hackneyed shonen manga you can think of, I’d have a good amount of respect for it.

 

But they didn’t. Instead, they've taken the opposite approach, and tried to present the game as something it isn’t: they decided to be really, actually, honest to god pretentious. Not ‘pretentious’ in the way half of the world seems to use it; i.e. “this thing is weird and I don’t understand it, so it’s pretentious”, but in the actual, “pretending to have depths that aren’t there” sense of the word.

 

And so we had a big hoo-hah made about the game getting the blessing of Akira Kurosawa’s estate to put his name to the game, and thus adding in an optional ‘Kurosawa’ mode. Kurosawa mode, of course, does its best to emulate Kurosawa’s famous visual style; his extreme use of telephoto lenses, his use of jump cuts, his careful composition of shots and balancing of light and shade to get the most out of his black and white shots – oh, no, of course it doesn’t do any of that. It puts a black and white filter over the game and gives it a bit of crackle. And the game features samurai. Kurosawa!

 

It plays its story entirely straight. Not ‘straight’ in the way, say, Fist of the North Star plays its absurdity with over the top sincerity; no, it plays it sombre and moody. You’re meant to Feel Things for this character, for his Deep Struggle With His Sense Of Honour. You know, that stereotype that gets thrown around in orientalist literature all the fucking time. And which, incidentally, happens to have a precisely 0% relevance to the period of history the game is set in, where a samurai being ‘a bit sneaky’ certainly wouldn’t have been seen as in any way invalid; it's like having a game fixated on struggling with chivalry and setting it during the Norman invasion.

 

Then there’s all the little things – the small anachronisms and inaccuracies that could be forgiven in a bombastic adventure, but feel off when the game treats everything seriously. Like the fact that Tsushima is presented as a stand-in for all of Japan, given a climate and visual range to make it recognisably ‘Japanese’ to Western audiences, rather than trying to be at all true to the actual geography of the island. The bit where you run around with a katana despite, again, that not really making sense for the period (if anything a naginata would be more appropriate). The whole ‘civilised Japanese, uncivilised Mongols’ dichotomy being presented predictably uncritically.* The bits where you compose [bad] haiku in a game set four centuries before their time. Basically, every decision in the game is made with an eye to making the player think ‘ooh, I recognise that!’, and nothing more.

 

At best it would be a bit lazy, but if the game proudly leant into these decisions, played out brashly, I could go along with it - though I might still have a bit of a sour taste in my mouth that it was an American studio weaving this mish-mash of foreign stereotypes together. However, when it’s presented with a sombre tone, asking you to treat its story and characters seriously; when it’s merrily taking the trappings of actual Japanese history but putting in none of the work to reflect its reality; when it’s proudly advertising its links to Akira Kurosawa, its reverence to Japanese culture but doing nothing to showcase an appreciation for it beyond surface level; at that point, I find it a far more distasteful affair.

 

Again, if I could switch off my awareness of all that, and simply enjoy the dumb action game with pretty landscapes as a dumb action game with pretty landscapes, I would. It’s perfect switch-off-and-play fodder; a nice traipse through the countryside punctuated by bursts of extreme violence (and the occasional pursuit of a friendly fox). But, fuck, that framing just ruins the game for me. If it doesn’t for you, then, well, I guess it’s the 8th best game of the year.

 

 

 

* I mean, I suppose I should be thankful that at least it’s not 300 levels of awful, and that its contrasting of Japanese and Mongol culture doesn’t quite hit the depths of the Brave, White, Freedom-Loving Spartans vs. the Monstrous, Dark, Gluttonous Persians and their Yucky Cripple Ally, but I’m not quite at the point in my life where I consider not being as a shithead a creator as Frank Miller to be worthy of praise.

 

 

 

As far as I can tell, nobody left any comments for this one.

[Mr. Gerbik]

5 minutes ago, Wiper said:

And so we had a big hoo-hah made about the game getting the blessing of Akira Kurosawa’s estate to put his name to the game, and thus adds in an optional ‘Kurosawa’ mode. Kurosawa mode, of course, does its best to emulate Kurosawa’s famous visual style; his extreme use of telephoto lenses, his use of jump cuts, his careful composition of shots and balancing of light and shade to get the most out of his black and white shots – oh, no, of course it doesn’t do any of that. It puts a black and white filter over the game and gives it a bit of crackle. And the game features samurai. Kurosawa!

The entire piece is excellent but this part had me laughing out loud

 

Kurosawa!