Bit of a shorter newsletter this week because I'm spending two valuable writing days out of the flat at the WASD Expo down at Tobacco Dock, where I will be seeing friends I haven't seen in literally years and hoping no one punches me in the mouth because I said mean things about Final Fantasy X on Twitter once.

Elden Ring: The Final Verdict.

Okay. Let's get this whole thing written down so we can draw a line under it and move on. The temptation to write about this game every single week since its release has been extremely strong, so I'm going to dump everything I have to say about it right here and that's that. I've also kept this pretty much spoiler-free too, focusing on the general stuff rather than discussing specific areas/items/plot points, so even if you haven't finished it yet, you can see what I've got to say.

Elden Ring is one of the best videogames I have ever played.

It's almost impossible to fathom how this game was made by human beings. It feels like something that has been in development for decades, such is its size and scope. The 'Soulsborne' games all have an elite level of design and world-building and I don't think it is unfair to think that this is something that would be diluted by an open-world structure but far, far from it. Stand almost anywhere in the game and look in any direction and you'll be treated to the sort of spectacle that would usually be a one-off final level 'epic' moment. In Elden Ring, the sheer amount of artistry, creativity that has gone into crafting this world just feels so far beyond any other open-world game and that's before you've even dipped a toe into the lore and backstory as to why these things are/look the way they are. It is a staggering achievement.

The game is an amalgamation of everything From Software have been working on since Demon's Souls back in 2009. The atmosphere of Demon's Souls. The connected, believable world of Dark Souls. The deep, varied builds available in Dark Souls 2. The incredible, mind-melting lore from Bloodborne. The stunning, inventive bosses of Dark Souls 3 and the core of combat, all about learning an enemies every move and reacting appropriately, shown in its purest form in Sekiro, all gets mixed together here. No wonder they had to go open-world - they needed something this big just to hold all the ideas! It feels very much like a logical end point of everything they've ever done.

It's actually that aspect from the black sheep of the From Software recent library - Dark Souls 2, a game I feel is criminally underappreciated - that is the key ingredient to the Elden Ring formula. This is a challenging game and one that is more than happy for you to get lost in a way that is far more intimidating than wandering into the graveyard at the start of Dark Souls. Even following the critical path can present you with a boss you're woefully unequipped to deal with if you're not taking your time to explore fully and, well, the bosses in general are among some of the hardest From Software have made to date.

However, it is a game that is so confident in its quality that it practically encourages you to break it. Sorceries and miracles are extremely overpowered, lore-specific NPC summons can be found for most major bosses and you can heavily customise any standard weapon, from status effects to special abilities and some of this stuff can essentially render any bosses difficulty completely negligible. More so than any other game in the series, Dark Souls 2 wants you to play around with your build and see what daft concoction you can come up with and that DNA (likely down to DS2's director, Yui Tanimura, being co-director on this project) is present in Elden Ring and acts as a means of how you shape the notorious From Software difficulty. This is where Elden Ring's genius lies.

You see, unlike Sekiro, where there's no levelling or summoning or high powered magic spells to get you past a particularly challenging boss fight, in Elden Ring you can dictate the difficulty by what tools you are using. You absolutely can do a no-summon, melee only hardcore run but you can also nuke a boss from orbit with some daft spells, gang up on them with summoned help or create a sword that knocks a third of their health off per hit. There's so many ways that, through stuff you can EARN (and crucially, aren't just given) you can shift the balance of power in your favour.

And, if it is all too much, you can just fuck it off and go elsewhere! The world is so wonderfully crafted and so full of secret caves and tombs that if you're struggling with one particular boss or area you can just go elsewhere and it never feels like a waste of your time or any lesser an experience. Heading off for the horizon in search of adventure is almost always going to end up with you discovering something that can net you some runes to level up with, a cool weapon or spell or something else to make your life a little easier. Being able to tailor the difficulty via these in-game means without simply making the game mechanically easier ensures that the challenge that makes these games so special stays intact and makes any optional side content far more compelling and worth doing than your average open-world title.

I've recently been replaying Spider-Man on the PS5 and it doesn't even try to hide the fucking busywork from you. Within about two main missions it has you doing tedious hacking minigames and sticks a bunch of collectibles on the map for you to find. If these were truly optional, it'd be a simple case of filler content to flesh out a large play area but actual abilities are gated behind this stuff. Stuff that makes the game fun can only be experienced by engaging with a bunch of crap content. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was the game that showed that this wasn't necessary. Elden Ring is the only game that truly understands what made Nintendo's game so essential and fresh. Put simply: exploration is its own reward. You're never ticking off boxes or taking part in half-arsed mini missions of varying quality. There's little fat here, even in repeated bosses or similar tombs/caves. There's always a little twist, something to keep you guessing as to what you're going to find hidden away in the world.

This freedom in approach to the combat but also exploration and progression makes Elden Ring - despite its intimidating scale - the most approachable From Software game to day. If you have an issue, there's a way you can solve it. There's a means of making any situation easier for you in the game. For what it is worth, this stuff has almost always been present in some way throughout their Soulsborne output but the sheer amount and variety of it here makes it far easy to figure out what is needed and to actually engage with it. It's not just something that new players benefit from either, as this huge amount of flexibility affords seasoned Soulsborne veterans loads of toys to play with and new ways to challenge themselves if the game itself isn't doing that for them. In fact, my only real issue with the game lies with the fact that there is, right now, one extremely good setup you can get that works with both PVP and PVE situations which discourages most players to try out a lot of the really cool stuff available to them. I expect a patch to adjust this in the coming weeks, however.

All the other stuff - the lore, the design of each area, the structure of the world and ensuring that it is all consistent, character and enemy design is also head and shoulders above most other studios. In fact, the only thing I can think of that really sits above the stuff on show here is in From's own Bloodborne, which still remains as their highest watermark. Only bloody just, though.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that From Software, creators of absolute classics have created yet another classic that I, the From Software game liker, has found to be absolutely incredible but Elden Ring has done something that none of their other titles has been able to do to date and has managed to become a legitimate crossover success. They're one of the big boys now and they've done without compromise. They make their games - their brilliant, beautiful, brutal videogames - and through word of mouth and constant critical acclaim, the mass market has come to them, rather than the other way. There's no company who has delivered their level of quality in the past decade.

Elden Ring is a 10. A top, all-timer of a videogame and one that shows that the standards should be raised when delivering these top marks. THIS is the top of the pile. THIS is the level you should expect from a 10/10.

Recommended: Ghostwire: Tokyo.

On the other side of the open-world spectrum is this, Ghostwire: Tokyo by Tango Gameworks. A game that sticks rigidly to the tired, old formula that has been around for near enough FIFTEEN YEARS now. There's not a single original bone in the structure of this one - find the thing you interact with to open up more of the map and complete all the little objectives as you go to win points to put into a skill tree - and yet, there's something about Ghostwire: Tokyo that keeps me coming back to it.

A bit like how Spider-Man manages to keep itself afloat by having some fun traversal and some cute fan service, Ghostwire: Tokyo is carried massively by its setting. Traversal is decent, combat is surprisingly deep and looks rad but the Tokyo presented in this game is this brilliant mix of authenticity and the absurd that is simply quite cool to exist in and that is what keeps me coming back to it.

Last week I commented on this article, which discusses the difference between viewing a culture through a cinematic lens or through lived experience. Despite all the daft ghosts and inter-dimensional madness that is going on in Ghostwire: Tokyo, there's something quite subdued, quite normal and unspectacular about the city. A focus on the everyday, juxtaposed with the surreal. A mixture of Tokyo's reputation as a cool, high-tech future city with Japan's rich historical folklore. It's utterly unique but also quite familiar. You get the feeling that this DEFINITELY was a place people were just living their lives before the events of the game started and ripped everyone out of it.

It's not doing anything new in regards to the structure and I've fully hated similar games but there's something quite charming and compelling about this representation of Tokyo. A piece of virtual tourism that is focused on the minutiae of everyday life in that city as opposed to hitting all the obvious tourist hotspots. Perhaps it is a side effect of the relentless Elden Ring sessions but this is offering a much more relaxed pace which is most welcome.

I should stress, this sounds like I'm saying Ghostwire: Tokyo is a shite game with a good setting - it's a decent little game! It has a big 'AA' vibe about it where everything just kind of works fairly well. There's no big surprises or revolutionary systems and a lot of the things it does do have been worn threadbare by years and years of games doing the same stuff but nothing about it is bad, just a bit by the numbers. All stuff, however, that is elevated a bit by the setting. The difference maker between a solid 7 and a decent 8 out of 10 - that sort of thing.

This is definitely a game that, with a slightly more unoriginal or uninteresting setting, would do nothing for me. However, the care and creativity that is on display in this vision of Tokyo has got me ticking off side missions, filling up skill trees and finding collectibles like its 2009 all over again.

OTHER STUFF WORTH LOOKING AT THIS WEEK IN ONE SENTENCE.

Densha De Go! - I'm hooked on the OG Densha once again, the addictive mix of Crazy Taxi and Curling, only with big Japanese trains.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - A game I know like the back of my hand, so I've been having a lot of fun with the SOTN Randomiser you can find online, allowing for unique playthroughs of this classic.

Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst - Join me on the Schthack server, where we can all have a grand old relaxing time playing one of the finest MMORPGs ever made.