Ghostwire: Tokyo
Ghostwire: Tokyo surprised us positively, but perhaps mainly because we had little faith in it after our preview. Walking around extinct Shibuya is fun and exciting, and the gameplay offers enough fun and variety to keep you entertained for the 12 to 15 hours you’ll be on it. It shouldn’t last much longer, because then the fights would be too repetitive. We haven’t had that effect yet and that’s nice, because then the focus remains on how entertaining it is to beat the Yokai and rip the cores out of their bodies. Technically Ghostwire: Tokyo falls short, although the overall level is okay. The game surprises here and there with beautiful ray tracing effects, but if you take a quick look at it, you will not immediately say that this is a very nice game. That judgment is what sticks with us the most. There are quite a few good things to discover in Mikami’s latest game, but the chances of Ghostwire: Tokyo joining its greatest classics are slim to none.
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When we shared our first experience with Ghostwire: Tokyo in early February, we were not positive about it. The game failed to impress. That was not surprising: publisher Bethesda Softworks and development studio Tango Gameworks showed us the game in a presentation where the quality of the stream was not optimal. In addition, we couldn’t play the game ourselves, which doesn’t help either. Because if you don’t have any gameplay to focus on, things like repeating animations start to stand out. Attention is focused on how empty Tokyo looks and how boring it actually seems. When you’re not playing yourself, you feel a lot less of the sinister atmosphere and tension that comes with Ghostwire: Tokyo. We are now almost two months further, the game is already in the shops and we have played it extensively ourselves. In fact, we finished the game almost in one go, which is remarkable for a game we expected so little from at the beginning of February.
While first-person action game Ghostwire: Tokyo isn’t a big, household name, the game doesn’t come without some expectations. The studio behind the game, Tango Gameworks, is the studio of Shinji Mikami. You may know that name from Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and The Evil Within. Many of Mikami’s games have their own ‘face’; they are special in several ways. The Evil Within 2, Mikami’s last game before Ghostwire: Tokyo, dates back to 2017, so it was about time for a new special game from the hand of this Japanese master.
Ghostwire: Tokyo revolves around the main character Akito, who as a resident of Tokyo one day has to deal with a disaster. A mysterious mist descends over the Shibuya district, killing all the inhabitants. That is, the bodies are detached from their souls and disappear, while a mysterious figure behind a Hannya mask, known as Hannya in the game for convenience, tries to harvest the souls and use them for his own purposes. . Akito is supposed to be one of the victims, but survives as ghost detective KK takes possession of his body. Initially, Akito is not supposed to know about this intruder, but soon realizes that KK’s presence could help him find out what happened in Shibuya and where his apparently kidnapped sister might be.
The presence of KK’s ghost not only gives Akito a wisecrack, bossy voice in his head, but also special gifts. He can dispel evil spirits with hand movements and attack enemies with a variety of elemental attacks, while also gaining KK’s bow and using his spectral vision, which allows him to spot clues in the environments and enemies through walls, among other things. can notice. KK is also initially not very happy with the body on which he rides, but gradually KK and Akito come closer to each other. The bond between KK and Akito is part of the story, which also revolves around freeing Shibuya, and tracking down Hannya and Akito’s sister, with some room at the end for moralistic messages about love and family. That didn’t impress us much, although it certainly doesn’t get in the way of the game.
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