Ghostwire: Tokyo is an action-adventure game occur a Tokyo void of people and filled with spirits that want to either help you, kill you, or avoid you. Even though Ghostwire: Tokyo is more action than horror, it’s easy to see the way the game’s roots help make the town feel more alive (or even more dead) through the use of horror. Ghostwire: Tokyo may be the third AAA game from Tango Gameworks following their popular third-person survival-horror games The Evil Within 1 and a pair of. Plus, because of so many brilliant minds who accustomed to focus on Capcom’s Resident Evil series now employed by Tango Gameworks, it’s clear that Ghostwire: Tokyo, while a departure from survival-horror, still plays to its horrific strengths while mixing in a brand-new blend of action, adventure, and mystery. Within this review, you will find light spoilers, particularly in the “Until We Meet Again (The Story)” section, so proceed with caution.
Until We Meet Again (The Story)
There are several messages told throughout Ghostwire: Tokyo’s story, but the main themes center on the power of friendship and gratitude for a lifetime. The sport starts very quickly being an event called the Vanishing sweeps a blanket of deathly fog across Tokyo. Upon touching the fog, every person’s physical body disappears his or her spirit is released to become stuck between your physical and the spiritual world or to simply spread. This doesn’t happen to Akito, the primary protagonist, because a wandering spirit named KK, who still has a piece to complete, possesses Akito’s body giving him spiritual abilities and defense against the fog. The 2 quickly understand that they need each other’s help to put a stop to Hannya, the mysterious masked antagonist.
As you make the right path through the city streets of Tokyo, KK and Akito grow more and more attached (literally) by clearing torii gates, fighting Visitors, and unraveling the intentions of Hannya. Towards the end from the game, the friendship forged forwards and backwards is a powerful bond that lasts beyond death.
And talking about death, Ghostwire: Tokyo’s second main theme is gratitude for a lifetime. The ideology of Ghostwire: Tokyo is that all human beings have a spirit and that there is a life after death. With that established, you will find deaths in the story which are a little over-dramatized considering the characters know for certain that they will see each other again within the next life. Having said that, the main takeaway would be to enjoy each waking moment that life has to offer and enjoy life to the fullest. The general plot of Hannya is basically to kill everyone so the inhabitants of the physical world and also the inhabitants from the spirit world can be together again. While wanting to be reunited together with your lost family members isn’t s a poor desire, in the end, whether you believe inside a life after death or not, the story leaves you using the message that life is worth living, enjoying, and fighting for.
Tokyo’s Beautiful Tonight (The climate and Open World)
Ghostwire: Tokyo has got the most beautiful and enticing urban open-world I’ve played in recent memory. The entirety of Tokyo feels quite large because of the game’s use of different environments like tight city streets, big train stations, small old-fashioned villages, large parks, and torii gate squares. However, the open-world feels incredibly personal thanks to the compressed and highly detailed streets and alleyways keeping you in our instead of how other open-world games guide you to be constantly considering the next destination both mentally and physically. Each city block’s rainy streets are extremely captivating, offer visual variety, and therefore are filled with secrets behind every corner, coaxing the player to discover more and more.
The atmosphere of Tokyo following the Vanishing is really a chilling freeze-frame of humanity suddenly gone, captured through the abandoned cars lining the streets, the deserted strollers on the sidewalks, and also the clothes of individuals littered everywhere, each painting an image of who was here before. In this way, Ghostwire: Tokyo hits the nail on the head with capturing an eerie charm like the first Bioshock while creating moments of outdoors through Tokyo’s scenic marriage of nature and cityscape.
Speaking of eerie charm, since Tokyo is overrun with Visitors and spirits, you’ll encounter greater than a couple of visual illusions along your adventure. Ghostwire: Tokyo has illusionary moments, both scripted and unscripted, which will take your breath away. For instance, as you dive in to the mind of Rinko, a friend you meet in the center of the sport, you are taken via a wild ride of colorful transforming rooms, umbrellas falling from the sky that form bridges, exploding and expanding isometric shapes, and tons more. On view world, supernatural events may happen to you that feel extremely situational, like wandering down an alley and seeing the silhouettes of ghost kids with no heads play in circles for a couple of seconds or when all of the city lights flicker a couple of times and go out completely like a ghostly horde of Visitors slowly creep toward you. In summary, Ghostwire: Tokyo is a visual and atmospheric treat.
Ninja Wizard (The Ethereal Weaving)
Another element that makes every screen capture of Ghostwire: Tokyo are designed so is the Ethereal Weaving and the combat generally. As mentioned previously, the faceless (and often headless) enemies in Ghostwire: Tokyo are called Visitors. There are a wide variety of Visitors each with their own moveset. The combat seems to feel fresh and fast-paced by mixing in the types of Visitors you fight in a group but could feel repetitive before long due to how surprisingly shallow the Ethereal Weaving is.
Ethereal Weaving is Ghostwire: Tokyo’s reputation for the spirit powers KK grants you. And don’t misunderstand me, they appear amazing and feel even better. Especially with the PlayStation 5 DualSense controller, the haptic feedback rumbles while you cast a fire grenade or hurl wave after wave water slices at your enemy. The adaptive triggers permit you to have the effort of whipping the soul out of visitors and charging your wind attack. All that is great, but the actual depth of the items the Ethereal Weaving offers leaves a little to become desired. While the different Ethereal Weaving powers are cool, it would’ve been neat if some enemies were weak to a specific element and powerful against another requiring you to plan your attack a bit more carefully. Having said that, the Ethereal Weaving looks and feels great and functions well in combat.
Moving around during combat as well as in the open world is a more thing that doesn’t feel quite right. The movement in Ghostwire: Tokyo feels a tad bit too slow and, particularly in combat, would benefit greatly from a dash mechanic. It might be since it is coming hot from the heels of Dying Light 2, a first-person parkour game, or because of popular games that reward mobility above all else like Apex Legends, but due to how fast-paced the combat of Ghostwire: Tokyo already is and how slow the smoothness moves, using a a bit more flexibility when it comes to movement is needed tremendously.
Lots and a lot of Yokai (Along side it Quests)
Lastly, something that makes Ghostwire: Tokyo a step over the levels of competition are the yokai. Yokai are supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore and, believe me, there are a lot of these within this game. This really is absolutely a good thing. Rarely have yokai received their proper spotlight in video games considering how fertile the grounds are for storytelling. Ghostwire: Tokyo showcases many popular yokai through its side quests.
The side quests in Ghostwire: Tokyo are always interesting, never the exact same thing, and very palatable. I often found myself doing such things as speaking with an old woman spirit a good angry landlord spirit in their house, kicking the spirit away from home, and allowing that old woman spirit to rest all within a couple of minutes between going to the next area in the primary quest. Not every side quest features a yokai, however the ones that do open the possibility to find that type of yokai in a number of other locations in the open-world later. The yokai provide you with Magatama that is crucial to leveling your skills. Some of the yokai featured are Kappa, Rokurokubi, Ittan-Momen, and Zashiki-Warashi. The side quests in Ghostwire: Tokyo are not only fun and various; additionally they teach about famous Japanese folklore which is really cool.
The Verdict
Ghostwire: Tokyo succeeds at as being a very refreshing, very exciting take on the first-person action-adventure genre by introducing an incredible imagining of haunted Tokyo and incorporating engaging action with magic rather than the all-too-familiar current trends of bullets and bazookas. While it still has room to grow, Ghostwire: Tokyo is really a one-of-a-kind experience because of its breathtaking atmosphere, gorgeous open world, impressive stories, and exhilarating combat.
Ghostwire: Tokyo is available March 25, 2022, on PlayStation 5 and PC.
