Ghostrunner 2 Preview: Bringing a Bike to a Gun Fight

Introduce yourself

First-person parkour is an underrated subgenre. It features the likes of EA’s Mirror’s Edge series, Respawn Entertainment’s Titanfall franchise, and One More Level’s Ghostrunner – one of my fav orite games. In the summer of 2022 I played it for the first time two years after its release in 2020. At that point, I was jobless and very depressed. The game was a good experience. It made me feel like I lived in a capitalist world, where business executives were making cruel decisions for the human race living in Dharma Tower. But instead of suffering, Ghostrunner or myself, went straight up to the top with a Katana and brought it down. Ghostrunner, now free of the A.I. powered Cybervoid and under Jack’s new name, is able to liberate humanity from its oppression.

Ghostrunner 2’s upcoming sequel, Ghostrunner 2: The Next Generation is coming to current-gen consoles this month and will also be available on PC. This demo didn’t consist of much – short tutorial sequences, a few enemy-filled arenas to parkour destructively through, and a finale I’ll get to shortly. The demo I received was exactly what I wanted: confirmation that Ghostrunner 2 builds on the world One More Level built three years prior.

Jack’s a good man

Jack’s a good man

Ghostrunner 2 feels just right. It’s fast as hell, jaw-droppingly gorgeous with neon-lit rain turning the glass of skyscrapers into cyberpunk watercolor canvases, and incredibly tactile. Ghostrunner 2’s parkour, however, is at the heart of its experience. It feels just as good as Ghostrunner, perhaps even better, but features some tweaks studio head and CEO Szymon Bryła describes as an evolution of the series’ formula, not a revolution.

“You will see that [evolution] on each layer, in gameplay, visuals, the combat system, and many others,” he tells me.

Gameplay director Radosław Ratus znik says the team knew it couldn’t swap out Jack’s parkour skill set with something new, instead opting to improve on what’s already there. “The player playing the first game feels at home playing the second Ghostrunner, but for the newcomers and the people who like to experiment with their playstyle, there are new ways to play,” Ratusznik says.

New blocking mechanic is an immediate and major change. You can deflect bullets in the first Ghostrunner, but only after unlocking the specific ability, and even then, you have to time the ability’s use with the bullet’s contact to do so. Ghostrunner 2 offers bullet-blocking by simply holding down the button. It features a gauge, which prevents you from blocking forever, but it’s enough time to get a feel for what’s happening in the otherwise lightning-fast combat playing out around you.

Ratusznik believes blocking is a great way to help players improve their performance in the initial game. But it’s optional – veteran Ghostrunner players can stick to the in-and-out-style of combat required in the first game. It’s easy for me to incorporate the block into my game. I cover Jack against machine gun fire and then look out enemies who I can kill with some shuriken throws or a dash, jump, slash. It’s the fact that even in combat puzzles, blocking can be done.

Cyberpu-zzle

Cyberpu-zzle

“It’s more like, ‘Try different options,’” Ratusznik tells me. “You now have access to abilities that you can use quite often, not like in the first game where there were only ultimate abilities that you could use not so often. [So] now you have a chance to somehow connect all these mechanics together and mix them how you want, and it’s really satisfying when you are successful with that. And of course, you are improving after each restart; you are becoming better and better, and then you reach the sweet spot where you know everything about the game and can use all your tools that we provide and feel really powerful.”

In one of the puzzles, I move a vent with a push-like force to shoot Jack in the air. The wall opening was close by. After being launched into the air I quickly grab a shuriken and use it to strike a switch in the wall opening. It’s a familiar puzzle in the world of Ghostrunner, and I smile at its return. The game is a first-person action game, but it’s as much a puzzle game, too. Beyond puzzles like the one I describe above, every combat scenario is a puzzle because of the game’s difficulty.

Jack dies if hit by any weapon, whether it’s a bullet, a blade, or a shockwave. Every attack, movement, dash, slow-mo in-air directional shift, and grapple matters because it’s one piece of the equation that takes you from X to Y and finally, to Z. The same excellent combat system returns, with arenas that are even larger than in the previous game.

“At first, when developing [Ghostrunner 1], that was new to us,” Ratusznik tells me, remarking on the team discovering that its first-person action parkour game also plays like a puzzle game. “When developing a top-down game [referring to One More Level’s 2019 game, God’s Trigger]You can plan out your actions before you enter a room. Like in Hotline Miami, you can check what’s in front of you but here, when entering a room, everything is new for you. It’s up to you to check the area for any enemies, and their location. When entering new areas, it’s sure you will die.”

But the beauty of death in Ghostrunner is now you know what’s coming and how it’s coming. You try and die again. But this time you change your strategy. “What works? What doesn’t? If I attack this enemy first, I can throw a shuriken to that explosive barrel to take those two out before hopping onto the zipline above to take out the tankier guy up here.” These are the kinds of thoughts going through my head multiple times in this short preview, and they’re exactly what One More Level wants me to think while playing, Ratusznik and Bryła say, calling Ghostrunner 2 “a super-fast puzzle game.”

Wheels – A new set of wheels

Wheels – A new set of wheels

The team behind this sequel knew that it had to be more challenging in both combat and puzzles. And while it tackled this by evolving what’s already there, it added something brand new: a motorbike. After just 10 minutes sitting in the driver’s seat, I already love it.

“We decided that Ghostrunner was a really fast-paced game and asked ourselves, ‘Alright, what if we want to have something even faster than Jack?’,” Bryła says. “We decided, ‘What if we have a motorcycle in the game and use it as a tool to go from one point to another and use it in the outside world?’”

Almost immediately after using the motorbike, it’s clear it’s One More Level’s best addition. As I barrel down a futuristic highway, using my controller’s right trigger to throttle it forward, I must think quickly. There’s an in-world timer I have to stay ahead of to remain alive. It’s time to jump, but the first thing I need to do is boost up the ramp. It was impossible for me to get around these barriers until I realized this motorbike would ride along the circular walls. The motorbike feels like an extension of Jack, and I look forward to seeing how else it’s used. One More Level teases sequences where Jack will have to jump off the motorbike mid-air to slash a switch that opens a pathway ahead and land back on the motorbike to advance, and I can’t wait to see this and the inevitable AkiraThese moments will be enhanced by the accompanying -slide.

“It was more like, ‘Okay, let’s not treat this too seriously, let’s prototype it first,’” Ratusznik tells me. “We knew we wanted to move away from the Tower for a lot of the game [and]The Tower has levels that are not inside the Tower. [Jack] wouldn’t travel too far [on foot] so we gave him something to travel there faster.”

He said they immediately knew that Jack would need a motorcycle, and the game had a very flashy moment to reveal it. Bryła says the motorbike is already a big part of cyberpunk media and culture, so adding it was a no-brainer. The motorbike segments were also easy to disregard physics, Bryla says, adding that Mario Kart arcade racing video games are the inspiration.

“It’s always about connecting to Ghostrunner 2’s gameplay,” Bryła says. “We are wall-running; let’s add wall-riding to the bike, but let’s not put too much attention into physics and it being realistic. We took a pure arcade-ish approach because you need to have fun, not simulate a real motorbike, and I think it’s a good addition. It makes for a really fresh approach to Ghostrunner.”

Are you ready for more?

Are you ready for more?

The bike is the breakout star of my short preview with Ghostrunner 2, but it’s also the most prominent addition; I’m not surprised it’s the major takeaway from my time with the sequel. What I want out of Ghostrunner 2 is more – more of Jack’s story, more characters to interact with, more of this dour but beautiful cyberpunk world to explore, and thousands more enemies to parkour around and slash through. So far, Ghostrunner 2 is delivering on that, and new additions like the bike, blocking, a new in-world hub to talk to characters in-person (not as floating heads like in the first game), and more have me yearning for the game’s release this month when I can go beyond just a meager 30 minutes of play. Jack is back and I couldn’t be more excited.

Original publication of the article in Issue 360 Game Informer.