GhostWire: Tokyo Review – Graveyard of Horror

GhostWire: Tokyo is a dead place, without any human life or contact. You will also find boring, repetitive combat and a dull story. Yet, it is a great game. I actually love it better than many other games. GhostWire has a unique feature that is the best part of GhostWire: it’s dead, cold map. 

The supernatural forces that cause everyone in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward to vanish early on the game are able to make them disappear. A mysterious man flashes on the many LED screens around Shibuya Scramble – the famously busy real-world intersection where the game also begins – spouting some nonsense about saving people’s souls and so on. That guy is stealing the souls of everybody around you. 

Akito is the character you play. He can be saved from death by being possessed with a spirit named KK. KK is in your body, which means that you also have elements powers. You wouldn’t know that. Now, terrifying monsters and ghosts roam Tokyo’s streets with no care whatsoever. To stop this maniac from terrorizing Tokyo, KK must have Akito’s corpse. Akito only wants to help his sister. You might be able do it both if you put aside your differences. 

It’s a bland story that never does anything unexpected and never reaches beyond just okay. Although I enjoyed Akito’s and KK’s banter, beyond that I didn’t find myself invested in their arcs. There are a small number of side characters throughout GhostWire – both friend and foe – but none get much screentime or development beyond whatever gameplay purpose they’re serving in the given moment, be that a boss fight, new objective, mechanic, so on, and so forth. 

The story, though, does not give any narrative justification as to why Shibuya has been abandoned (except for the spooky ghosts). And I think this is one of the more interesting parts of GhostWire; its open-world take on Shibuya is a fantastic recreation of architectural density – minus the people. They feel enormous, and not just tightly packed together. GhostWire is in the first person, so this becomes immediately evident. The game’s spatial and scale sense was fascinating to me. I enjoyed looking up at the architecture around my head. It captures Tokyo’s sprawling urban landscape. Crossing the map took time. I never felt bored, however, walking about like a tourist. 

GhostWire believes urban isolation is possible even though millions live in the same city. GhostWire achieves the feeling of complete isolation by completely removing people. It’s eerie to walk around in a place without people, and knowing that there is no one else to speak to other than you or the voice (literal in this instance). More often than not, I found myself wishing there were people – or even just one friendly person – I could find on GhostWire’s streets. GhostWire’s isolation and loneliness made me feel incredibly lonely and inexplicable. 

This is haunting. GhostWire will take every opportunity to promote its supernatural apocalypse. The game can sometimes be frustrating. The street’s painted lines would wave in the wind, as though they were paper thin pieces. I noticed this while walking around. Then, when I turned a corner, it would be that in just a few streets or blocks, there was a torrent of rain, which soaked the nearby buildings in a deep, bloody red. The world around you breaks down at crucial story points. Amazing set-piece scenes allow levels to twist, warp and transform before you eyes. It’s almost as if M.C. Escher is now the art director. The art is amazing, it’s fun to see and I enjoyed using photo mode for the weirdness. 

Recalling classic rapture imagery, personal belongings litter the map exactly where they were left – you can’t take your purse or cellphone with you to the afterlife. Clothing is everywhere, which is most remarkable. There are often huge amounts of clothes littering the ground, especially in areas with high populations. This is the kind of imagery that really brings home the terrifying nature and scale of GhostWire’s game. Add that the city is still functioning – lights are on, speaker systems play, you can go into the subway or inside convenient stores – and GhostWire has a world not hampered by its lack of things to do but strengthened by its commitment to being desolate. 

Other than those creepy creatures, Desolate is not possible. GhostWire’s antagonist fuses the worlds between the living and dead. This is the setting for much of GhostWire’s gameplay and combat. 

Shibuya is overrun by spirits as it attempts to bring together the worlds of one and two. The vast majority of GhostWire is running from point A to point B, fighting a variety of hostile yōkai littering the streets on the way, getting to your destination, and then fighting some more. The combat is satisfying both from a visual and audio perspective. It has a strong weight and crunch. Each of Akito’s elements have unique benefits. My fire attack is a powerful explosion that causes severe damage, while my water attack sends out an arc of energy that can hit multiple enemies simultaneously. I found it fun to switch between them. Fun powers include a wind attack that produces high rates of fire and magical bow-and arrows. You also have the option to freeze enemy enemies. And using the ethereal weave – which is basically a magic string – to rip out enemy cores always looked great. 

GhostWire is a first-person shooter, even though it does not have guns. However, it is not an excellent one. It is difficult to aim accurately and clunky. I often missed more attacks. The encounter design is also the same: kill all enemies around this point of interest and move on. While it’s effective in getting the job done it isn’t necessarily good. However, combat soon becomes tedious. Unfortunately, the few bosses in this game are not as good and can often be awkward or slow to fight. 

However, not every spirit wants to harm you. You’re helping to rescue spirits from between worlds when you aren’t blasting through Shibuya. There are over 240,000 lost souls you need to help usher back into the mortal coil, which means spending a ton of time walking around collecting – which boils down to holding a button, or very rarely, solving a small puzzle – and depositing at various payphones throughout the map. Although you can pick up spirits in bulk, it is still tedious. 

However, I am not too critical of the core gameplay loops. It is, on one hand, a boring and repetitive take on Far Cry’s formula. On the other, on top of loving GhostWire’s world, its yōkai designs stand in a league of their own – it has some of my favorite enemy designs in years. Mixing traditional Japanese folklore with its contemporary setting, looking at the terrifying enemies never got old. Shiromuku and the Lamentation are my favorites. Their long, black hair reminds me of Sadako’s classic Japanese horror films characters.Ring) and Asami Yamazaki (AuditionYou can find the complete article here. Carved. Being a horror enthusiast, particularly one who grew-up watching Japanese horror movies, I could not help but obsess over all the creature designs. 

GhostWire also works well because it is very short. The campaign was completed in 14 hours. I did spend a little more time cleaning up afterward. GhostWire is not a great game, despite the fact that it’s blatantly boring in its story and gameplay. You can have fun with the whole game, and not get bored by things that aren’t so good.

Which makes GhostWire a strange game to review – at least within the often-restrictive confines of a scoring system. GhostWire has many things that I love. I’d go so far as to say that some elements – its world, enemy design, etc. – are among my favorites in a game in years. GhostWire can’t be trusted with many elements such as gameplay and story. 

While I expect that not everyone will be as enthralled with GhostWire as I am, it’s entirely understandable. GhostWire will connect to you if it connects with your heart. The game’s uniqueness is amazing. It also allows for a lot of creativity and innovation. GhostWire is my favorite game.