![]() ![]() This sounds good conceptually, as many players welcome the opportunity to improvise and think on their feet, but Ghostrunner seems to take a little too much pleasure in punishing mistakes. Often, there are multiple routes one can take to dispatch all the baddies in a room, and you’re expected to figure it out as you go. The issue at heart here is the lack of control one feels in a given combat encounter. Naturally, some will be attracted to this high level of difficulty while others will be put off, though we feel it bears mentioning that Ghostrunner tends to lean more towards the frustrating end of high difficulty than the rewarding end. There are some factors you can work to your advantage – like temporary pickups or equippable abilities – which can help give you an edge in combat, but Ghostrunner is very much a ‘put up or shut up’ kind of game that demands you play it a very specific way or not play it at all. One miscalculated dash angle or jump will likely result in your ninja eating a faceful of laser fire and dying a horrible death. This high-risk, high-speed gameplay makes each encounter tense and razor-sharp, as nothing but perfection is tolerated before you’re granted access to the next room. All Speech Subtitled (Or No Speech In Game).To counter this, your greatest asset is the ninja’s high mobility, as he nimbly runs along walls and grapples between points. One wayward blast from an opponent still standing is fatal to your ninja, and sends him back to the checkpoint at the start of the encounter. Your ninja has an intensely lethal “monomolecular blade” which is capable of dispatching enemies in a single swift stroke, but the enemies have similarly effective guns. The typical flow of a stage is a bit like a 3D rendition of Katana Zero, with a bit more freerunning thrown in for good measure. Ghostrunner is a title which puts its gameplay front and centre, and it luckily does a pretty decent job with this. Still, it’s rather obvious that the focus isn’t much on telling an elaborate tale, so it’s difficult to fault Ghostrunner too much for any deficiencies there. Why should we care about the Ghostrunner’s quest? Well, because everyone at the top is living in luxury and it’s time for the people to take back what’s theirs! All that’s missing is an extended pseudo-philosophical monologue from an AI on what it means to be ‘more than human’. All of this is played completely straight, without the vaguest hint of humour or lightheartedness, and this can make for a rather drab story. Players can expect plenty of eye-rollingly vague references to Very Important Things (which are always capitalized) and cynical speeches on the downfalls of classism and wealth inequality. ![]() The narrative is fine for what it is, but it does tend to flog conventional tropes of the cyberpunk genre a little too flagrantly at times. At the apex of this Tower of Babel is the enigmatic Mara, an evil ruler who needs to be deposed because she’s an evil ruler, and you’re guided on your murderous journey to the top by voices in your head who swear they’re on your side. You play as the titular Ghostrunner, a cybernetic ninja who has conveniently misplaced his memory, trapped at the base of an industrial tower which supposedly acts as the living quarters for the last surviving members of the human race. Ghostrunner’s story is rather straightforward, which can be a positive or a negative depending on how you look at it. However, though Ghostrunner does deliver mostly on that promise, it comes with some big caveats (especially in the Switch version) which unfortunately hold it back from being something truly great. Ghostrunner is the latest in this hi-tech, low-life lineage, promising to place you in the shoes of a badass cyborg ninja as he slices and dices his way through hordes of baddies with style and aplomb. ![]() It seems the cyberpunk genre has seen something of a resurgence in the indie game scene lately, no doubt spurred on by CDProjektRed’s anticipated tentpole release which now appears set to launch somewhere in the actual year 2077 (only kidding, of course! It's sure to be here by at least 2055). Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
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