Ghostwire: Tokyo

"Ghostwire: Tokyo" beckons players into the bustling streets of Shibuya, inviting them to confront ghosts and spirits in a first-person shooter experience where elemental spells replace conventional firearms. The combat mechanics, though not overly intricate, manage to deliver fun through their brisk pace and vibrant light effects. The creatures' designs further amplify the enjoyment, especially when messing around the environment with glitchy effects and dreamy scripted events.

Unfortunately, the core narrative and main campaign don't meet the expectations set by the gameplay. They come across as rushed and half-baked. Nonetheless, these shortcomings find their counterbalance in the game's array of side quests and collectibles. These aspects prove to be the truly rewarding and enjoyable facets of the gameplay. My recommendation would be to rush through the main campaign and then enjoy strolling through the map and enjoying the exploration. I wish I had more time to do the trophies too...

An evident dedication to precision manifests in the game's faithful recreation of Shibuya's main streets, where landmarks and famous buildings are painstakingly reproduced and easily recognizable to those familiar with the area. While the game seems to have been designed to captivate Western players, the Japanese origins of the team is reflected in the meticulous replication of objects and everyday life elements, even more than real-life setting games like "Yakuza".

The freedom of movement within the game is both seamless and gratifying, free from the interruption of transitional cutscenes or protracted animations that might impede the gameplay. Moreover, the vertical exploration of select buildings and spaces adds an extra layer of immersion, allowing the exploration of underground areas and jumping from one building to another.

In short, while "Ghostwire: Tokyo" falls short in terms of its central narrative, its captivating recreation of Shibuya, attention to detail, and enjoyable diversions found in side quests offer a satisfying and immersive gameplay experience.

As a card-carrying Japanophile who spent a semester in Tokyo and has been back to visit multiple times, I can’t help but feel that Ghostwire: Tokyo was made just for me. I’ve browsed Shibuya’s underground record stores, sang karaoke on the 12th floor of a random high rise, had coffee at the Shibuya Scramble Starbucks, recreated here as Tulitorbucks, and even inched through suffocating crowds in the JR station to catch the last train home. On the other hand, I’m definitely not a local, and my recollection of Shibuya’s more granular details is hazy to nonexistent. If the streets are in the wrong place or the scale is off, I wouldn’t notice. As far as I’m concerned, Ghostwire’s Shibuya feels like the real deal. My only disappointment is that I can’t go toe-to-toe with CD-chucking poltergeists in Tower Records.

But how does it play? Well, if you’re not completely burnt out on Ubisoft-style open worlds, you’re in luck. Ghostwire provides a dense map to explore, full of quests and collectibles. Instead of climbing towers to open up the map, our protagonist Akito and his buddy KK clear the fog over Tokyo by purging cursed torii gates of malicious spirits. Side-quests are doled out by troubled souls with unresolved business that’s keeping them tethered to the mortal plane. Collectibles, meanwhile, come in many varieties. Some simply require you to find them, while others must be won from yokai – traditional Japanese monsters – by either lending a helping hand or through trickery, depending on the monster in question. Collecting everything is an undertaking, to be sure, but in contrast to many modern open-world games in which hitting 100% can take well over a hundred hours, going full completionist in Ghostwire is a more reasonable proposition. I put 50 hours into the game and I don’t regret a second of it. (Time-strapped gamers, don’t let that number scare you away. If you avoid the side content, you can wrap up the game in 12 hours or less.)

It doesn’t hurt that traversing Tokyo is a hell of a lot of fun – at least once you’ve unlocked a few key abilities. One major misstep Ghostwire makes is hiding its best abilities in plain sight as optional skills. If you don’t thoroughly explore the skill tree and invest time collecting spirits and magatama, you will miss out on powers that completely reshape how Akito traverses Tokyo’s concrete jungle. With his base abilities, Akito can only clamber up ledges and glide a few feet in the air. After acquiring a few key upgrades, however, he basically becomes Japanese Spider-Man with spirit-powered hover boots. Swinging around the rooftops of Tokyo is an absolute joy, and it’s a shame that most players won’t get to experience it.

I still haven’t mentioned the story, which is solid if not particularly deep. It does feel like the developers decided to recreate Shibuya first and only later turned to making a game out of the space. The plot is thin, and the characters lean heavily on archetypes – the brave young man, the cynical old mentor, the villain with a tragic backstory, the calm, collected female sidekick, the younger sister in trouble. While the story won’t win any awards, I do appreciate the way it employs traditional Japanese folklore and explores life and the afterlife in a way that games seldom do.

I can see why Ghostwire: Tokyo largely flew under the radar when it launched. It looks like a horror game but it’s really an open-world adventure with horror themes. I’ve also heard that the gameplay originally felt underbaked; thankfully, the recent one-year anniversary update (available on all platforms) has deepened the combat mechanics and improved the experience across the board. A masterpiece Ghostwire is not, but players looking for an experience that’s familiar yet offbeat could do a lot worse than diving into phantom-stricken Tokyo.

Much like Deathloop, Xbox owners had to way a full year before getting access to the last piece of Bethesda per-acquisition. I'm not sure if this PS5 exclusivity and the knowledge that it was coming to Game Pass at a later date cause it to be ignored, but after a few weeks from release it seems that the game was quickly forgotten and somewhat subpar performance based on Bethesda standards. In the meantime Tango also dropped Hi-Fi Rush earlier this year with lots of praise and acclaim, so in my case it cause renewed interest into this one (and especially to see how their bigger budget title compares).

Ghostwire: Tokyo is a weird game. It's about ghosts and the supernatural, the story feels completely crazy and out of this world. The combat is somewhat a little odd too, you inherited spirit allows you to shoot magic out of your hands (wind/water/fire) but does require you to charge them with maximum effect. A lot of time in combat is spent stepping back to get those charges and there isn't many options when it comes to melee or dodging. It's not that the combat is bad, but it's kind of an unusual system that goes with the game's general weirdness. However as the game opens up, it turns out it has a generic open world "Ubisoft-like" approach with lots of markers and activities to do. The map is initially limited, but you have to do these gates and then it opens up more areas... unfortunately it's mostly the same activities all over again.

On the graphics side things are pretty incredible, the city looks great and there's definitely a lot of work on the details. The visuals are also pretty good in the main quests where all these hallucinations things happen, this is definitely one of the strong suits of the game and kinda shows that Silent Hill/David Lynch influence into it. It's a little unfortunate that years of game dev time is required to reach these levels of detail, it seems that any game that wants to experiment a little out of the beaten path has to dedicate 5 years of resources to it and without really having any guarantee of success with it.

I enjoyed this. Definitely not the best game ever and it's got its flaws and limitations, but blasting through the campaign and exploring the city and the buildings was quite fun. The polish is there (perhaps not as much as Hi-Fi Rush) and it does feel like it's a notch above most games in that aspect. Does make me wonder what Tango will work onto next, I feel they will learn from this experience here and put something out even better on the next round... unfortunately that might just be in 2027-2028 with the way development on games is going lately, these super-realistic graphics and high demanding performances just take so much time to achieve.