Ghostrunner’s intense first-person parkour platforming demands perfection. Whether you’re cleaning up a neon cityscape of Cyberpunk thugs or running up walls and making your way through the vents of a gigantic factory, even a small miscalculation will kill you. Your jumps must be precise. Every blow of your sword should be deadly. Everything else does not comply with the specifications of Robot Ninja. Ghostrunner punishes quickly, but is also more than willing to reward players who take up his challenge . Jumping from one wall to another feels like flying. It’s exciting to run circles around supply men, dodge lead and strike them down without a scratch. This is a high-risk, high-reward situation: fighting with mistake after mistake, even with simple tasks, is incredibly frustrating from the start, but this anger eventually dissipates as your ability grow to reveal an exciting Test of your abilities.
In a Cyberpunk-style post-apocalyptic world, Ghostrunner leaves you in control of a Ninja robot assassin who wants to kill the authoritarian ruler of his world. (She also almost killed him a while ago, so he’s a doppelganger! Revolution and revenge.) There is a winding and agile plot, but it is often very detached from what you are actually playing, as it is told almost exclusively by voice-over.
Ghostrunner pretty much adheres to the principles of the visual aesthetics of Cyberpunk. You run through dirty and dilapidated cities with contrasting dark corners with neon signs and bright screens that illuminate the night. Some of the enemies you face are literal Cyborg Punks. Don’t worry, there are also a lot of robots. There were enough Cyberpunk stories in the games that this Look wasn’t particularly fresh, but that doesn’t stop it from looking cool. It helps that Ghostrunner looks very sharp on a technical level. The environments, the enemies and your sword that always sticks out in front of you are all incredibly detailed. It may not be the most creative, but it’s still attractive.
Despite the fact that you control a robot Ninja assassin and much of the game revolves around finish, Ghostrunner is primarily a first-person platformer. Each sequence, action or not, has wood-paneled walls that you can walk on, rails that you can slide on and comfortably placed loops compatible with your grappling hook so that you can do superhuman Parkour. Stringing these maneuvers together seamlessly allows you to gain speed that prevents opponents from landing your shots and allows you to make larger jumps that allow even bigger and bolder maneuvers. Many areas, especially the platform sections without enemies, are designed to remain mobile. When you are in a fight, speed is power: dancing around enemies and dodging lead makes you feel like an unstoppable force, twice as much as you knock them all out without not found a step.
Combining wall runs, dashes, slides and other maneuvers to move seamlessly around the world requires sustained concentration and quick reflexes. You must aim your jumps precisely before moving from one element to another, while keeping an eye on the way ahead so that you know where you are going. The faster you move, the less time you have to aim before jumping, so the longer you stay mobile, the more difficult it will be to keep control; A poorly targeted or poorly timed jump can cause you to fly beyond a platform. Even a small miscalculation can cost you momentum and expose you to enemy fire. The demands of the crossing lead to many frustrating expireds from the very starting, but make success incredibly rewarding. If you are able to jump through a actionareawithout losing speed, you will feel masterful.
action in Ghostrunner is really an extension of the platform, although it rarely seems that simple. Almost all enemies die at once. If you get close enough to the enemy to cut him off, you are dead. So the challenge lies in the approach, not in the action itself. There are a decent number of enemy types, each of which has unique abilities that create an interesting new wrinkle that you need to take into account in a fight. Although many of them are simple – there is a soldier with a shield, a Ninja who needs to be parried, etc. – they are always difficult to ship and require precise timing. Each experience skillfully combines environmental obstacles and new types of enemies to make each level exciting From one section to the next, even if you are actually doing the same thing over and over again,.
In all honesty, this is not just a “sword pendant”. “You get action-oriented ability that give you more options for dealing with enemies. First of all, your shot allows you to briefly slow down time to avoid an enemy lead at the last second. You also get a number of special attacks, including a “Blink” dash that allows you to cut multiple enemies and lead in a straight line, and a reflective shockwave projectile. Each of the four abilities offers you an interesting opportunity to create new opportunities for yourself, whether it’s lining up enemies to finish them off in one fell swoop or strikeing fire just to reflect it.
Learning how to use these tools, how to run and how to play Ghostrunner is sometimes a painful process. The Ghostrunner is a glass cannon – a single shot will kill you – and most platform races require tight timing. The only way to “practice” your moves is to fail and try again, so you can expect to die a lot. (Fortunately, the reloading of your last checkpoint on PC is almost instantaneous). Even if you don’t die, it can be frustrating to have to interrupt a Parkour run because you couldn’t figure out where to go next without stopping to look around. If you are like me and your reflexes are not an Esports class, it takes dedication (and a little muscle memory) to complete a domain without making a fatal mistake. The satisfaction of doing it is worth it, but there is panic and bitterness mixed with excitement and panic.