While you can kill in a single hit, the real challenge is getting close enough to land the attack, and this is where the Sensory Boost comes in.

You’ll start running, not knowing exactly the layout of the arena, but it doesn’t matter as the signposting and traversal mechanics are so natural that you can focus on the enemy positions. This is good, because the enemies will be killing you in a single hit as well.Įach encounter with enemies is set up in a kind of jungle gym of death. The only weapon you’ll need is yours from the very beginning: a katana that can kill every enemy in a single hit. Neuromancer katana dancerĬombat in Ghostrunner is raw, it’s powerful and there’s a level of precision here that allows you to teeter between failure and success, riding the high of scraping past death as you dodge enemy fire and attacks. Jumping from a crate onto a wall and then wallrunning around a curve and grappling to another point flows together with such grace that it’s easy for this to become second nature.Īnd when the platforming becomes second nature, which it does almost immediately, your frontal lobe can focus on the combat – the very thing that makes you feel like a true, cybernetic ninja. What’s more, the platforming never feels cumbersome. It takes a talented team to create a game that can achieve this. Lights shine a different color in the direction you need to be moving, colored power cables and conduits snake around corners, and buttons that move important pieces of the level always have you facing the correct path. All these work in conjunction to ensure that, despite the blistering speed of the combat and movement, the player is never lost on where to go. From the onset, the Ghostrunner can clamber up ledges, wallrun for an infinite amount of time, grapple across great distances, and even slow down time when in the air.īut all these tools would be useless if not for Ghostrunner’s environment, which is expertly signposted. It all begins with the tools at the player’s disposal. Never before has wallrunning, jumping, and grappling around levels felt so second nature. Simply put, Ghostrunner’s traversal mechanics are pure elegance. Though I will get to the incredibly precise and powerful feeling of the combat, special attention must be paid to the traversal and platforming in Ghostrunner.

Even when the action does ease up (an opportunity to still your racing heart), you’re never locked in one spot and forced to listen, you’re either solving a puzzle or working through some tightly designed and visually striking platforming section. While the story in Ghostrunner deserves to be explored, it never dominates your attention or gets in the way of the action. The whole package is gorgeous and never falters, even when things get intense. The gorgeous backdrop of the game shifts from the grimy industrial level to the bright and neon-lit streets and rooftops of the wealthier distracts and beyond as you ascend the tower. There is also environmental storytelling. The narrative tackles iconic cyberpunk problems such as identity, authority, and what it means to be human. And so begins one of the most challenging, rewarding, and stylish first-person perspective games I’ve ever played. But life inside Dharma Tower isn’t grand as the place is ruled by the tyrannical Keymaster.Īt some unknown time, you wake up as the Ghostrunner, an entity others refer to as Jack, and you only know two things: Someone is whispering in your ear and you need to start killing. The Earth as we know it has succumbed to some kind of disaster and the only safe haven is Dharma Tower. Ghostrunner takes place in a classic cyberpunk-type of world. For those that want even better traversal mechanics than Mirror’s Edge and Titanfall 2 with the intense and stylish combat of something like Superhot, this is the game for you. The teams at One More Level, 3D Realms and Slipgate Ironworks have created a slick and elegant experience that will push your reflexes to the very edge and then force you to dig a little deeper. Little comes close to matching the speed and performance high you feel when playing Ghostrunner.

Ghostrunner reviews