If you’re moving, you’re running. To
stay still is ordinarily to invite death;
most enemies have guns, they’re all
excellent shots, and you only have a
sword. There’s no time for quiet
contemplation while you’re in the air
or running along walls either. Miss a
jump or react too
slowly to fling yourself
at the next wall, and
you’ll fall ungracefully
to your death. You’re
constantly on the move,
like a stray dog with
excellent parkour skills
and nothing left to lose.
Despite the fact that
you’ll often have somebody chatting
in your ear, there’s no strong
narrative to hold everything together.
Something about betrayal, something
about a vicious ruler, something
about human experimentation... it’s,
y’know, fine. A Saturday morning
cartoon co-directed by Ridley Scott
and Quentin Tarantino.
Honestly though, that doesn’t
matter. At its best, Ghostrunner is
fantastic. Bouncing between walls to
jump down to the floor, cutting
through two enemies in a row,
grappling up to the wall so that you
can run along it to leap down oncemore, sliding under a huge laser blast
to destroy the mech that sent it your
way, is a unique thrill.
Nonetheless, Ghostrunner
occasionally seems determined to
stab itself in the foot. There are
multiple instances of travel through
the ‘Cybervoid’, a
blocky electronic space
between areas.
Sometimes, this serves
as a tutorial area for
new abilities. More
often, it’s used to force
the player into tedious
puzzles which may or
may not involve
slow-paced platforming. There’s
absolutely no reason for these
(rare) sequences to exist, and
they completely kill the pace
and atmosphere.GHOST OF A CHANCE
Back in the ‘real’ world, things have
been designed very well to avoid
some foreseeable pitfalls. The gradual
introduction of new enemies and
environmental elements prevents
monotony setting in without
overwhelming you. Crucially,
checkpoints have been set out in such
a way as to make things reasonablewithout reducing the challenge.
Levels are split into chunks,
enemy encounters and tricky
platforming sequences divided by
checkpoints. Each fight is essentially
a blood-spattered parkour puzzle. I
worried that this might be a game
where you could only progress by
following a strictly determined path,
but each arena usually offers at least
two routes to start down, and the
sequence you kill enemies in is
entirely up to you. I prefer to destroy
shield generators first so everybody’s
vulnerable at once, take down any
walking mechs with their huge laser
blasts next, then pick off everybody
else according to threat.
Near the end of the game, that
most unoriginal and annoying enemy
type is introduced: The Thing That
Explodes When It Gets Too Close.
Dying because you run into one
around a corner, or get hit by one that
you didn’t know was right behind
you, is no fun. Thank goodness they
only make a brief appearance.
There are a total of four abilities
unlocked during the course of the
game. Three kill enemies from a
distance, while the fourth
temporarily turns an enemy into an
ally. The upgrade system links to
these in an interesting way. The more
upgrades you have equipped (easier
to deflect bullets with your sword,
mark collectibles on your radar, etc),
the slower the focus bar necessary to
use these abilities passively charges.
Like moment-to-moment play, it’s
about risk and reward.
It’s flawed, then, but never
critically so. Ghostrunner wants to
make you feel like a cybernetically
enhanced badass – and it achieves
this almost all the time with great
style. A game that’s tough and fair
and fun? Who’da thunk it.NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A cyberpunk parkour
slasher that thinks Dark
Souls gives players too
many hit points
EXPECT TO PAY
£25
DEVELOPER
One More Level,
Slipgate6, 3D Realms
PUBLISHER
505 Games, All In!
Games
REVIEWED ON
GeForce GTX 1650, AMD
Ryzen 5 3550H,
8 GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
No
LINK
ghostrunnergame.com81
Incredibly tough
but perfectly fair,
Ghostrunner cuts
the cybernetically
enhanced mustard.VERDICTYou’re
constantly on
the move, like a
stray dog with
parkour skillsT
he fundamental concept is easy to understand, and mildly
terrifying. Each enemy dies in one hit, and so do you. You’ll
sometimes die (many) more times in one level here than in
an entire game elsewhere. It’s hard – brutally, unforgivingly
so – but fair in a way that some obnoxiously difficult games
don’t even try to be. I’ve brought a knife to a gun fight, and I love it.FEEL LUCKY, CYBERPUNK?
A world of pain – usually yours – in
GHOSTRUNNER. By Luke Kemp
BAD INFLUENCE The games that haunt Ghostrunner
MIRROR’S EDGE
The game that demonstrated
first-person parkour could work,
and even be fun.DOOM
The modern Doom games, like
Ghostrunner, are all about constant
movement (and gore).DISHONORED
You can close distance quickly in
both games, and they even both
have an ability named Blink.Ghostrunner
REVIEW