ACTION-
ADVENTURE
GAME© BETHESDA SOFTWORKSThe city that doesn’t want you to sleep
Ghostwire Tokyo
A CURIOSITY IN FORM as well as function,
Ghostwire Tokyo is in some ways a
callback to Japanese horror games of
the early 2000s (although this is much
more of an action game), and also a
graphical monster capable of serving up
spectacular slices of neon lights and ray-
traced reflections.
To call the story outlandish would be
something of an understatement, but it’s
a good word to start the review off with.
Everyone in Tokyo is dead, or at least
gone, reduced to piles of clothing that
lay where they fell when the body was
somehow removed from them. Instead of
its once bustling population, Tokyo is now
home to a huge population of escaped
pets looking for attention and rather a lot
of ghosts and other visitors taken straight
from Japanese folklore.
A first-person shooter with finger guns
that fire spells instead of little bits of
metal, Ghostwire Tokyo's main character
Akita has gained supernatural powers
and the ability not to be one of those piles
of clothing on the sidewalk, having been
saved from a motorcycle crash by a spirit
detective. His sister’s been kidnapped too,
providing more motivation than one man
needs to go up against a ghost army.An FPS with finger guns that
fire spells is... outlandish.snap his fingers into flying shapes that
launch a barrage of shapes and colors
at the enemy. There are mercifully few
boss characters too. Coming from Tango
Gameworks, the Shinji Mikami-founded
studio behind the Evil Within games,
there’s a definite hint of the mind behind
Resident Evil here. Thing is, it’s the wrong
Resi. Rather than 4, which shook up the
third-person shooter and made it what it
is today, it’s the earlier games that seem
to have been more of an influence.TENSION RISING
Witness the way characters in Ghostwire
Tokyo move—the original Resi games
built up tension from the knowledge
that you couldn’t move quickly or freely
enough to escape, and as you struggle
to turn smoothly here you’d swear the
devs are trying the same trick. If there
wasn’t a lock-on, the game would be
considerably more difficult, as you tried
to line up an accurate shot on an enemy
that’s spawned right in front of you with an
aiming system that moves in huge chunks
rather than the precise slices needed. The
weapon-select wheel is sluggish too, its
reliability during the more intense combat
sequences is open to question.He’s not one man, though, thanks to
the spirit riding shotgun in his body and
supplying his new powers, but still, the
pull to explore this remarkable vision
would be strong enough on its own. Much
of the time you crouch in cover, charging a
spell before popping up, letting it rip, and
enjoying the view of both the city backdrop
and the inevitable explosion. Powers are
based around the four elements, with
wind as your basic machine gun. Damage
enemies enough, and they expose their
core which must be ripped out.
There’s a shield for blocking and you
can unlock a bow that suffers greatly from
limited ammunition in the way the best
weapons in survival horror games always
do. Upgraded though, it’s a beast, taking
out enemies with single headshots from
the other end of an alley before they even
notice you’re there. Talismans provide
a form of grenade, and fire powers can
touch off excellent explosions that open
up multiple enemies to having their cores
removed.
After last month’s Elden Ring, which
actively wanted to hurt you and took pride
in doing so, it’s nice to play a game that
wants to make you look cool. Akito’s
ethereal weaving techniques see himin the lab
90 MAXIMU MPC JUN 2022