Ghostrunner Review
I don’t think I would’ve picked up Ghostrunner if it didn’t come included in a subscription service, in fact I’ve actually had it included in two different services! It was the monthly PlayStation Plus game for March, and it was in Humble Bundle’s April games. I’ve spoken on the podcast plenty about how I just don’t like playing first-person games on consoles because I don’t think that mouse/keyboard controls for FPSs can be bettered or even equalled by dual analog stick controls.
And I knew that not only was Ghostrunner a first-person game, but it was also going to require incredibly precise, split-second reaction controls to get through it. More on this shortly…
The elevator pitch for the game is basically first-person ninja twitch action/platformer. Originally described to me as a first-person Super Meat Boy, I think it’s significantly more akin to something like Hotline Miami, where you will be mixing precise movement with precise decisions and precise violence to get through increasingly tough and complicated stages with instantaneous restarts so that you never lose momentum. And Ghostrunner is set in a beautifully detailed and realised Cyberpunk dystopian world and you are the titular ghostrunner a cybernetic-enhanced ninja armed with a sword and some skills and you need to fight your way through the oppression to get to the top of the tower to achieve freedom for you and the rest of the gooduns.
You’ll start with fairly simple mechanics such as swooshing your sword and being able to run along walls and a dash move which allows you to slow down time briefly to avoiding incoming enemy fire by quickly shifting your trajectory of movement. And the thing the game does brilliantly is pace itself with how it builds all of the features that are coming your way over the 8 hours campaign. You’ll end up grappling, sliding, hacking, leaping, shurikening, grinding, deflecting, dodging, slicing, possessing and riding, and each of these features are perfectly spaced out so that you never get bored of a particular mechanic before it’s adding something else into the mix, but it never gets overwhelming either where you’re trying to juggle too many button combos before you’ve fully got to grips with how to play the game. And the enemies are equally as diverse, and they are introduced sporadically through the game to shake things up even further. Just when you think you’ve got the hang of dodging a lone gunman’s single bullet firing, than a machine-gun-wielding soldier appears, and when you think you can handle any enemy as long as they’re standing still, new enemies jump and fly and charge at you, or come complete with shields, or enormous wave attacks. It always keeps you on your toes and brings a brilliant puzzle solving element to the game which means you’re always analysing the lay of the land, seeing your objective and the obstacles between you and it, looking at the tools in your arsenal, and then deciding on the best and most efficient way through it all. And there’s plenty of scope for changing how you approach each scenario as well. I don’t think there’s ever one scenario that specifically asks you to solve it one way - if your first approach isn’t quite working, rethink things, try it differently and see where you get.
The fact that the game is literally instant to restart after you die is so paramount to your enjoyment because anything longer than instant would bring a small piece of frustration with it, and that would add up quite quickly to a rage quit. Because you will die a lot, but you know that 99% of the time it’s because of something you’ve done or haven’t done. And being able to instantly retry your approach means that you never get too pissed off with anything and can keep your momentum going, and it becomes a really addictive gameplay loop.
I think it’s definitely fortuitous that I came to the game straight off the back of playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice 5 times in a row, because there were many skills that I’d learnt in that game that I could apply here, from the split-second reaction to avoid attacks to timing parrying with your sword. I changed the control set-up in Ghostrunner immediately to better reflect how I was playing Sekiro with the grappling on the left shoulder, the attack on the right, and jumping and interacting on matching buttons, and that brings me back to talking about controlling the game on console. And I think the real gift to me was that I could play this on my SteamDeck - the pick up and playability of the console was a great fit for this and I think having the screen sat between my two analog sticks really helped my sense of perception in terms of controlling the camera and movements and I would say it’s by far the most I’ve enjoyed controlling a first-person game on console controls, and it could be the thing that opens the door to others that I’ve previously avoided! Having said that, there were still moments during the more complicated and demanding parkour sections where I really wished I could’ve had mouse and keyboard controls, especially later on in the game where it becomes really demanding, but I managed to get through it all in the end, but with probably more tries than I would’ve had if I had a mouse to hand!
It runs beautifully on the SteamDeck as well - it looks beautiful, fantastic soundtrack as well, great thumping electronic tracks to keep you focused, which I’ve always done when i’m really trying to get some work done is whack on some electronic or trance stuff, like the social network soundtrack or Daft Punk or Royksopp which just gets my head in the zone and so the soundtrack to Ghostrunner was perfect for the mindset I needed to be in to play it!
Time will tell if I’ll return to the game to try and go back and find all the secrets and collectibles, and I think I will because it’s so gosh-darn fun to play! Like Sekiro, I couldn’t find a game more fun to actively play once I beat it, so I kept beating it until I found one, and I’ll likely do the same with Ghostrunner now! Plus there’s DLC which looks pretty cool where you play as one of the villains of the piece imbued with a different skillset so that should be really fun!
It’s certainly a contender for an entry in my Top 100 as well, so I’ll see where we’re at by the end of this season and issue our final evaluation of our lists - but don’t be surprised if this features somewhere on there!