Hello folks, here’s ya boi FatNicK coming at you with…err…reviews of games that have been out for a while and have already been widely covered elsewhere.
So what’s the verdict on this one? It’s quite good ‘innit! I could write a whole review focusing on its wonderfully dark and foreboding atmosphere, about the creepiness of the visitors who stalk the city streets, or of the impressive level of detail which seems to have been paid to every single surface in every location of the game, but to be honest that’s all been done elsewhere. Most probably better.
No, what I really liked about Ghostwire Tokyo is how the main quest and acts as an example of not outstaying your welcome. With a whole open-world city district to explore, it’s the kind of game that would have been easy to have had its narrative expanded indefinitely: “Oh no! we thought we were on our way to the final encounter with the big baddy but now we have to get another MacGuffin from the other side of the map first!” Send the player on a few wild goose chases across the map a few times and you could easily have pushed this up to that all important 15-20 hour mark that opinionated Facebook group members and marketing peeps seem to think is very important.
No, instead Ghost Wire Tokyo sticks to its guns. The main gameplay loop is relatively simple: with Tokyo shrouded in a spiritual fog that wrenches souls from their body, you’ll spend most of your time wandering dark but gorgeously detailed streets of Tokyo, performing exorcism rituals on the cursed torii gates being used to keep the fog in place. Standing in your way are the hideous visitors: mannequin-like spiritual beings born from a range of negative emotions experiences by the city’s former inhabitants.
Combat – which mixes a dash with a block/parry and a number of element-based projectile attacks is fun and satisfying but relatively limited and quite repetitive. That’s completely fine though Creators Tango Game Works – recently revived much like protagonist Akito – seem well aware of their creation’s limitations, and regularly throw in curve balls, new powers and brilliantly disturbing horror-filled set pieces to keep things interesting, but the is never made more complicated than it needs to be, and you always feel like you’re barreling along towards something.
Consequently, though my completed save file weighs in at ten hours (which includes a couple of hours of non-mandatory side quests – Do not miss Fear for The Children) I don’t feel cheated. Aside from getting the game for free anyway (thank you Epic freebies), its not getting uninstalled any time soon. Aside from the unfinished side quests and the generous ‘Spider’s thread’ bonus game, I know I’ll want to experience this one again. Not necessarily next week or even next month, but I will – and then probably again some time after that. Ghostwire Tokyo, then, stands as testament to the benefits of having a well-crafted 10 hour single player game the player will want to return to again and again, rather than a grindy 20 hour experience the player will not. With some of the industry’s practices being called into question (you have my sympathies Concorde team), this is definitely a lesson I hope others will take on board.