Ghostrunner - cyberpunk runner galore

[J1M]

if the level design is properly executed.

An absolutely linear corridor filled with very obvious vertical/horizontal plates to run and jump on?

It's an action game, not an exploration game. There are combat arenas and a few puzzles, but travel is mostly a reflex challenge.

Another take on what Mirror's Edge could have been if players and enemies died in one hit.

I had fun with it, but I was glad it wasn't any longer. Some of you may find the character building element interesting. (Swappable Tetris pieces in a grid.)

 

[Star Citizen]

Level design ain't corridor tho. Arena's can be 'solved' in multiple fashions.

 

[JRIz]

This game's soundtrack is rad. Another one for the synthwave! Dunno about the game.

 

[Tavar]

This game's soundtrack is rad. Another one for the synthwave! Dunno about the game.

The soundtrack was done by Daniel Deluxe who is my favourite synthwave artist. You should also check out his soundtrack to Desync. Regarding the game: I'm in level 11 now and I like it. It is very hard and very demanding, but fun nevertheless. Definitely feels like Hotline Miami and Mirrors Edge had a baby. Naturally, the level design makes no sense at all, but that's to be expected from a parcour game. Sadly, the game doesn't allow you to save during a level, so you have to finish the level in one go or lose your progess which is very annoying. Controls feel a bit glitchy at times, but work well overall. I recommend this game if you don't mind replaying certain sections 30+ times. If you are unsure, better wait for a sale or pirate it first to check it out.

 

[thesoup]

been playing this. Pretty good.

 

[Tavar]

I've finished the game by now and nothing has changed about my original assessment. Funnily enough, the first boss is the hardest of the three in the game. The last level is spectacularly annoying even though it is only platforming. The story has a super obvious twist and is very bare bones, but it doesn't get in the way. Final verdict: 7/10, would recommend to patient players.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Been playing this for the last two days and I'm loving it. I've wanted to play a cyberninja since forever and the game delivers.

Two things that I like particularly much about it: First, it requires a LOT of very quick thinking for some of the wall-running/jumping sections, particularly when there are dudes shootin' at you. Second, the level design is great. I was initially worried that the combat encounters would essentially be 'puzzles' with only one obvious path forward, but the way they are constructed gives you numerous ways of approach on all fronts - when it comes to movement, using special abilities and the order in which you chop dudes. Some of the platforming sections are also pretty bueno.

The only thing so far that bothers me a little are the controls, they can be pretty wonky sometimes. Especially the automatic climb, where the protag will sometimes climb a fan blade and get sliced and diced instead of dashing through it, or when he'll climb a prop at the edge of a platform and launch himself straight into the abyss behind it. But the checkpoints are generous enough that this is a minor nuisance.

 

[Darth Roxor]

How do you deal with the stupid exploding creepy-crawlers? The only way other than tempest/surge that I can think of is to turn around, observe the radar and dash away when the red dots get too close, and this just feels too retarded to be the intended approach. Am I missing something patently obvious here?

 

[gerey]

How do you deal with the stupid exploding creepy-crawlers? The only way other than tempest/surge that I can think of is to turn around, observe the radar and dash away when the red dots get too close, and this just feels too retarded to be the intended approach. Am I missing something patently obvious here?

That section is mostly a "puzzle", there's usually a specific order in which the crawler waves come, leaving you one obvious path of progress. Some sections may require a bit of manoeuvring around obstacles to herd the crawlers into a specific place so a new path can be freed.

Also, tweak your tetris-inventory a bit to prioritize dashing and tempest.

 

[thesoup]

I think I mostly ran away from them like a retard.

 

[SoupNazi]

I think it's worth taking a look at the first few pages of this thread and observing he edgelords call this a shitty game without so much as spending a minute with it, just as a kind reminder of being on RPGCodex. It's hilarious how fucking retarded those first comments are.

This was my favorite non-RPG game of last year, and it's probably the best purely action, arcadeish game to come out in the modern times. The issues reported with controls etc seem to be mostly hardware/driver related, as some people never have the issues with wallhopping or climbing, and some have it constantly, then some others only have it in the endgame (which is vastly different from the rest). Me, personally, I didn't have a single "fuck this, I should have gotten that" moment in the entire game, I could always narrow it down to player error. It plays great, is fluid, dynamic, has a good balance between the "bullshit" (if only i was a second faster) difficulty and the more natural side of things. The soundtrack is the best in years, and the game is addictive in how it entices you to master it. Movement is the closest to the opposite of "fridge with a gun" syndrome any game has gotten recently as well.

It's no great evocative masterpiece that keeps you thinking for the next few days to come after finishing it, but as far as arcadey action games go, it's the best since yesterdecade.

Darth Roxor you just keep running and wallrunning, the point of them is to add some extra tension to you taking out the other goons - the suicide bombers will usually explode behind you while you cut down some gunfag.

 

[3 others]

Damn, this is -50% off in GOG from the already-quite-aggressively-low list price and the demo was solid. I'm sold.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Aaaaaand finished. Excellent shit, high quality kino.

What I said before still stands - I'm really impressed by the level/encounter design and platforming. Sometimes I'd clear an arena, then hop around looking for shit only to find passages I had no idea about that could have been used to approach the encounter in a completely different way. The hefty cooldowns on the awesome buttons also prevent you from relying on them too much. I was also very satisfied to find that this game had no invisible walls whatsoever, which meant you could sometimes find an exploit in the level construction that the designers clearly didn't think about and bypass a jumping puzzle in an alternative way.

I would also say that the game's biggest strength by far is how focused it is on its core design principle - that you are a wallrunning cyberninja who slashes dudes. All of the game's systems and challenges are built exactly on that base, and said systems and challenges remain relevant, exciting and challenging all the way through. The way you keep unlocking new abilities and encountering new enemy types (that are all still according to the core design) also keeps the gameplay remarkably fresh all the way to the end. Where every other shit game would have knocked you over the head with minigames and gimmicks, Ghostrunner sticks to its guns from start to finish and it does a wonderful job at it - with the only exception perhaps being some of the Cybervoid bits like the flow/circuit puzzle, which felt gimmicky, but they didn't bother me too much, probably because they are so rare.

There were only three things by and large that bothered me about the game.
One was the kind of wonky controls - sometimes I struggled against them pretty heavily, especially with wall-to-wall jumping segments. Pretty sure it's due to first person parkour just being 'inaccurate' compared to third person.
Second were the creepy-crawler suicide bombers. This is the only part of the game that I feel was absolutely contrary to the core design. You are a cyberninja who chops dudes up close. Hey, won't it be fun to add an enemy that explodes on proximity? Nope. Nope nope nope. That lab level where the fuckers are introduced en masse was EXTREMELY annoying. Very fortunate that they almost don't appear afterwards.
And third is of course the Painfully Predictable Plot. Can you even call something a plot twist if it's THAT horribly telegraphed? Good lord. Still, who gives a shit.

Anyway, great game. 10/10 thoroughly recommend.

 

[Silentstorm]

One thing i like about the game is that you using a Katana is 100% the fault of a weeb that programmed you to be unable to use guns because Katanas are just...better and cause less property damage, as a great self-evolving AI, your character automatically asks if his creator has never been in a fight and sure enough, he hasn't and can't understand why you ask that.

It's clear that even in setting, Ghostrunner finds that running around with a sword while everyone else has guns is stupid and he wishes he could just shoot back, at least there is a justification even if it's just your creator being so much of a weeb he becomes stupid.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

I think it's worth taking a look at the first few pages of this thread and observing he edgelords call this a shitty game without so much as spending a minute with it, just as a kind reminder of being on RPGCodex. It's hilarious how fucking retarded those first comments are.

as usual, hellfire is always right.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

a kick to the face is a better game than cyberpunk 2077.

 

[Silentstorm]

Is this a better game than Cyberpunk 2077?

If you're asking if the game is good, it depends, it's very much a game where you will die a lot and you learn through death, thankfully you tend to quickly get back to the way you died and slicing some people after dying a lot feels great.

But it's very much a game with an old school mentality...or games like Super Meat Boy or Celeste, you die and then repeat until you do it right and feel like a badass, and if you replay the game enough, you can basically speedrun it as a badass ninja delivering death to any fool who thinks he can shoot you.

 

[Lagi]

holly molly. Glorious!
I thought its another old school shooter. But its instead melee parkour. linear, but not QTE.
Strafing mid air to avoid bullets is just great.

I die 110 times in first level. For the love of mother nature i cannot take the grasp of controls (getting old).
protips: reduce the Resolution scale slider to have crispy pixels and proper FPS.

Oh and the ambient is just delicious.

I play half more hour and then go to work :D

 

[Silentstorm]

It's done well enough to get further free upgrades and a sequel has been announced, this game is not a failure when it comes to sales, one can only hope Ghostrunner 2 still ends up good.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

https://af.gog.com/game/ghostrunner_neon_pack?as=1649904300

 

[Tavar]

The first real DLC Project_Hel has been out for a couple of months now. I've just finished it and highly recommend it if you liked the original game. It is a prequel where you play as Hel (the third boss of the main game). You have different abilities and hence the gameplay is a bit different as well.

 

[SoupNazi]

The first real DLC Project_Hel has been out for a couple of months now. I've just finished it and highly recommend it if you liked the original game. It is a prequel where you play as Hel (the third boss of the main game). You have different abilities and hence the gameplay is a bit different as well.

Thanks, downloadan.

 

[Roguey]

Completed this a few months ago and the DLC just now. Pretty good and demanding Mirror's Edge successor, though the final level of the main game hurt my left wrist and had me seething. Project_Hel gives you a huge jump, a temporary shield, and has a few light puzzlers in the level design, and fortunately doesn't go full bullet hell with its final part like the last level did. The reviews say it's easier than the base game and that's true in the sense that the hardest parts aren't as hard as Ghostrunner's hardest parts, but it's still pretty demanding (took me 4 1/2 hours to complete and a perfect run takes about 40 minutes).

 

[udm]

Completed this two weeks ago. I enjoyed it a lot, but couldn't play it for more than 2 hours in one sitting due to motion sickness. Very immersive and cool though. The level design really picked up after TOM.