Ghostwire: Tokyo - a new action adventure from The Evil Within studio

[Arbiter]

There are full walkthroughs on YT already.

 

[Infinitron]

Accolades trailer before release:

 

[Tyranicon]

Accolades trailer before release:

I'm starting to think there's a number of outlets that exist solely to give "accolades."

 

[Jenkem]

I was never really interested in this game outside of liking Tango's previous games and Shinji Mikami (is he even involved in this game?) but I have to say after seeing reviews and gameplay I'm more interested... doesn't necessarily look that great but it looks completely batshit and something very odd... feels like some weird game you'd get back in the psx/ps2 days where devs were more open to try new things. The type of game that people either love or hate and it becomes a cult classic in a decade.

I'll grab this when it's on sale, it's a Bethesda game so that won't take too long I hope

 

[Cricket McBangle]

I was never really interested in this game outside of liking Tango's previous games and Shinji Mikami (is he even involved in this game?) but I have to say after seeing reviews and gameplay I'm more interested... doesn't necessarily look that great but it looks completely batshit and something very odd... feels like some weird game you'd get back in the psx/ps2 days where devs were more open to try new things. The type of game that people either love or hate and it becomes a cult classic in a decade.

I'll grab this when it's on sale, it's a Bethesda game so that won't take too long I hope

The studio, Tango Gameworks, was formed by Shinji Mikami to showcase different people at the helm. Evil Within 1 was the most hands-on he was with a project at the studio but him giving the director's seats to others for other projects such as Evil Within 2, Ghostwire, whatever else they want to do is how he envisioned the studio working.

 

[DeepOcean]

People are complaining about the Ubisoftitis, the main story is meh and combat is also meh, so pretty much like 99% of the games released nowdays. Seeing the same guys that were gobbling Ghost of Tsushima balls dunking on this game that have the same flaws, so you guess the wonders that a big Sony campaign targeted at "digital influencers" do.

They are also claiming the game isnt scary as if Evil Within wasnt some cheesy as fuck laughing inducing B movie.

 

[Zizka]

The should have done Evil Within 3 instead.

I’ve been forcing myself to hunt crocodiles in Caves of Qu for the last two days. I thought, “This looks promising!”
I tried it for about 10 minutes. Goddammit.

Japanese games have this thing where a spade can never be a spade. It needs to be something needlessly complicated. It can’t be something simple like a bad guy who wants to take over the world, it needs to be about a school boy who gets teleported in a new dimension with students from a different planet in another school system who needs to compete to discover why the first dungeon is really a suppression of the superego of the main character’s younger cousin (with telephone booths which allow you to call the ancestors of the first shogun).

I entered the hospital in-game and thought “this is exactly the same as everything out there but instead of guns you cast magic missiles. You can sort of finish them off if you damage them enough and you can do stealth kills.

On the bright side, the UI is well designed but that might be because I just played Caves of Qud.

 

[Skdursh]

His takeaway is p much what most people seemingly expected, formulaic open world design with very attractive setting.
The combat is what looks most disappointing to me, I pretty much took it for granted that since promos were playing on the elemental nature of your powers they would have element specific effects, like freezing enemies, putting them on fire, combining various effects. There is none of that. Also, there being no way to move any faster during combat is p disappointing, I guess everyone who complained about the slowness in gameplay vids is vindicated. But there are other things that could be due to him not being very good or missing some important stuff, he admits that he failed to use one important mechanic (those talisman things) until the very end even though they were present all the time.

Gman is a mostly-garbage reviewer who doesn't research any of the dumb shit he says before blurting out his angsty-teenager-on-Twitter hot takes. I dunno, it's probably due to fetal alcohol syndrome or something.

Regardless, the game looks good... it looks good. Like visually it looks good. It's probably enjoyable to walk around lil' Tokyo playing pretend that you're The Last Weeaboo on a desperate quest to save all the waifus from the sp00ky ghosties destroying the hentai shop. The gameplay, on the other hand, looks mostly lackluster... at least once you're done rubbing your eyes from the blinding light of the excessive particle effects that take up anywhere from 60-80% of the screen every time you attack anything. I guess the colors are pretty though.

 

[Tyranicon]

There's also the question of why, when building a supposedly atmospheric horror game, you'd want to include colorful particle effects in the first place.

 

[kangaxx]

One of the Steam reviews simply reads "You can get toilet paper for a ghost as a side quest."

 

[Reever]

I played a little bit and the visuals are really cool but the gameplay is very average. Also looking at the upgrade tree, it doesn't really inspire much confidence that something will change. And I don't know how in 2022 you can release an FPS on PC without an FOV slider and some of the worst mouse acceleration I've seen. At least the acceleration is fixable with an .ini edit.

There's also the question of why, when building a supposedly atmospheric horror game, you'd want to include colorful particle effects in the first place.

It kind of fits with the neon-filled Shibuya. Either way I feel like the game isn't really as much horror as it just has supernatural elements. Maybe I'm just a Gaijin and not a proper Japanese hikikomori but I'm not really scared by breakdancing schoolgirls.

 

[Rean]

Playing it now.
Game's fine, aside from the aforementioned shit controls.
Ignore the usual whiny suspects who never play any games to begin with.

 

[potatojohn]

First person perspective and no FOV slider. Totalbiscuit died for nothing.

 

[Rean]

TB should come back and die again, your idol spent all of 2016 whining about Trump and 'racism'.

 

[potatojohn]

TB should come back and die again, your idol spent all of 2016 whining about Trump and 'racism'.

By the sounds of it, so were you.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

I’ll review this game because why not:

Ghostwire: Tokyo is probably one of the more forgettable new IPs to debut from an AAA gaming publishing ecosystem and that’s really saying something. Even now I’m struggling to remember anything notable because it’s all just kind of a blur. Looking at Ghostwire, you might see something that looks interesting but playing it is certainly not.

You play as Akito who is inhabited and partially controlled by a spirit called KK. Tokyo is under attack and overrun with ghosts and Yokai and it’s up to you to save the city and your kidnapped girlfriend. Honestly, the story is not very interesting. It’s just really hard to care about anything.

Some might say calling Ghostwire a Far Cry game is reductive. I say it’s almost exactly that and I’m right. You explore an open-world that gradually opens up the more towers more Torrii gates you cleanse. The game is a sneaky-shooty first person game with skill trees. You’re expected to prioritize stealth, which is little more than sneaking behind demons and knifing them purging them.

As far as the combat goes, it’s not great. Instead of guns, you get to switch between spells based on the elements: fire, water, and wind. (You also get a bow which is used more to solve puzzles, by which I mean “hit the Tab key and shoot the glowy thing.”) Enemies are spongy and generally annoying to kill. There isn’t any sort of good feedback system to let the player feel like they're doing damage. In other words, shooting a wall feels no different than shooting an enemy. The handplay (?) looks impressive but on PC it feels slightly cumbersome and mind-numbing. Which is strange because both of Tango's previous games, The Evil Within 1 & 2, have decent mechanical tightness and responsive controls, at least compared to this.

Additionally, Ghostwire has a little bit of gameplay where you need to wave your character's hands in a certain pattern by tracing a line. This straight up sucks and I bet a lot of it is lost on PC because I imagine this is mostly to show off the DualSense features but either way, you can tell the team knew this wouldn't translate well because they let you skip it entirely by holding down Tab.

The upgrades serve a wide variety of functions and I don’t mean this in the way you think. Ideally, progressing through skill trees should allow an invested player to take their style of play to the next level. Not so in Ghostwire. In this game, upgrades mostly serve to reduce stupid bullshit present in gameplay. For example, going to a location to cleanse it or pulling a core out of an enemy by holding down the right button is not interesting. Ghostwire lets you put points in reducing the time you need to hold down a button in certain situations out of and in combat. Why include padding like this in the first place when a real improvement, as an example, using melee to rip enemy cores out is worth the same amount of skill points?

Aside from the usual open-world bullshit that comes with games like these (boring side missions, a trash mountain’s worth of collectibles, and a brief super vision power that shows you where everything in your near vicinity is), Ghostwire is probably one of the easiest games to play. Money and ammo are aplenty. Even moreso if you collect the random spirits floating around in the open world and during missions to gain a massive amount of XP.

Ghostwire is frustrating because there’s some depth and cleverness to the way it combines modern day neon glitz of Tokyo with Japanese folklore and mythology yet all of it is trapped in this boring and sluggish game. Everything feels safe and inoffensive and there's a severe lack of imagination in the game design.

Lastly, I found that the game ran smoothly. I'm on an RTX 2060, 2666 mhz 16 gb of RAM and a 9th gen Intel i7 CPU.

 

[Reever]

and your kidnapped girlfriend

I thought it's his sister.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

and your kidnapped girlfriend

I thought it's his sister.

You're right. I thought it was his sister due to me being kinda retarded and not paying that much attention.

 

[Zizka]

Well written and concise. Write more reviews (please)!

 

[Rean]

TB should come back and die again, your idol spent all of 2016 whining about Trump and 'racism'.

By the sounds of it, so were you.

Did you like and subscribe?

 

[potatojohn]

TB should come back and die again, your idol spent all of 2016 whining about Trump and 'racism'.

By the sounds of it, so were you.

Did you like and subscribe?

Sure, why not?

 

[Gromlintroid]

Looks shit.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Tokyo by night is nice.

 

[Cricket McBangle]

Well written and concise. Write more reviews (please)!

Hey thanks. Sure, if I see anything I feel confident on, I’ll post something!

 

[Nifft Batuff]

It's noteworthy that it is 2022 and this game is not a prequel/sequel/remaster.