
Armed with just a sword and your wits, the challenge really starts to climb as you try to plan the best path to take through each area so that you can dispatch your foes and progress to your next objective, all while dodging a hail of gunfire. But before long, you’ll come face to face with Mara’s goons, which you’ll often need to take down while simultaneously performing insane acrobatic feats. Trying to navigate Ghostrunner‘s gritty locales is already challenging to begin with. But much like Mirror’s Edge, bright yellow accents usually serve to highlight your destination as you make your way across the sprawling environments. With so much going on, it can be pretty tough to get your bearings.

However, it doesn’t take long before you find yourself in the middle of a veritable Rube Goldberg machine of perilous platforms and churning death traps that will put your parkour skills to the test. Things begin straightforward enough as you run along walls and slide down ramps to gain speed to perform long-distance leaps of faith. Precision platforming is the name of the game in Ghostrunner. Guided by the voice of a being known as The Architect, your goal is to climb Dharma Tower (no, not Darm Tower of Ys fame) and kill the Keymaster, Mara, who rules over society from her lair high above the city. The game puts you in control of “Jack,” a Ghostrunner brought back from the dead with no memory of his former self. Unfortunately, like a cybernetic implant rejected by its host, the Switch version of Ghostrunner feels like it’s fighting tooth and nail to rebel against the humble hardware that’s trying to run it.īefore I get into all that, though, here’s the setup. I spent roughly six hours slashing my way through the game’s campaign in hopes of honing my samurai skills to a razor’s edge.

I felt more like a squirrel trying in vain to clamber up a light post covered in Crisco than a badass cyber Samurai scaling an ominous tower high above a dystopian skyline. However, as much as I wished to become the agile ninja showcased in the game’s opening cinematic, my career as a Ghostrunner was an exercise in frustration. So when a review copy of the Nintendo Switch version landed in my inbox, you better believe I was eager to take a stab at the title.
#GHOSTRUNNER GAMEPLAY PC#
Combining the high-flying parkour gameplay of Mirror’s Edge with the tense, one-hit deaths of Hotline Miami, this cyberpunk slasher was well-received when it made its way onto the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC last month. That’s great news if you like moving around at lightening fast speeds, making quick decisions as far as where to go next.Developed in partnership with One More Level, 3D Realms, and Slipgate Ironworks, Ghostrunner aims to make players feel like the ultimate cyborg ninja as they grapple, wall run, and slide across ominous industrial areas and slice gun-toting psychos in half with their futuristic katanas. Much of the opening sequence seems centered around platforming action. Your character also has some sort of grapple hook that can attach to structures to gain access to higher-up areas. The interesting chain of events should keep you locked in, whether it’s moving from different tiers, hopping over obstacles, or keeping your deadly sword ready for the next wave of attacks. It’s like the tower city has a life force of its own and beckons to be discovered. The developer hits all of the right notes with the colors, building structures, and street signs in the distance. The tower city has a very cyberpunk feel to it, which is a theme that’s gained steady traction in the gaming industry thanks to Cyberpunk 2077’s pending release. It’s also worth mentioning the game’s setting. You truly feel like a cybernetic ninja capable of anything. You can perform all sorts of maneuvers to get to new areas, such as running across walls and jumping up ledges.

They have a fast-tempo nature to them, which helps keep the action going from sequence to sequence. The developer - One More Level - certainly isn’t shying away from graphic content and that should captivate a lot of gamers at launch. The player swoops down from a tall building and drives their futuristic sword through an enemy’s neck. That’s pretty clear with some new gameplay footage that just surfaced.Įven the opening sequence of this latest trailer starts off on a graphic note. As you might imagine, engaging in epic sword battles will be pretty brutal and graphic in nature. That concept alone makes Ghostrunner pretty unique out of the gate. It’s a first-person shooter in a sense, but instead of guns, you have a sword. One of the more intriguing games of 2020 has to be Ghostrunner.
