Ghostrunner

Irritating but in the way I like :) I need more and more.

Like with a game called ruiner, once you get good at it you become a high speed meat grinder and you feel great. But untill then you're more like a high speed mellon splattering on every surface you hit untill you manage to get to the end. But still, it's fun to figure thing out and the payoff is, at least for me, worth it.

If you're a casual gamer or if you're here for the story, then this game isn't for you. You can expect to die a lot in this game, and the story is average at best (even the ending is quite predictable). But the story isn't the reason why I bought this game, and it shouldn't be yours either. The gameplay is fun and using the various skills you gain throughout the game as well as the different katanas is extremely satisfying. The parkour is fun too, but what makes this game truly stand out is its soundtracks, which motivated me to continue even when I was having a hard time. Overall, it was an incredible experience!

I loved Mirror's Edge and the Hotline Miami games. Ghostrunner is a mix of these. And I like precise controls. Played the game at locked 120 fps to minimize input delay and frame rate issues. A game, that is all about demanding perfect timing from the player, is fine to me, if it provides the controls to realize perfect timing. Ghostrunner fails at that task. Esp. the controls for the wall running and jumping sections are incredibly clunky and imprecise. You don't necessarily fail at a puzzle, because you are bad. You pretty much fail, because your inputs are not registered correctly. I don't see a reason why you should put any effort into getting good in this game. It does the absolute basics for the genre wrong. Side Notes (reasons why I gave more than 1 star): - the visuals and music are subjectively good - the story is okay, but was obviously not the main focus for the developers - the non ray tracing performance is good (ray tracing is useless in this game anyway, as it is just put on top of the baked lighting and so ends up being almost invisible)

You die in one hit, and only have a melee weapon while enemies have guns. You will restart a lot and make little progress. Platforming sections sometimes require trial and error, and failing near the end will send you quite a few jumps back. The bullet time in mid air breaks the pace of the game and I do not like using it, but it seems like a key part of the game (maybe only if you are bad at the game). A better method of self preservation that didn't break the game flow would have been welcome. Even with assist mode (cheats mode), it's just constantly restarting tiny sections until you figure out the exact moves the devs wanted you to make. At least the restarts are blinding fast though, that part is spot on. I think for a relaxing time, some assist mode options / cheats I would have wanted would be: Enemies stay dead even after restarting Bosses hp does not restore when restarting (no idea if bosses do have health, but assuming they would) Button to skip the platforming / puzzle section you are currently on Besides the quick restarting, other positives would be the visual / audio presentation and titanfall'ish wall running.