Ghostrunner

The game's plot is one giant cliche; if you DO want a bit more, you can find a bunch of audio logs and mementos of the City and life before the Burst as collectibles- there's even an optional upgrade that'll highlight them on your radar map. But the story really isn't the point here. The point is, unequivocally, action. The game is about getting from point A to point B, either platforming your way through various urban and industrial complexes, or making it through a tight area full of enemies who must all be killed to unlock the door forward. One hit kills you, and them, so this is as much a precision platformer as it is a parkour game. Each challenge, be it platforming or a combat sequence, is essentially a puzzle-find the optimal way of using your limited skillset to get the task done. Reloads are instantaneous, and the presentation pushes you ever forward. The game nails the cyberpunk aesthetic (though a few levels are drabber than others, and the absolute highlight of the game are the residential districts), and the soundtrack is phenomenal in how it resonates with the game's pacing to keep you going. The way enemies die, the way you move through the world, the way your extra powers work- it all coalesces into an amazing power fantasy, that leaves you thinking "what I did was cool". To put it simply, once you've managed to kill 5-6 enemies in a single choreographed go, you're feeling too good about yourself to get upset that a 7th got a lucky shot in. There's also boss fights. They're all about pattern recognition, and can be very frustrating (a few took me north of 300 attempts each). But the game generally does very generous checkpointing and it almost never feels unfair. While simply finishing the game once you know what you're doing can be fairly trivial, it took me about 30 hours to finish and then re-run a few levels with unlocked upgrades for some achievements. Overall, a great package for action fans; you'll certainly get your money's worth!

Fast paced game and one hit kill. Voice acting helps a lot to really get into the story. The game is amazing.

The controls are not as fluid and smooth as the trailer makes it look. They are too janky and glitchy for a one-hit-kill game like Katana Zero (which has the snappy controls this game lacks). I honestly didn't make it far into the game, but if the core mechanics don't feel good, why would you? If the original Super Mario Brothers didn't have realible (although sluggish) controls, it would have been yet another fast forgotten mediocre platformer. In the same way, Ghostrunner is another, fast forgotten neo noir that is looks slick but doesn't play smooth. Also, personally, I feel I'm pretty over the neon lights look There's a lot more you can do, other than copy the streets of Blade Runner.

You have both look for parkour and guys with gun in a repetitive pattern. It is too boring and too complicated for a mundane game.

The first thing I noticed playing this is that the dash function feels schizophrenic; while grounded it gives you a short boost in whatever direction you're moving, in the air it gives you bullet time and an optional sideways juke, then boosts you in the direction you're aiming regardless of movement. It feels like two separate abilities that should never have been merged, and if you're ever trying to use it while close to the ground you'd best hope you aren't slightly off the ground if you meant to be grounded or vice versa, or you'll almost certainly die instantly. The next thing I noticed is the brutality and inconsistency of the combat and parkour; sometimes it feels like I drop dead apropos of absolutely nothing, occasionally shots seem to phase right through me but far more often than not I get to deal with somehow being cut down by a single bullet mid-dash even while traveling perfectly perpendicular to the projectile. Sometimes my idiot character will attempt to latch onto a ledge instead of wallrunning, sometimes walljumping just spits me off at an unrecoverable downwards angle for no apparent reason, some parts are generously checkpointed while others will funnel me through a 2-5-minute marathon of one-hit KO BS until I manage to execute the entirety of it flawlessly some 30 attempts later. There were also odd occasions of me clipping through geometry to my death, but the jank was overall tolerable... until I got to the mandatory tutorialization of the first unlockable ability, the Blink. You need to use it to cut through clusters of 3 placeholder enemies at a time to continue the game, but every time I do so it resets me and respawns the targets, telling me to try again. I'm softlocked. I am well versed in and completed Meat Boy, Mirror's Edge, AND Shadow Warrior, but gameplay-wise this feels like one of the worse potential outcomes of melding all three. Which is a shame because the aesthetic and premise were both really grabbing me.