Ghostrunner

I love the concept and theme. The visuals are ok. The controls are awful, the auto wall running is unintuitive and feels terrible, auto mantling takes you over objects instead of onto them, the screen jumps at hard angles when you change surfaces while wall running, and the levels are not well designed. It's not good. It did not take me long to figure that out.

It's smooth, responsive ("but" incoming after this), fast, and fun, at least a four star experience. BUT: as I use a non-standard keyboard layout, I attempted to bind the "o" key to movement. This seems to work in the menu, and the key works elsewhere on my system, but in the actual game it didn't work at all for movement. This brings it down a good bit in my books. The key did eventually get working, the trick is you have to bind it to "abilities," and then after you unlock abilities (I think that's level 3, so about 30 minutes of gametime give or take) the key will work normally from that point forward.

I'm not very far in this game, and I can safely say you must have the patience of a saint in order to play this game. I'm stuck on the first room to feature the grappling hook gadget as a necessary tool. The AI doesn't miss unless you "dodge" after they fire their shot. Be prepared to dodge and never stop moving. You die in one hit. Your enemies die in one hit, though, so that's a plus. It's hard. Too hard for me. I'm also writing this review at about 0330 in the morning. Be caffienated, be alert, be ready to be careful and precise if you play this game. Why do I rate 2 stars? I'm angry.

It's a mess, frequently crashes. The game either decides you've fallen to your death while you're still in reach of platforms, or leaves you alive standing on pipes that there's no return from. The idea of dying from a single hit and retrying levels over and over is completely at odds with the story. Its hard to buy into the idea you're an elite warrior after the same scrub with a pistol shoots you dead for the tenth time over. The auto assist for wall running is real dumb too, regularly sticks you to scenery that is obviously not intended to be part of the level (i.e. small pipes that lead to nowhere), while also occasionally just dropping you to your death on a wall run you've done indentically moments before. Some really good ideas, executed terribly.

the game is looking fantastic and I could not wait for a chance to play it but after 30 minutes and over 100 deaths i'm still stuck in the tutorial. Certanly I'm not a skilled player but even using the Help Mode the game felt the same since the problems are the crazy reflexes you gotta have to dodge bullets. If it ever gets a real Difficulty scale I will rewrite this review.