All product names, logos, brands, and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. 505 Games and the 505 Games logo are registered trademarks of 505 Games SpA. All rights reserved.
Not many games have gripped me like Ghostrunner, despite being a "hardcore" game, a casual player such as myself was able to finish it without any assist mode or guides. The movement and combat is unmatched. This game is a must have for anyone in love with parkour, the cyberpunk aesthetic and honest-to-god gritty sword based combat.
Ghostrunner uses its insanely smooth movement with a simple yet fun combat system to take advantage of the amazing level design. The story is very basic but the setting of the game makes up for it by being stylish as hell. This game takes the "easy to learn, hard to master" idea to the top with its very simple and addictive gameplay loop.
As an avid Dishonored and Parkour game fan I find the game's Level Design way too boring and repetitive.
The Artwork is fine, most of what you would want to see from a Cyberpunk themed game is there sure, but still missing.
The levels are not smooth enough and they force you to kill the enemies before you go to the other puzzle which takes too much time with not enough stimulation for my fast-paced playstyle loving brain. The parkour part of the game is not embedded with the map but most things are there just for you conveniently just jump one them. The game forces you to play in their playstyle not yours, it's not flexible enough to capture a wide amount players' interests I think when they first buy/get the game.
The puzzle part is OK however, dying on a single hit makes you strategize around the weaknesses of the units, that sounds nice doesn't it? However most of them only have weaknesses around timing and that makes the levels just fill me with apathy and anger because some random guy just shoots me from the other side of the map when I was jumping around/moving around the map to find the correct time interval to slash them.
On the other hand however, the kill run game mode is in my opinion fantastic and really goes well with the actual idea of a cyberpunk assassin(not a juggernaut mind you since you get oneshot) just flying through enemies and getting the job done. Some levels are designed in a way so that they test your mechanics some are still just stuck at the timing part.
What I would want from a game like this has been so much different than what the game had offered to me. I would want to be tested for smooth movement, smart killing strategies not just strafing around to wait for the kill time interval.
I run the game on a 3060 and still have fps issues with the lowest graphics which shouldn't actually be a thing because how the not pleases the eye at all times.
Story is meh.
The game overall gets a very generous 3/5 from me.
Ghostrunner. Ah, a veritable gore-filled-cyberpunk-fueled medley of ideas that, in my opinion, lack a degree of execution I expected from the respective developer(s).
To start, the world in which it takes place in is absolutely awesome. You really feel like an insignificant and trying to scale an insurmountable tower of abstract, yet fluid and cohesive architecture.
I do very much appreciate the level layouts and utilizing tools and abilities to go from scene to scene, place to place. It reminds me very much of the BLAME! Manga. Very cool. Dystopian, gritty, and futuristic, yet retro-wave in a way, if that makes sense. You can feel the oppression in the game, and that is a quality I admire very much.
Your character itself has super-human abilities, of course. Much more agile and capable than the vast majority of foes you face, as well as the dangers inherent in the level design as well. I enjoyed the relative freedom in which I could run and scale walls an leap over and through large spaces as well as the claustrophobic machinations designed to hinder your progress and kill you. You MUST be able to think very quickly on your feet to survive. When you do, it feels great; when you don't, it can get a bit frustrating and feel tedious. This COULD be due to me not being as capable as other gamers, however I feel most people would struggle quite a bit with figuring out where to go and how to get there at times.
The combat is intense. Satisfyingly so. It is also frustrating and tedious at times as well. Generally, I found combat to be a trial and error kind of affair. I didn't see a whole lot of diverse or dynamic options when confronting opponents, but again, maybe this is just my own limitations as a gamer.
I did(and do) keep trying until I succeed to the next checkpoint, but I do(and did) get tired of dying for the 20th time.
Your mileage will probably vary with this game and depend on your reflexes and pattern recognition. It's pretty fun, nonetheless.