Ghostwire: Tokyo

When Ghostwire: Tokyo was announced I was intrigued. A horror game with yokai invading a realistic Tokyo is an easy sell for me. A lot of what is good about this game are really just vibes. The ambiance of the world you are walking through is unsettling, keeping your head on a swivel. The color palette is a lot of greys and blacks but the splotches of color we do get pop in contrast when it’s the neon lights of a convenient store. When you get to the parks the colors are earthly and soothing, a stark contrast to how the tall buildings make you spend most of your time surrounded by. The exploration of Tokyo is the real draw of the game, though because of that the game does suffer from “open world game” syndrome. A nice large-ish map but because the map is big there needs to be things to do that aren’t the story. It always feels like busy work and Ghostwire: Tokyo is no exception. This problem is more widespread across games, at this point just having things to do in big maps is a “prestige” video game mechanic. An actual problem with the game that is solely on the game is its combat. You fight off the yokai with three types of elemental attacks, that also have their own properties, or use a bow and arrow. I rarely used the bow, only using it for the segments I was forced to use it. With the elemental attacks there is some variety but you can only do so much with them. Either a basic fire or you can charge it up, that’s it. You only get three types and each one has it’s own ammo account. You’ll probably find yourself only really using the wind based attack since that has the most ammo and since it’s the first you start off making it more likely that you upgrade it earlier rather than waiting. All of that makes combat feeling flat. Even more so when you consider that you never really have to block or dodge, you can just slowly walk backwards as you fire off shots. None of the non-boss enemies never really gain ground fast enough for that to not be a viable strategy. The story is good enough, though it is filled with a lot of coincidental and right place right time.

This game was sitting on my backlog for awhile. When I bought it I had some friends tell me it might not be worth it, so wanting to give it a fair shake I sat on it to let it fall out of cycle and come in as fresh as can be. I did enjoy it despite it’s shortcomings thought I only stuck to the main story and some side quests. Like most games coming out that are like it, it is a good not great game.

In essence: I think it would’ve been better as a third person game.