Game review: Ghostwire: Tokyo for EGS

Regular readers know that I have a firm rule about reviews: if I can’t finish something, I don’t review it. Ghostwire: Tokyo frequently tempted me to break that rule, or at least to give up and post a summary of why I quit. The story is pretty good, and a lot of the side quest writing was easily on par with the main plot. In terms of graphics, it’s one of the few games on my new gaming box that looked gorgeous without making tweaks in the Radeon app, and the music is fantastic.

Y’all know a BUT is coming, and it’s a BUT at least three times the size of my own full moon. Before I get into the negatives that kept this out of 5 star territory, I really want to dig into the positives that came because I persevered through my early hours of discontent.

Ghostwire: Tokyo is, at its heart, a game about people failing to talk to folks they care about, and the resulting regrets that create VERY bad decision making. This statement could refer to the protagonist, his co-star, the antagonist, any number of supporting cast members, and even some of the enemies. Once the writers and director decided on a theme, they committed to the bit with remarkable thoroughness.

The main character, Akito, is racing to see his sister in a hospital because he was told she has taken a turn for the worse. But on his way to the hospital, he gets into an accident right as the ghost apocalypse begins. HILARITY ENSUES!

But no, aggravation ensues instead. This is a first person shooter with a pathetically low ammo count and a distinct lack of gun varieties. Players start with one windy finger pistol carrying thirty shots. Which might seem like a lot if every hit landed. But this game has the WORST implementation of aim assist I’ve ever seen. Simply trying to get it to work at all is fiddly, but one shot can knock back an enemy and shake the target lock off. That enemy might jump to one side once aim assist does lock on, or even walk sideways slowly, and the aiming reticle goes “Aw shucks, I lost ‘em!”

For the sake of comparison, there’s an accessibility feature for another big part of the game, hand gestures. Throughout the game, Akito will use talismans on cursed objects or angry spirits, and then a prompt pops up instructing the player to use the right stick to draw any number of shapes to complete the ritual and press both triggers to release the resulting energy buildup. But if a player finds the drawing aspect frustrating or tedious, they can just turn on a feature that will draw the shape for them, leaving only the simpler act of pulling the triggers to finish the ritual.

This kind of disparity bakes my brain. How does a game with a great accessibility feature blow aim assist when that is far, FAR more needed for the vast majority of the game? I’m going to return to this, but I need to move on for now.

Once the game opens up a little, Akito gets access to a “water blade” and a “fire spear.” Both have a shorter range than the windy pistol, with the water blade prone to missing unless a monster is all up in your grill, possibly even doing some grilling on your grill while sipping a cold one and telling his buddy about his plans to visit Fuji next weekend. The fire spear is arguably the most powerful weapon, but it also has the lowest ammo count, its range is quite a bit shorter than the wind shot, and it has an extremely low rate of fire.

None of the early game hijinks are helped by Akito’s lack of movement options, most of which can’t even be unlocked until considerable progress has been made in the story. A lot of that early game is firing ineffectually until all ammo is depleted, and then running around trying to smash spirit objects to reload. Keep in mind that all the objects offering ammo do so in miniscule amounts. Oh, you needed five fire spears? Great, here’s one. Nope, no matter how many other objects you crush in that area, that’s the only one you’re getting, loser.

In theory, you might try to recover shots by punching enemies, but keeping the aim assist in mind, you also have to factor in Akito’s very short melee attack and ask if you really want to get close enough to offer enemies the chance to kick Akito long before his weak jab is in range. Later, though when you’ve got some XP invested in the skill tree, blocking to recover shots is an option, but it has to be a Perfect Block. It’s doable in one-on -one combat, but less likely when a mob is attempting to tag-team tap dance on Akito’s face

Eventually, the slog of exploration turns into a proper open world game and leaves the decision making up to the player, and this was the moment when I started to hate it a lot less. Side missions offered the rewards I needed to make moving around Shibuya easier, and there are elemental statues to pray to for more shots. (Don’t get too excited, though, as it’s one shot per statue, they’re hard to find, and flame shots are rarer than hen’s teeth.)

What really opened up the game was being able to summon a spirit and launch a psychic grapple line to pull Akito up to the roof level. If the game suddenly decided to drop ten or so enemies on a location without warning, I could grapple away, or at least grapple up to find a more safe point to make a stand from.

Before I go any further, I need to answer an obvious question: if I hated the tutorial bits so much, why did I stick with it? Dogs and cats. Littered around the map are various colors of Shina Ibu dogs, and Akito can pet them and offer them food. They might reward him by digging up some spirit coins, or by guiding him to an elemental statue. In a similar manner, petting and talking to cats might reveal the locations of items, bad spirits or tanuki, a band of shapeshifters from southern Japan who scattered across the region when the spiritual shit hit the physical fan.

And yeah, it’s a dumb reason to stick with a game, but listen, I love dogs, and going on a tour of Shibuya to feed and pet every last one became something of a calming ritual for every time I found myself shouting “For the love of God, HOLD STILL FOR ONE SECOND!” (We’re still not back to this yet.) But there’s also the exploration of a city that’s beautifully like Shibuya while still holding to video game rules about traversal and platforming. (Which is also sometimes its own form of frustration, albeit much less so than the combat problems.)

There’s one last gotcha that comes up about mid-game. There were lots of smaller mini boss fights, but at the end of the first proper boss fight, Akito is stripped of the source of his powers. (I hope you notice I’m working real hard not to do spoilers. You’re welcome.) This leads to him having to do a stealth mission back to base, armed only with a bow. Eventually, he gets his mojo back, but beyond this point, it was quite common for bosses and mini bosses to use the same tactic, leaving me scrambling to dodge attacks while also struggling to recover Akito’s powers. It’s hard to have a proper power fantasy when every hour or so some random dude can render my character weaker than a wet noodle.

Around two thirds into the game, new enemies get added into the buckets being dumped on Akito…okay, wait, I should pause and explain something else. One of Akito’s abilities is being able to send out a psychic pulse that will highlight objects and enemies in his surroundings, even seeing through walls. The range for this ability can be expanded in the skill tree, so in theory, spotting traps is less likely. Except, to make sure players can’t have too much fun, lots of times enemies will appear from black puffs of smoke. Where there were no enemies one second, a whole battalion of bad guys might suddenly be charging Akito from all directions in the next.

Okay, now: new enemies get added into those ambushes, and most of them love to make the aim assist woes of the game worse. You’ve got an invisible bullet sponge who telekinetically launches everything and the kitchen sink. After taking a few shots, this guy melts to the ground and races elsewhere. Fighting him requires blocking his attacks, using spirit vision to relocate him, and getting a few shots off before being pummeled by another barrage. It’s not fun. There are monsters who “swim” in the pavement, rarely popping up to grant a shot, and aim assist loves to lock onto the empty spaces on one side or the other of them. Then there’s flying monsters wearing nooses, whose rapid direction changes coupled with an increasing number of ranged attacks makes each encounter just that little bit more aggravating. (They start out firing one magic missile per enemy, but that eventually expanded to five and six missiles. Now multiply that by four to five added enemies of the same type. I reiterate: it’s not fun)

For me, this game fell into two patterns. Mood one, where I got into fights with the local spirit mobs and elevated my blood pressure; and mood two, where I went around the map doing the side questing activities. I might rescue some trapped spirits, hunt for yokai to borrow their powers, play with the dogs, cats, and tanuki, and so on an so forth. Sometimes, I just went shopping at the local convenience stores to admire all the loving details in the food packaging. The rise and fall of these two moods became a balance of yin and yang, or perhaps in my case, of yay and fuck off.

Eventually, I finally got enough shots for all the elements so that I didn’t run out mid-fight, and I collected enough items to make all my attacks stronger, so I could deal with the increasing waves of enemies without having to flee to the rooftops or scrabble to collect extra shots. That’s when I decided to tackle the end-game.

But without knowing it, I instead stumbled onto the DLC, and that deserves an honorable mention. Most of the vibe of this game is many things, but scary isn’t really a word I’d use. But someone making the DLC said, “Hey, why don’t we make this add-on genuinely scary?” And they succeeded, y’all.

Multiple times, I shouted out loud from jump scares or random noises, and there was not one but two chase sequences that had me on the literal edge of my seat. Before hitting the DLC, I’d died maybe three or four times, and two of those were intentional flings into voids to reset my position because I was lost. But I died a LOT in the DLC until I finally sorted out how to survive the second of two chases. It was humbling, and also a relief when I could finally walk out of the school where the DLC takes place. (It does warn you that once you start, you can’t leave until you’re done, and I, like an idiot, said, “How bad could it be?” It’s pretty intense.)

Things get very cut-scene heavy near the end, and in between multiple boss fights, there are long, slow walks through Akito’s memories that reinforce all the themes of regret that have been harped on all along. When the last boss falls and the dust settles, Akito is left with one last challenge, learning to live with regrets and still somehow do more than just survive.

I think this is another reason why I stuck with the game despite my aggravation with it. Living with regrets as a theme speaks very strongly to me, someone who carries a LOT of regrets over past mistakes and lost chances. So once I saw that this was the theme, I wanted to know if the writers had something to say about moving on, getting on with living instead of merely surviving. They did, and in my opinion, they pulled it off quite well.

Which leads me to my last minor complaint. Like a lot of open world games, after the credits roll, players are sent back to the map in a special modified save file taking place before the last boss fight. This is intended to allow for mopping up of remaining side quests, or just to do a victory lap. But for once, I really would have liked to see an alternative offered, one where I could reach a true end game and explore Shibuya post-apocalypse. I wanted to know how all the people returning to their bodies dealt with “the event?” Would they even know it happened? And how would it feel for Akito to return to explore that world without any powers to make it easy?

It’s a big ask, probably far beyond the technical scope of the game, so I’m not saying I expected it, just that the ending left me curious to know more. That’s something a good story will do. It leaves me longing for more time in any given world, and I consider that a great accomplishment for any story, but more so for video games, where the story often takes a back seat to game mechanics.

To be sure, there are times where the story falters because of gameplay, or because an objective in a side quest requires a nonsensical MacGuffin to keep things moving along. But on the whole, I liked the story a lot, and that helped keep me going when the game’s other parts seemed bound and determined to kick me out.

In the end, I will give Ghostwire: Tokyo 4 stars, but that comes with a few caveats ahead of recommendations. This is very much a game that “takes X hours to get good.” Anybody who doesn’t have time for that, I can understand. Even for those that are okay with waiting to get good, I might recommend playing with a mouse and keyboard if you can. I tried that a few times out of frustration with my controller, and it made a world of difference. Sadly, just a few short sessions caused some wrist pain, so I went reluctantly back to a controller.

So I guess I’d recommend this for the kind of gamer that’s okay with the wonky controls making basic stuff harder. If you can see it through to the end credits, I think the story is worth your time. But man, this game is going to make you earn it.